How’s this for a fish story

I’m always intrigued by those art auctions where paintings go for astronomical prices. Good for the collector/seller. Not much benefit for a dead artist. A good enough deal for a live artist, as those high prices will transfer to their future works and their wallets.

If you’re someone who wants the work of art to have and to hold, to cherish and to keep, well, good luck for you.

If you’re a gambling type investor who’s hoping that the prices keep going up, well, good luck to you.

While on some level, I don’t get the sky-high prices for a work of art, on another level – art lover or investor – I do understand. And that understanding is largely based on the fact that a work of art – unless it’s Banksy’s self-destructing painting (here’s Pink Slip on that subject) – is tangible, lasting.

But a crazy price for a fish is quite another kettle of fish.

A 278-kilogram bluefin tuna sold for 333.6 million yen ($3.1 million) at a Tokyo fish market Saturday. The record price -- which equates to about $5,000 a pound -- is more than double the previous high set in 2013, according to Masayuki Fukuda, an official in charge of trading operations at the Tokyo market. (Source: Bloomberg)

That’s about 600 pounds of bluefin tuna, translating into $10,000 per eight ounce serving. In sushi terms, we’re talking somewhere between $300 and $400 per piece.

This 600 pounds overstates the yield on that fish, and understates the cost, given the presence of fish guts, teeth and eyes.

Understated/overstated, $300 is an awful lot to pay for a piece of tuna sushi. Think I’ll stick with the California roll, thanks. That and canned tuna.

Such a crazy-high price…

The bluefin tuna is an endangered species and all that. So of course it’s worth more than, say, farmed salmon. And New Year’s is the big go fish day at the Tokyo fish market. But still.

Anyway, unlike a work for art, fish (even if you freeze it) is pretty much a use it or lose it item.

The restaurants are, of course, getting into these bidding wars for the publicity, not because they can get away with charging customers the actual cost of the fish. The Sushizanmai chain, proud owner of the most expensive fish in history, is planning on making the high-priced tuna available at their regular prices.

The company is conceding that they may have overpaid.

"We did too much," Kiyoshi Kimura, the owner of the chain, told reporters. "I expected it would be between 30 million yen and 50 million yen, or 60 million yen, but it ended up five times more expensive," according to television footage of him speaking to the media.

One might quite sensibly ask whether the publicity that accrues to overpaying 5x is worth it, but for Kimura, known as Japan’s “Tuna King”, it apparently is. He’s been the high bidder at the New Year’s Day auction for the past eight years.

I can only imagine what the going rate will be for the last bluefin tuna in the world.

Seems crazy to me, but what do I know about sushi chain PR in Japan?

Oh, what a world we live in.

Bowled over by this excellent job!

I pay about as much attention to the college football bowls as I do to college football in the regular season. Which is next to none.

Oh, on New Year’s Day, I was at my sister Trish’s when she realized that Northwestern, her alma mater, had mounted a comeback victory against Utah in the Holiday Bowl. The game had been played on December 31, but was televised on January 1. We put it on for about 2 minutes.

Because it was covered in the Boston Globe, I noticed that the First Responder Bowl, in which local fan non-favorite/meh team Boston College was playing Boise State, was canceled because of lightning. Guess they didn’t want any first responders to actually have to respond first.

And I know some folks whose son is an assistant coach at the University of Florida, so I was aware of Florida’s thumping Michigan in the Peach Bowl. (In other respects, however Michigan thumps Florida, starting with the fact that Our Tom Brady went to Michigan, while his former teammate, murderous thug Aaron Hernandez, was a Gator.)

And although I won’t watch the game, I realize that Alabama and Clemson are going at it this week in some sort of playoff for “we’re number one” bragging rights.

Mostly, I don’t pay a lot of attention to football, college or otherwise. (That said, I will probably watch the Super Bowl in the unlikely event that the Patriots and Our Tom Brady somehow make it there.)

But I am certainly aware that there are a ton of bowl games out there.

When I was growing up, New Year’s Day meant the Big Four bowl games: Sugar, Cotton, Orange and Rose. Then, over time, a few other bowls crept in, floating around on the periphery of bowldom – Peach, Fiesta, Liberty.

And now? Wow!

Whole lot of bowlin’ going on.

There’s something called the Celebration Bowl. And something else called the Cure Bowl. If there’s ever a cure for breast cancer, the cure promoted by the Curl Bowl, perhaps these bowls can merge and become the Celebrate the Cure Bowl.

New Mexico, Texas, Birmingham (AL),  New Orleans, Boca Raton, Frisco (TX) and Las Vegas each has its own eponymous bowl. And Nashville has the Music City Bowl, which is somewhat eponymous. Who knew any of this? (The New Mexico Bowl is played at Dreamstyle Stadium. And if you’re wondering what Dreamstyle is, it’s a home remodeling business located in Albuquerque NM.) There’s even a Bahamas Bowl. They used to say that everything was better in the Bahamas, but the teams that played in this bowl were Florida International and Toledo, so…

The Rose isn’t the only flowery bowl. There’s a Camellia Bowl. There’s also a tuber-based bowl: Famous Idaho Potato. And some just plain boring company-named bowls: Dollar General, Belk, RedBox. And the cheesy-sounding Cheez-It Bowl.

The only bowl that actually sounded fun is the Gasparilla Bowl, named for a pirate festival held in Tampa.

This is by no means the full roster of bowl games, but there are so many that a fair number of one-step-above-mediocre teams end up in one. And who would turn an invite down? The Cheez-It Bowl gives both teams $1M, and even though the lowly Dollar General Bowl pays out $750K.

Outback Steakhouse is another company that sponsors a bowl. As is befitting a full meal vs. a snack food, the Outback Bowl pays each team $3.5M for their appearance.

While this strikes me as a great deal of money, you have to keep in mind that college football, especially at its upper echelons, is a big business. And the major bowls – the old Big Four – pay each team playing $18M. (I think that’s right. I’ve seen a few different figures floating around out there. It didn’t seem worth putting much energy into figuring this particular thing out. Suffice it to say, going to an important bowl translates into important money.)

Anyway, the Outback Bowl is not in this elevated category. An article in the Washington Post on the fellow who runs it characterizes it as “a second-tier college football postseason game featuring third-place teams.”

The article wasn’t focused on the Outback Bowl qua bowl, but rather on Jim McVay, the exec who runs it. With a salary a bit over $1M, McKay was:

…the highest-paid bowl executive in the country in 2017, the most recent year financial records are available, even though his organization’s revenue that year — $11.9 million — ranked 10th among bowl organizations. While several bowl bosses manage other games or major events, McVay’s core duties remain as focused as they were when he took the job in 1988: negotiate contracts and sell sponsorships and tickets for one football game each year. (Source: WaPo)

I was going to say ‘nice work if you can get it’, but it’s hard for me to envision a more boring and altogether yucky job that spending your year talking to the folks who run big-time college football programs, and selling tickets to a game that no one really wants to see, other than hardcore fans of the teams playing. (This year, that would be Mississippi State and Iowa.)

To put McKay’s compensation in a slightly different perspective the chief exec for the Rose Bowl made the relatively paltry sum of $412M. (The Rose Bowl organization earned revenues close to $100M, so had a lot more $$$ coming in than did the Outback.)

It will come as no surprise that McVay declined the request for an interview for the WaPo article. However:

A former Outback board chairman, in a phone interview, defended McVay’s pay as “a bargain,” pointing to his ability to keep Outback, the SEC and the Big Ten locked into contracts, and the economic impact of tens of thousands of visitors each December.

“We don’t just throw money away . . . Jim’s very well-compensated, yes, but he’s worth every penny,” said Steve Schember, board member since 1990.

On the other hand:

When informed of McVay’s pay and the Outback Bowl’s revenue, one expert on the economy of college sports laughed.

“You really can’t justify this salary,” said Richard Southall, professor and director of the College Sport Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.

McVay is credited with saving this limping-along, debt-ridden, bowl when he took the job running it three decades ago. He forged agreements with the Big Ten and SEC conferences that guarantee that their third-place teams – not their fourth place teams – will play in the Outback. And got a good deal with ESPN for television rights.

Still, there’s only so many days in the year you can spend negotiating multi-year deals and schmoozing with the conference and TV guys. Sounds like a pretty cushy job to me. And the bottom line is that over the past 20 years, while the Outback’s revenue has “increased about 50 percent, McVay’s compensation jumped about 240 percent.”

And it sounds like McVay is a particularly good negotiator when it comes to his paycheck. He apparently does so by letting his board know that some NFL team or another is dangling an offer his way. And the board just doesn’t want to lose him.

McVay is also pretty good at compensating his staff. The Outback Bowl has only a handful of full-time employees. And:

In Tampa, a city where median income is $48,000, the lowest-paid Outback Bowl employee earned $138,000 last year.

I’m pretty bowled over by all this. All that money for running a average-y bowl. Nice work if you can get it, especially when you consider that the players themselves make zip…

Pink Slip mourns as Durgin-Park announces it’s closing

The first I heard that Durgin-Park was closing came in an email from my brother-in-law. He had seen the transcript of a December Ark Restaurants Group earnings call, during which it was mentioned that Durgin-Park was likely to close.

And then the general public got the word from The Boston Globe, which was passed on to me in short order by Frederick, a faithful Pink Slip reader, by both of my sisters, by my brother-in-law (again), and by my Boston-local brother. Oh, and by one of my cousins.

All, of course, knew that I am a proud alumna of Durgin-Park, a venerable (and not all that good) Boston restaurant that first opened its doors in 1827. (And, yes, you read that right.)

Durgin was known for a few things: Prime Rib, surly waitresses, and Indian Pudding.

The Faneuil Hall restaurant will close on Jan. 12, according to restaurant manager Kenneth Thimothee, who cited financial reasons including an increased minimum wage.

“It’s very unfortunate, but the costs are too high,” he said. (Source: Boston Globe)

Well, I’ll call BS here.

I’m sure there are financial reasons: high rent and fewer patrons. But that increased minimum wage is just happening as of January 1, and I’m sure that those costs could easily have been passed on to diners – costs buried in the hefty prices folks were already paying for uninspired food.

I mean, do people really want the same menu items that were on offer in 1827? Or 1973?

Because I just looked at the menu, and not much has changed since I exited the building in March of 1973.

Oh, there are some additions: Caesar Salad, and Mama Park’s Signature Meatballs and Spaghetti. But most of the stuff – Prime Rib, Lamb Shanks, Chicken Liver, Scrod - is same-old.

As for “Mama Park’s Signature Meatballs over Spaghetti”, talk about calling BS. I can pretty much guarantee that neither the mother nor the wife of Durgin-Park co-founder Eldridge Park had ever heard of meatballs and spaghetti, let alone come up with a recipe for it. In 1827, there were barely any Irish immigrants in Boston for the Yankees to look down on, let alone Italians, who flooded in 40 or 50 years after the famine Irish arrived.

If they were going to put Italian food on the menu, they should have gotten recipes from Mary S. or Angie, two of the classic old-gal waitresses from my era at Durgin. Mary S. was from Boston’s Italian North End. Angie, I think, was from Revere.

Angie (major bouffant hairdo, died jet-black even though Angie was getting up there in years) and Mary S. (somewhat cranky but very sweet by the standards of the old gal waitresses) were just two of the brigade of long-time Durgin waitresses I worked with during the year I was there.

Flo (head gal, who one time ran into me while she was beelining the wrong way into the kitchen; this would have been fine, if I hadn’t been balancing six cups of boiling hot coffee on my wrists – a Durgin waitress trick. I missed nearly a week of work, uncompensated, of course, even by the skimpy pay that waitresses got – I think it was $1.15 an hour.

By the way, that $1.15 an hour for a tipped employee translates into $6.67 an hour in 2019 terms. So I’m definitely calling BS on the fact that the new tipped minimum wage in Massachusetts of $4.35 was going to break Durgin-Park’s back.

Gussie was another of the old gals. If Flo was a bulldozer, not only barreling into the kitchen the wrong way, but being an occasionally mean and erratic head waitress, Gussie – her second in command – was a gentle soul who always played good cop to Flo’s bad.

I noticed that there were a number of mentions of Dottie in the comments on the article. I’m sure they were referring to Dottie L, not Dottie F, as Dottie L was one of the saltier of the old gals. Maybe 25 years ago, I went back to eat at Durgin for the first time. This was nearly two decades after my tenure there, and Dottie L was still working. I spoke with her, but she didn’t remember me. Until I reminded her of the incident in which my roommate threw a strawberry shortcake at the owner. Then she recalled us. (You had to be there. Joyce was almost entirely justified. The owner was an absolutely raging crazy man, a bellowing drunk who bullied not just the waitstaff, but the customers as well.)

There was Fox Hole Rita, named for her regular station. Marilyn and Pam, whom Joyce and I knew from our all having worked at Union Oyster House the year before. Marilyn and Pam were in their late twenties, so near age peers – especially when compared to the old gals – and we used to share packs of Marlboros, which we’d leave in cubby holes so that they were convenient when we needed a break. As anyone who waited during my era can tell you, you really needed to smoke so that you had a reason to take a break. And so that you could tell the head waitress when she came looking for you, “Just let me finish my fucking cigarette.”

I fondly remember Jeanie, who was a very butch woman, her hair Brylcreemed into a boy-cut DA, but who ALWAYS helped out a fellow-waitress when you needed someone to water, bus, check on a table.

Nina, Colleen, and Sharon. A mother-daughters combination. Nina took the nasty Durgin waitress to a new level. I once saw here leaning out the unscreened window, raining change down on the heads of her departing customers, and telling them to “shove your tip up your fucking asses.”

Ah, Durgin-Park.

Although I have eaten there only two times since 1973, I already miss the idea of Durgin’s Indian Pudding, a cornmeal and molasses concoction that was definitely old Yankee. And definitely delish when served warm with vanilla ice cream. Sometimes we were allowed to eat it; other times not. On the not days, our dessert choice was restricted to “Coffee Jelly”, a wonderfully slimy homemade, ultra-strong coffee jello. Alas, I see, it’s no longer on the menu. While the Coffee Jelly was fine, it was no Indian Pudding. Permission to eat Indian Pudding depended on the day’s whim of the owner. When it was a disallowed day, we could hide out in one of Fox Hole Rita’s stations, with someone standing guard to make sure the old man wasn’t around to see us sneaking the Indian Pudding.

Ah, Durgin.

I’ve worked at some crazy places, but it was probably the craziest places I ever worked. Arbitrary. Insane.

But it sure prepared me for the work world in terms of learning how to deal with all types. With non-sensical rules, with arbitrary decisions, with brutally demanding everyone, with tiring on-your-feet (other than when sneaking Indian Pudding in a Fox Hole table.)

And I can’t think of any other job I ever had that was more fun.

I texted a link to that article on Durgin’s closing to my friend Joyce, who lives in Dallas. She told me that she was crying a bit when she heard.

Me, too.

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For anyone so inclined, here’s the recipe for Durgin-Park Indian Pudding:

Old-Fashioned Durgin–Park Indian Pudding

For many, the recipe for Durgin–Park Indian pudding, served warm and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, is the gold standard.

Total Time: About 7 hours
Hands-On Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 8-10 servings

Ingredients

• 1 cup granulated yellow cornmeal
• 1/2 cup black molasses
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup lard or unsalted butter, softened, plus more for baking dish
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 large eggs
• 6 cups (1 1/2 quarts) warmed whole milk, divided
• Garnish: freshly whipped cream or vanilla ice cream

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 450° and generously grease a 2-quart baking dish, preferably one made of porcelain or stone.
Whisk together the first seven ingredients and 3 cups of the warmed milk.
Bake until the mixture begins to bubble, about 10 minutes; then stir in the remaining 3 cups of milk. Reduce the heat to 275° and continue baking another 5 to 7 hours.
Serve warm with freshly whipped cream or a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Source: New England Today/Yankee Magazine.

Word.

Well, the Oxford Dictionaries have spoken, and the word is that their Word of the Year for 2018 is toxic.

Works for me, given the level of political toxicity that exists. Toxic didn’t make the list primarily because of politics, however. In 2018, toxic was most closely associated with toxic masculinity. For the record, I’m all for masculinity, but absolutely believe that, when it comes to masculinity, a little toxicity goes a lot way, right bro?

The runners-up for Oxford’s WotY were an interesting bunch.

For starters, I’d never heard the term Big Dick Energy (BDE), largely because I don’t typically didn’t follow the ups and downs of the Ariana Grande/Pete Davidson. (It was with respect to their relationship that the term went viral.) But the initial reference was to Anthony Bourdain – and yes, I was a fan – and Tony (I’ll pretend I knew him because the sister of one of my friends is married to AB’s brother, if you can follow that) exuded BDE, which is defined as “low-key, self-assured poise…an attitude of understated and casual confidence.” Despite that “dick” in there, BDE – which is considered to some extent to be the opposite of toxic masculinity – has become a gender-neutral term. That said, when I hear BDE what comes to mind is Michael Lewis’ description of the Salomon Brothers alpha males in his 1989 book Liar’s Poker: Big Swinging Dicks. Toxic masculinity in action.

Cakeism comes from the Brits, and derives from “having your cake and eating it, too” with particular reference to Brits who favor Brexit, but want to keep all the benefits (such as borderless travel across EU). An altogether excellent word.

Gammon is another Brit term. It’s a “derogatory term for an older middle-class white man whose face becomes flushed due to anger when expressing political (typically right-wing) opinions.” I’m guessing some overlap with toxic masculinity. Just sayin’.

Gaslighting is the word on the runner-up list that I would have given the nod to for top billing.

Gaslighting is the “action of manipulating someone by psychological means into accepting a false depiction of reality or doubting their own sanity.” While I don’t see many members of the Trump cult “doubting their own sanity” – leave that to me - we’re sure seeing plenty of acceptance of “a false depiction of reality.”

It does make me want to re-see the movie Gaslight, about the man who tries to drive his wife crazy. Not run-of-the-mill, been-there-done-that husband driving his wife crazy. But crazy crazy. I’m sure the movie (1944) is a complete psychological howler, à la Now, Voyager. Nonetheless, I definitely want to see it again soon.

Incel. I shudder at the thought of these folks, associated as they are with violent misogyny. Yet another variant on the theme of toxic masculinity. I was going to say “F incels.” But, ah, no.

Orbiting. Guess I’m not young or social media active or social anything active enough to know this one. Orbiting is “the action of abruptly withdrawing from direct communication with someone while still monitoring, and sometimes responding to, their activity on social media.” Stalking light?

Overtourism. Beacon Hill isn’t exactly Venice or Stonehenge, but come the Fourth of July, when the Pops has its fab concert and fireworks just around the corner, my neighborhood is absolutely over-touristed. Years ago, when my sister Trish still lived on The Hill, she came over one Fourth grousing about too many people in “our 7-Eleven.” That 7-Eleven is long gone. It’s a Peet’s now. But these tourists can be a bother. When I try to step out my front door on the Fourth and have to wait for a pause in the tourist flow, I find myself mentally grumbling about outsiders using “our sidewalks.”

Techlash. I’d never heard this one, but if ever an industry deserved a backlash, it would be tech. I did my bit to participate in this movement by no longer looking at Facebook. As one of the admins of a charity’s FB account, I did need to keep my credentials. I never posted to begin with, but I did look at and like the posts of friends and family. No longer. I techlashed my way off of Facebook. Leaning out, as it were.

For the record, Merriam-Webster also names a word of the year. For 2019, it’s justice. Not that I ever thought I’d be jaded about the concept of justice but, come on, justice? Yawn…

I did note after googling that some folks come up with their very own, personal Word of the Year. I can’t be arsed to come up with one, other than maybe arsed…

For 2019, I’ll have to be on the lookout throughout the year and see if I can come up with a word of my own.

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Source of Oxford list: Oxford Dictionaries 

The Euro Turns Twenty

My niece is on a school trip to Russia, and she and a couple of her friends are tacking on a trip to Budapest. Which meant a trip to the bank to pick up rubles and forints. Banks around here stock Euros, British pounds, Canadian dollars and (maybe: I don’t know for sure) Mexican pesos. So if you’re going any place more exotic, and you want to enter the country with a few buck-equivalents in your pocket, you need to order ahead and have your foreign exchange imported from New York.

With a few exceptions – Scotland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland – almost all of my European trips over the past 20 years have been to Euro-zone countries. This makes traveling to and fro a lot easier. The bank has Euros on hand, so you can get it the day you walk in looking for it. And once you’re home, any left over cash can just be tucked in with the passport for use the next time over.

The downside if a uni-currency is that you don’t have the pleasure of figuring out what that 5,000 whatever note is worth in American. And, of course, you miss out on learning about the worthies that make it onto a country’s legal tender.

Take Hungarian statesman Ferenc Deák de Kehida, "The Wise Man of the Nation”, who graces the 20,000 forint note, which is worth about seventy bucks.

Seriously, who among us would have much if any familiarity with Ferenc Deák if we hadn’t found him in our wallets?

And then there’s good old N.N.Muravjov-Amursky, posing on the Russian 5,000 ruble note.

To t

Yep! Another statesman that I haven’t heard of. Admittedly, my fluency is Russian history is just a smidge ahead of my fluency in Hungarian history. Pretty much all I know about Russian history is Tsars and Tsarinas, To the Finland Station, Lenin, Stalin…Khrushchev…Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Putin. That and Dr. Zhivago.

Currency as a learning experience!

Our currency has statemen, too. (Franklin and Hamilton) That and dead presidents. Maybe someday there’ll be Harriet Tubman…

Which brings us (or me, at least) to the Euro, which has doorways on it, not people. Guess it’s just too difficult to make everyone happy by picking and choosing statesmen/women et al.

The Euro is observing it’s 20th birthday this year, which means it wasn’t around the first time I visited Europe in 1973 with my friend Joyce.

Europe in 1973 meant carrying Traveler’s Checks, and exchanging currency every time you crossed a border.

First up: Great Britain, where we got us some pounds, which fortunately were used in Scotland and Wales, too. Then off to Ireland, where we bought some punts.

In France, it was francs. French francs. Not to be confused with Swiss francs. Or Belgian francs. Or Luxembourg francs. Or Monégasque francs. All of which we needed at some point or another.

We did a lot of wandering and wondering.

In Denmark, we got krone. Similar to but different than Norwegian krone. Similar to but different than Swedish krone.

Germany meant deutschmark. Austria mixed it up with schillings. And thankfully Yugoslavia was one country, not a whole bunch of countries. So we just needed dinars until we hit the Greek border, when we cashed them in for drachma.

Turkey had lira. So did Italy, which, unlike most countries, didn’t have change when we were there – just bills. If you went into a store and handed them lira, they gave you back hard candy or tokens to use in the phones. In Spain, we used pesetas.

Fortunately, parochial school – with all those mental arithmetic drills - prepared me well for on the fly computing on what any currency was worth. It also kept us from getting screwed out of 15,000 Italian lira at the currency exchange when we got off the boat from Piraeus, Greece in Bari. I held my ground – this was, if I remember things right, worth about $20; a lot more than we spent on any given day, given that we hosteled or camped everywhere we went. The fellow behind the counter just shrugged and gave me the right amount.

In an American Express office somewhere in Switzerland – American Express being “home away” for Americans abroad: where you could cash your Traveler’s Checks, buy currency, and pick up your mail – an American business school student convinced us to convert our Traveler’s Checks to Swiss francs.

A few weeks later, in an American Express office somewhere in Germany, another American business school student convinced us to convert our Traveler’s Checks to Deutschmark.

Thanks to these business types, the thousand dollars a piece we had brought for four months hitching around Europe went a lot further, and Joyce and I each managed to bring home $400 a piece. (Imagine that: 4 months in Europe for $600. There really was a time when you could see the world on Five Dollars a Day…)

The Euro sure would have made traveling easier, but we wouldn’t have been able to play the currency markets and make some money on each transaction.

Anyway, as a traveler, I like the Euro, and wish it a happy birthday. Hope it lasts…

Forget resolutions, I’ve got PLANS for the New Year

I’ve neve been all that big on new years resolutions. Year after year, there’s some “lose 10 pounds” thang on there. Something about writing. Yawn…Anyway, my resolutions (made sporadically over the years) have at best been half-baked, half-hearted, half-arsed. Half-arsed is probably the best way to look at it. Half-arsed-ly made, and – as the Irish would ay – I can’t be arsed to actually keep them.

Last year, pretty darned cagily, I decided to forego making any resolutions Instead, I declared intentions. No real, fake, or real fake resolve to do anything about them in sight. Just intentions. Not even the special intentions that Catholic school kids of my era prayed for. Jut plain old intentions.

Here’s what I had to say for myself, intention-wise, as of January 2018:

I’m not bothering with any resolutions this year, since I never manage to keep them. That said, I do intend to lose 10 pounds, unfreeze my frozen shoulder and, oh yeah, complete the novel that’s been noodling around for a while.

While I didn’t actually achieve an 100% grade on my intentions, I did somewhat okay.

Those 10 pounds. Didn’t happen. Whether it’s a resolution or an intention, I’m dropping this sucker from my list. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, well, I like my nightly little bowl of frozen yogurt. (I highly recommend Gifford’s of Maine Moose Tracks or Blackberry with Chocolate.) Plus, I truly believe that some of the weight that I didn’t lose is actually muscle build up from walking so much.

Two years ago, my sister gave me a Fitbit. I went well over a year without missing a 10K step day. Overall, I’m going to guess that I’ve now missed a total of 10 days. (Probably a couple fewer.) A month or so ago, I decided to stop driving myself (and, admittedly, others) nuts by obsessing about the daily 10K. Instead, I’m focused on averaging 10K a day by doing 70K per week. So if I have a 15K day and the next day I’m visiting someone, and don’t want to wear out their carpet pacing their living room,  or if the weather outside is frightful, I’ve given myself permission to not bother to monitor my steps the next day. I can take the day off.  As long as I get my 70K steps in per week, I’m good. My weekly take is generally higher than that, and at 81K per week (which is pretty much how I track), things work out to 5 miles per day.

Frozen. After another 6 months of PT (added to all the PT I’d done for the should in 2017) and 3 months of acupuncture, the shoulder in 2018 got marginally better. It’s easier to put stuff away on upper shelves, and put the quart of frozen yogurt into the microwave to soften it up a bit. But late in the year, I decided to see an orthopedic guy. I’d seen one the year before, and he was god-awful. He was an older fellow whose claim to fame was having operated on some long-retired Patriots. He looked at my x-ray and told me that my shoulder would never get better, and that I’d end up with surgery. Surgery would be absurd for the my frozen shoulder. So: Not. Gonna. Happen.

This time, I went to a different orthopedic guy who, as it turns out, went to grammar school and high school with my brother Tom. He ordered an MRI, rather than an Xray; identified a small tear; agreed that surgery would be absurd; and gave me a shot. The shot relieved some of the pain, but I’m not sure that, when it wears off, I’ll do it again. The pain wasn’t that bad to begin with.

Anyway, I keep working the shoulder at the gym. If it gets totally unfrozen, great. If not, it’s obviously something I can live with. It just ain’t all that bad.

Novel ideas. As for that novel, it’s not completed, but I’ve made some headway and have a lot more of it down on paper. The Sins Against Hope is about a (mostly) good priest who, for whatever reasons, stays “in” despite his doubts. As Dan Breen pushes 70 and gets exiled to a failing rural parish (for being too liberal), he really starts looking back on the pros and cons of his life choices. There. I’ve said it. I’m writing a novel about a priest.

Plans for 2019

No resolutions this year. No intentions, either. Just plans. I’m actually pretty good at planning, so maybe I’ll pull the things I plan off.

The Sins Against Hope is something that I plan on completely. It is likely to go absolutely nowhere, but I’ll be happy to complete it, my writing group will be happy to read more pieces of it, and I like my character Dan Breen a lot. (I guess at this point in my life, he’s the man in it.)

Pen pals. A few months ago, out of the clear blue, I got a lovely note from a writer friend who moved a few years ago to Florida. Since then, we’ve exchanged a few notes, and I can tell you that there’s nothing like getting a letter or note, placed in an envelope and delivered via USPS. I send out a fair number of greeting cards during the year  - a few at Valentine’s Day, a lot for St. Patrick’s Day, a few at Easter, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and a lot for Christmas. This year, I plan on writing more no-reason notes, and I hope I get a few in return.

Emails and texts are great, but there’s nothing like a personal note nestled in with the junk mail, pleas for donations, and bills.

Thoughts of Dog? I’ve got the girl name and the boy name picked out already. I’ve got a couple of leads on places where you can get a rescue Lab. The plan is for this to be the Year of the Dog.

Get out of town. I like going places, and in 2019, I already have a couple of places to go: Tucson in January, upstate New York in May for my niece Molly’s college graduation. I’m definitely going to NYC at least once. And, as my sister Trish, our friend Michele, and I are all observing milestone birthdays in 2019, we’re planning a trip. Somewhere TBD. So I’ll definitely be getting out of town.

That’s where things stand for now… Forget resolutions. Forget intentions. For 2019, the plan’s the thing.

Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas

To my way of thinking, there are few Boston sights lovelier than seeing skaters on the Boston Common Frog Pond. Especially when the Christmas lights are up. I’m not much of a photographer, but here’s shot I took with my phone last week.

Now that I look at it, this is actually something of a selfie, as that’s me in the foreground. Or a shadow of myself. If you can’t figure out what I’m talking about, that’s me and my shadow, and not the shadow of a fireplug, or one of the Teletubbies wearing Zippy the Pinhead on its head.

I was going to crop myself out, but figured what the hell. I don’t have kids and grandkids, so I don’t get to send pictorial Xmas cards out. But I do have this consolation prize…

Anyway, Pink Slip wishes you all the Merriest of Christmases and the Happiest (and Healthiest) of New Years. That goes for you and for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In keeping with Pink Slip tradition, I’m having myself a merry little Christmas by taking the week off. Pink Slip will return on January 2nd.

The Heart of the Commonwealth

When I’m in a different part of the country, and tell someone I’m from Boston, as often as not, they’ll boom out “BAH-stin”. Really? I can pretty much guarantee that no one in the history of the city of Boston has ever said they were from “BAH-stin”. It’s “BAW-stin.”

I wouldn’t think that correctly pronouncing Boston would be so hard. And then I think of all those bad Boston accents in movies about the city. (Shudder, shudder…)

But Boston, pronunciation-wise is easy-peasy compared to my hometown, the glorious Heart of the Commonwealth: Worcester, Massachusetts.

Worcester has been getting a fair amount of play recently. There was an article on NPR on how this old industrial city was reinventing itself with biotech and foodie eateries. The Red Sox announced that they’re moving their primo minor league team from Pawtucket RI to our fair city. The Boston Globe, which only acknowledges Worcester when something bad and/or tragic occurs there (admittedly, this translates into some frequency), had a recent story on how young folks are (sort of) flocking there to take advantage of more affordable housing.

But there’s still the irksome problem of how to pronounce the city’s name.

Even the Wall Street Journal noticed, and devoted some prime real estate to the issue the other day. Why, Worcester even got one of the famous WSJ b&w pointillist illustrations!

And then they wrote:

From government to newspapers to visitors, people won’t stop calling New England’s second-largest city “Worchester.”

And it’s not just a misspelling. Those who somehow manage to insert an “h” into the city’s name invariably end up calling it “Wor-chester”, as in Westchester.

I really do not understand someone misspelling Worcester as Worchester. The only reason I can think of is that they’ve heard someone mispronounce it.

And where does that mispronunciation come from to begin with?

After all, it looks like it should be Wor-ces-ter, not Wor-chester. So Wor-ces-ter I can udnerstand.

But in real life, it’s Wu-sta (“wu” as in “woof”, not “wu” as in “woo”, although Worcester is sometimes call The Woo…).

So how does someone decide to put an “h” in there?

What the h?

According to the WSJ, that pesky “h” shows up in a number of places on the Mass Andstate gov website. And they should certainly know better. Worchester, sorry, I meant Worcester, is the second largest city in Massachusetts. In New England, in fact.

But even the federal government keeps adding an H, including on a September press release describing charges against a “Worchester Man” due to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives error…

Not to mention The Globe, where they’ve been putting an “h” in there off and on for a good long time.

“Wanted in Worchester for Taking Ex Mayor Pratt’s Fine Mares,” the Globe wrote in 1896, covering a notorious horse thief.

For the record, Worcester inherited its pronunciation from Worcester in England, so blame the Brits if you’re wondering why there’s no “ces” in Worcester. (You know the Brits. They’re the ones who pronounce Magdalene College Maudlin College…)

As for Worcester, no “h”, please. The only “he” in Worcester is the one in Heart!

Take a puff, it’s springtime

At some point in the next year or so, I’m sure I’ll make a purchase at one of the new Massachusetts marijuana emporiums. There’s one in Leicester, the town just outside of Worcester where my parents are buried. Maybe I’ll stop in next time I’m planting sun-patiens on their graves, or scraping lichen off of their gravestone. That will be springtime, so perhaps the traffic will have died down. Or I’ll drop by the by-appointment-only shop in Salem, which is where one of my sisters lives. (Heads up, Trixie!)

I can’t remember the last time I smoked pot. It’s probably in the 30-40 year range. I will not dime the family member whose home I lit up at, but it’s also the same place where I had my last hashish brownie. And I can roughly place that event, as I was driving my rust-bucket Honda Civic, which I bought in 1985 (used) and which dropped dead in 1988.

I was never all that much of a smoker, certainly not anyone’s idea of a “head,” but I did smoke occasionally from college on.

At first, I bought cigarettes, emptied out the tobacco, and stuffed it with grass. Then I learned to roll my own, and bought my Zig Zag papers at George’s Folly in Brookline.

A friend of mine dated a Berklee College of Music student who worked as a night clerk in a nearby motel, and I remember heading over and buying an occasional dime bag from Rick. (What I most remembered about this guy was that, when Ozzie Nelson stayed at his motel, he asked Ozzie what his job/profession was supposed to be on “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” The answer? Retired bandleader. Nice work if you can get it…)

My first job after business school held a weekly “Friday Party” – beer, wine, salty junk food, sugary junk food, and, well, grass. Then there was some kind of a clampdown, and if you wanted to smoke, you had to go into a conference room and close the door. Until pot-smoking was relegated to a conference room, I would take a puff or two from a passed joint. Once it was happenin’ away from the main party, I no longer participated.

When I smoked, I enjoyed the pot mellow, the slight high. I was never out of it, never out of control, but I liked the mild buzz, the goofiness, the munchies. (You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten frozen Sara Lee brownies. Because, in those pre-microwave days, who could wait for those frozen brownies to thaw?)

But then – all of a sudden or gradually, I don’t really know – no one I knew smoked anymore. Everyone drank, but light up a J? It just didn’t happen.

Anyway, it’s not exactly a bucket list item, but more than likely I’ll buy a bit of marijuana at some point in the next year or so. Out of curiosity. For old time's sake.

In any case, I want to make my purchase before the “large multinational corporations” enter the marketplace.

Who’s jumping in?

Atria, which owns the Marlboro brand, just bought a Canadian cannabis company. Constellation (Corona and other beer brands) bought a large stake in another Canadian MJ company, and Molson/Coors has joined forces with yet another Canadian cannabis outfit. (Why Canada? Pot is legal throughout the country.)

Other companies, including Coca-Cola, are keeping an eye on things, waiting and seeing until marijuana is legalized throughout the U.S., not just in a few states. Seems pretty natural for a company whose initial product contained cocaine. Just saying.

Anyway, big biz is on its way to becoming big buzz.

“There’s always been the expectation that big business was going to come in; we’ve been hearing rumors about ‘Marlboro Greens’ for decades now,” said Bethany Gomez, director of research at Brightfield Group, a cannabis market research group. “Now we’re past the point of no return.”

But while large-scale investments suggest that the mainstream acceptance of marijuana has reached a significant tipping point, longtime cannabis advocates are worried that the idealistic entrepreneurs who made this moment possible may get left behind.(Source: NY Times)

My guess is that “the idealistic entrepreneurs” will survive, but they’ll be like the indie bookstore, the one-off ice cream shop. Some people will patronize them, but the big guys will dominate.

Observers think that Atria will have a leg up. After all, they’ve been in the cigarette business and know how to manufacture, market, and distribute products that get smoked.

All this has got me thinking about the iconic cigarette ads that were a staple of my childhood.

I personally wouldn’t walk a mile for a Camel, but “I’d walk a mile for a Camel” was their tagline for a while.

Who doesn’t know what LSMFT stands for? (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco, silly.)

The Benson & Hedges theme song (an instrumental) became a radio hit. ]

For the ladies: MS. Magazine. Betty Friedan and The Feminist Mystique. Bella Abzug’s hats. And our very own cigarette, Virginia Slims, with its tagline, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.”

Salem smokers? They were urged to “take a puff, it’s springtime.”

And I remember entertaining the babysitter by racing into the den wearing winter PJs, racing out, and racing back in with summer PJs, yammering “Switch from hots to Kools.” (The babysitter, and her girlfriends who were hanging with her, were entertained…)

Not to mention the Marlboro Man, riding his horse off into Marlboro Country, to the theme music from The Magnificent Seven.

Although the ads were often excellent, I’m just as happy that there are no TV ads for cigarettes – there haven’t been for decades. But I really would have like to have seen what the folks that gave us Marlboro Country and “Take a puff, it’s springtime” would have done with ads for marijuana.

Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.

The moral of the story: don’t tear down a Richard Neutra house

One of my cousins had a perfectly nice Dutch Colonial on a double lot in a highly desirable neighborhood in a suburban town with great schools. When she and her husband decided to downsize, their perfectly nice Dutch Colonial – built in the 1920’s, so fabulous bones and great details – was sold as a tear-down. It goes without saying that a McMansion went up in its place.

We see it all the time around here: the perfectly nice home of the past doesn’t have what today’s homebuyers want: walk in closets, en suite for everyone, open concept, granite countertops, home offices, mudrooms, mancaves…

But most of the houses getting torn down aren’t architect-designed, custom-built gems. They’re just perfectly nice, well built homes that lack 21st century objects of desire.

Occasionally, however, someone somewhere gets the yen to replace an architect-designed, custom-built gem with a dream house.

Such an instance occurred last year in San Francisco last year. And now he’s being made to pay, big time:

A property owner who illegally demolished a 1936 Twin Peaks house designed by a renowned modernist must rebuild an exact replica of the home rather than the much larger structure the property owner had proposed replacing it with, the City Planning Commission ruled this week.

In a unanimous 5-0 vote late Thursday night, the commission also ordered that the property owner — Ross Johnston, through his 49 Hopkins LLC — include a sidewalk plaque telling the story of the original house designed by architect Richard Neutra, the demolition and the replica. (Source: SF Chronicle)

What Johnston did was what plenty of folks who want to live in San Francisco do: knock down a modest little house from back then, when families were happy to live in a modest little home of their own. The Largent House – the Neutra gem – was only 1,300 square foot. Living as I do in a condo a bit smaller than that, I will admit that this would be close quarters for a family.

On the other hand, I grew up in a family of seven in a home not much larger than that. Of course, we had the benefit of a basement, where we could rampage around blowing off steam in case of a hurricane, blizzard, or some other act of God that kept us inside. Not to mention a large yard, and an even larger neighborhood to roam around in. This was, of course, the 1950’s and 1960’s, when free-range childhood was not just allowed but encouraged. People had larger families and smaller houses, but the kids weren’t hanging around the house.

Johnston was intending to build a 4,000 square foot house on the lot, and he thought he could get away with the Neutra knockdown by following the “easier to ask forgiveness than permission” route. There was some SF precedent for this. A few years earlier, someone had torn down another architectural gem. The upshot? A mere $400K fine. Chump change, given that the developer septupled the value of the property with a rip and replace of the old pokey with the new colossus.

He did get some planning permission, but that was just for a remodel. Instead, he brought in the wrecking ball, and then “applied for a retroactive demolition permit and for permission to construct a new home.”

Retroactive permits sound like a very thin ice proposition to me, but Johnston is apparently a gambling kind of guy. Problem was, this time the gambler lost.

Planning Commissioner Dennis Richards said he hopes the commission’s action in the 49 Hopkins case will send a message to speculators accustomed to ignoring city planning and building laws with few or no repercussions.

“We are tired of seeing this happening in the city and are drawing a line in the sand,” said Richards. “You can have all the rules in the world, but if you don’t enforce them, the rules are worthless.”

Johnston is not, of course, taking this lying down, and will be appealing. He and his attorney are resting their hopes on an earlier owner’s approved plan for a substantial rework of the property, and an argument that an earlier fire and later remodels had already substantially altered the original Neutra design.

See you in court, but this may well end up tough luck for Johnston.

It’s not just preservations in SF who’ve had it with tear downs of historically important structures. It’s affordable housing advocates, who hate seeing the stock of 1,300 square foot “affordable” homes replaced with 4,000 square foot unaffordable homes. (For the record, Johnston paid $1.7 million for the 1,300 square foot home, so even those houses aren’t exactly most folks’ definition of affordable.)

They all want to send a message, and the person they’ve selected to receive that message is Johnston.

Sure, it would have been better if they’d decided to clamp down on a speculator, rather than someone like Johnston who was planning on making the new place his family’s home.

But, hey, you gamble, you lose.

Caveat, demolitioner!

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A tip of the Pink Slip cap to my friend John W., who tweeted about this story.

Shopping with Gwyneth, Part 2

Yesterday, I window-shopped my way through half of Goop’s Holiday Gift Guides. Talk about mentally exhausting! So much precious Gwyneth-ness.

There’s her poor mother, Blythe Danner, eking out a living doing ads for antidotes for post-menopausal osteoporosis, while Gwyneth gets to pick out all sorts of lifestyle products for those who aspire to the ultra-thin, eco-friendly, rose-gold way of life.

Fortified by a good night’s sleep and the sort of chow that never passed through Gwyneth Paltrow’s lips, I was able to virtually thumb my way through the remaining six gift guides.

The Lover Gift Guide

Given that my only love interest is Lawrence O’Donnell, whose show I watch on MSNBC every night at 10 p.m., I was going to give this guide a pass. But for old, old, old times sake, I forced my way through. Big mistake. I’d barely gotten over the $240 bright red Ophelia Whistling Lace Bodysuit, when lo and behold the $240 Studded Handled Flogger. (Gwyneth, please.) Then there were all those vibrators, some of which had names (The Tennis Coach, The Fireman…), and one of which (the sold out one) was a sleek and slender vibrator necklace. (Don’t leave home without.) And so on.

My pick: the rose that lasts a year. Because I ain’t never going to get any flowers from Lawrence O’Donnell. Oh, boo hoo.

The Ridiculous But Awesome Gift Guide

Well, this guide was a lot more my speed, and I was quite interested to see how ridiculous something would need to be to get on the ridiculous list, given that Goop pretty much specializes in ridiculous. Some of these gifts were almost inexpensive enough to qualify for a Yankee Swap item. Like the $39 mini butter churn. But a lot of them were right up there with the glam Nieman Marcus fantasy gifts. Like the $7.7K Hermes Surfboard. And the $150K Muse for the Day trip to London to pose for a famous (I guess) photographer.

Some of the gifts were misplaced. That banana lamp should have been in with the lover gifts. I really liked the $139K ultra-cool RV. But I had to go for the Loofa of the Month pick. A bargain at $6/month. (Now that MJ is legal in Massachusetts, maybe I should reconsider and go for the gold rolling papers.)

The Cook Guide

Now normally, I’m not someone who goes all ga-ga over stuff for cooks. But most of the stuff on this list was useful and/or interesting. I did a bit of head-scratching when I saw the Walnut Zester Grater. Who zests walnuts? Then I read the fine print and saw that the walnut was the handle. That made sense.  There were a couple of nice salad server sets, and a cool little glass olive oil bottle. I thought that the “gold” measuring cups and spoons were a bit much. Gold just doesn’t strike me as all that kitchen-y. But maybe it’s the arch thing in Goop-world.

Anyway, my kitchen is already pretty well-equipped. (I already have a zester.) So I’ll throw a $90 jar of Lauren’s All Purpose Salve in my basket. Tis the season to have dry hands, after all. And this seems like quite the practical item: “a thick ointment that works as a moisturizer, shaving cream, hair mask, makeup remover, and lubricant.” I have no idea what a hair mask is, and I’m afraid to ask what the lubricant is for. But I’ll go for it anyway.

The Guy Guide

No need to spend a New York minute on this one. Sigh. Lawrence and I don’t exchange Christmas gifts, which isn’t likely to change anytime soon, given that our relationship is completely one way: I turn on MSNBC at 10 p.m., and Lawrence is sitting there smiling at me. Maybe I’ll tweet somethingclever and he’ll like it…Anyway, given this sad state of non-affairs, I spent very little time in this virtual aisle. Just enough to pick out a Larq Self-Cleaning Bottle. Because I’m all for anything that’s self-cleaning. Only $95.  A stainless steal.

The Collector Gift Guide

Maybe you have to be Gwyneth, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was collector-ish about this collection. Do people collect Scrabble sets? Incense burners? Fragrance flasks?

People collect autographs. Sale and pepper shakers. Baseball cards. Watches. Pens. But incense burners? Guess there’s no accounting for collections.

The one item here that caught my eye was the Flyte Royal Levitating Light. I don’t think I’d ever want more than one in my collection. And at $349, I couldn’t afford more than one. But it seems like a worthy item to at least have a ones-y of. And how much fun to watch anything levitating, other than my political angst.

The One and Only Gift Guide

Perhaps I am all shopped out. Or all gooped out. But I really couldn’t concentrate on this guide. I sprinted through at quite a clip, spotting a Birkin Bag, a pair of $22K earrings, a $200 pair of shorty pajamas… Enough! I’m going to grab the $1,495 cashmere blanket and throw it over my head.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that I didn’t find everything on Goop to be ridonculous. Yes, plenty of it is. And plenty is twee. Or too precious for words. Or way too rose-gold-y. But some of it I actually liked. Not well enough to pay for it. But liked okay.

Anyway, the best thing about window shopping is that it’s all free.

Gooping around for a couple of evenings didn’t cost me a dime.

So many Goop guides, so little time. Part One.

Twelve days of Christmas?

I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t care less about lords a leaping, maids a milking, and a partridge in a pear tree.

But one item from each of the dozen Goop gift guides?

Now you’re talking!

From the Stocking-Stuff Guide

I’ll admit that I was a bit intrigued by the Porcelain Geopipes, mostly because I couldn’t figure out how you’d actually smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. And I don’t smoke. So I had to put any thoughts of sitting around chillaxing with a porcelain geopipe out of my mind and settle instead on the Emotional Detox Bath Soak.  Who couldn’t use some emotional detox? I don’t have a bathtub, but I promise to give one of the packs in the three-pack to whichever tub-owning sister invites me over for a soak.

The One Step Ahead Gift Guide

The coolest of the cool for the most discerning among us. As someone who is both cool and discerning, I figured there’d be a lot for me in this guide. I guess to be a cool and discerning goopster, you have to be a rich goopster, as most of the stuff in this catalogue was pretty pricey. And a lot of it was pretty ugly, too. Ugly $400 sneakers? Ugly $295 shorts? An ugly $13,800 ring (make that a “triple ruched ribbon ring”)?

As a New England I almost opted for the self-heating down parka. But then I saw the Collapsible Helmet. Just because. Just because those squirrels in the Boston Common are now running the size of racoons, and any day now one of them might decide to drop an acorn on my head.

The Traveler

I’ve got a few trips lined up (at least in my mind) for 2019, so I thought I’d find some goodies on this list. I wasn’t disappointed. I actually liked a lot of the stuff in this catalogue. Most of it was useful, albeit often a tad precious (this is Goop, after all). That Riviera Striped Beach Tent? What can I say? I want it, even though I never hang out on the beach and thus don’t need a beach tent.

But finally, even though I have about 3 or 4 of variation on theme universal adapters around around here – somewhere -  I’m decided on the Plugbug Duo International Multi Device Charger. Makes me want to go somewhere and plug something into a strange outlet.

The Wellness Junkie Gift Guide

I could gladly have given this one a pass, but in the interests of thoroughness I though I’d take a peak. A Moroccan Rose Beldi Soap. A Kessi Mitt. Detox this. Yoga that. Juice stuff. This is Goop at its Gwyneth Paltrow finest. Too bad the Kishu Binchotan Charcoal was sold out. 

We’re all trying to de-plastic our lives these days. Just say no to CVS bags and drinking straws. So I’m in on the Rose Quartz Crystal Straw. A bargain at $68. Can’t wait to slurp an Arnold Palmer through that sucker.

The Host Gift Guide

Not that we’re off to each other’s abodes for country weekends at Downton Abbey, but my friends and family do visit around, and we’ve pretty much locked arms and decided that no one needs another bowl or plate. Which is kinda sorta too bad, because there some pretty bowl-ish and plate-ish (and not that expensive) items in this guide. The striped Sugar Bowl – which would look terrific with the Riviera Beach Tent – was particularly sweet. Some of the stuff less so: we don’t go in for things like the $695 Anti-Pasti Knife Set. Who even knew there were special anti-pasti knives?

However, given our commitment to only bring host(ess) gifts that can be consumed, I’ll go with the $48 Super Suds Gift Set. And I’ll go with it knowing full well that the mother of anybody who’s home I will enter, gift bag in hand, would be appalled at the thought of anyone spending $12 on a bar of soap. (“What are you, crazy? Money doesn’t grow on trees?”) Then again, you can’t exactly show up at someone’s help with a couple of bars of Dove or Irish Spring.

The Under-18 Gift Guide

I’ve already completed my under-18 gift shopping. The 17 year old is getting cash. The 12 year old is getting a Red Sox World Series tee-shirt. And the 11 and 8 year olds are getting outfits for their American Girl Dolls. None of them are exactly Goop-type kids to begin with, so even if I wasn’t done, I wouldn’t be Goop-shopping for them. But I thought I’d take a look. 

A lot of the stuff appeared aimed at teenage girls – future Goop lifestyle type folks, I guess. And babies. (Like the cashmere infant socks and an organic cotton kimono.) There was a kid-sized collapsible helmet. And, for pint-sized vegans, a wooden toy salad kit. As a book-ish type shopper, I would have considered the sold-out Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, but I’ll have to go with the Alphabet Book. No run of the mill words here. This one goes from Astronaut to Zeppelin, with stops along the way for Lightbulb, Robot, and Yeti. A B-is-for-Bargain at $9.

Tomorrow I’ll window shop the remaining six Good catalogues.

Wonder whether I quit? Figure it out for yourself!

If my computer had worked on Day One at Wang, I would have used it to type up a resignation letter and high-tailed it out of there. Instead, I sucked it up and spent a miserable 2 years, 6 months, and 13 days there. I hated nearly everything about working at Wang: the miserable commute, the numbing bureaucracy, the shabby and dirty offices, the toilets that made me fear typhus, the Scrooge vacation days, the poorly lit parking lots, the distrust of employees, the travel policy from (and to) hell… Other than my colleagues, who were great, Wang was my absolute worst professional employment experience.

My worst non-professional employment experience was at the Valle’s Steakhouse on Route 9. My friend Joyce and I, just returned from a three month cross-country camping trip, were looking for a waitress gig to fund our next excursion: backpacking through Europe.

After a lunch shift at Valle’s, we went out to a late lunch at Friendly’s and looked at each other and began to laugh. No way we were going to hack it at Valle’s! I can’t remember exactly what set us off. It’s not as if we hadn’t had other wack waitress experiences. We were pros, with Union Oyster House and Durgin-Park on our resumes. Maybe it’s because Valle’s was tray service vs. the arm service we were used to. Maybe it was the petty rules. Maybe it was the head waitress. Maybe it was the bartender, the manager, the chefs. But we were in complete agreement that Valle’s wasn’t going to work.

We flipped a coin to see who was going to call in our resignation. I lost, and used the pay phone at Friendly’s to call the head waitress and tell her we were quitting. She was pissed, but, what the hell. It’s not as if we didn’t let them know. And we’d brought our own aprons with us.

Not bothering to quit, according to an article in the Washington Post, has become something of a trend.

“A number of contacts said that they had been ‘ghosted,’ a situation in which a worker stops coming to work without notice and then is impossible to contact,” the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago noted in December’s Beige Book, which tracks employment trends.

National data on economic “ghosting” is lacking. The term, which normally applies to dating, first surfaced on Dictionary.com in 2016. But companies across the country say silent exits are on the rise. (Source: WaPo)

I don’t think ghosting in a dating situation is such a commendable thing to do. If you don’t want to break up F2F or on the phone, you can at least send a goodbye text (or, old school: email; or, old-schooler: Dear John letter).

Date ghosting reminds me of a scene my husband and I witnessed decades ago.

We were at the (old) Ritz Bar, and sitting near us was a fellow we recognized from our neighborhood. We didn’t know him, but had seen him around and written up in the local rag. He was in real estate, I believe, and a presence in the Beacon Hill social  scene. Sitting with him was a woman, and we were close enough to figure out that they were on a first date.

She excused herself – we thought she was going to the ladies’ room – but then we saw her getting in a cab out front. Her date was facing away from the window, and he waited for quite a while before it dawned on him that his would-be GF wasn’t coming back to the table.

The least she could have done was make up some social lie: not feeling well or just remembered I left the iron on or whatever. In those days, there were no cell phones, so you couldn’t pretend to have received an emergency text. But you could always make something up that would allow your date to save face.

Anyway, date ghosting seems pretty poor behavior, especially given that non-ghosting is just a text away.

But ghosting your way out of a job seems to me like career suicide. Cities are small and networks are large. One would think word would get around.

But apparently it’s happening.

Applicants blow off interviews. New hires turn into no-shows. Workers leave one evening and never return.

I was never ghosted as a manager, but on two occasions, I put out emails welcoming a techie to a product team I was running, only to have the person up and quit after a day or two. I never blamed the person quitting. As with my Wang situation, you pretty much know from the get-go whether it’s going to work out or not. But I was always a little ticked that I’d put out an effusive and welcoming email…

Those studying the ghosting trend chalk it up to a healthy job market and the youth of the ghosters. Whatever it is that’s causing you to quit a job, unless the situation is really dangerous or threatening, it’s pretty simple to leave your manager some sort of message. You can always use the tried and true communications avoidance trick, and leave a voice mail at a time when no one’s gong to be at work – think 1 a.m. on a Saturday. (Unless you work in a bar.)

And this should be a two-way street.

I’m sure most people have been in the situation where they’re interviewing for a job when everything just gets cold and silent.

This happened to me a couple of times, and it’s annoying. At some point, you figure out that you’re going nowhere and there won’t be an offer, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to put the period at the end of a sentence, the final nail in a coffin.

One time, I had gotten pretty far down the path towards an offer when there was a dead halt.

I decided I wasn’t going to let the guy who would have been my manager off the hook, and was gong to force him to tell me he wasn’t making an offer. I tried calling a few times, but he was pretty nimble about refusing to take my calls. Eventually I gave up, but getting ghosted really ticked me off.

As for today’s young ghosters: DON’T DO IT! This is the sort of behavior that – guaranteed – can come back to haunt you at some point in your career. At least have the courtesy to call in and leave a message, even if there’s no Friendly’s pay phone to drop your dime into.

Sister Baby Needs a New Pair of Black Lace-up Shoes

‘Tis the season when we can expect a lot of heart-tugging and/or feel-good stories in the news. Occasionally there’ll be one involving a heart-tugging, feel-good nun. (No more heart-tugging, feel-good priest stories, I’m afraid.)

But the story of late that has put the biggest smile on my face is the one of the two nuns in California who embezzled as much as half-a-million bucks from their school over a 10-year period. They used the dough on trips to Las Vegas to gamble.

$500K is a lot of money by anyone’s standards, but by the standards of funding a parochial school. Yowza! Amazing that the school is still standing.

Sister Mary Margaret Kreuper and Sister Lana Chang are not nuns on the run, however.

They’re holed up in their convent:

The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, the order the nuns represent, said the nuns have been placed in a religious house under the supervision of community leadership. (Source: USA Today)

Which I guess means no more casino nights in the parish hall, no more bingo games with the old ladies, let alone trips to the The Strip.

"Sister Mary Margaret and Sister Lana have expressed to me and asked that I convey to you, the deep remorse they each feel for their actions and ask for your forgiveness and prayers," [St. James Parish’ Monsignor Michael’ Meyers said in his letter, reports AP.

I’ll bet they have. I’ll bet they do.

The order is going to pay the school back – which I don’t imagine will be easy. These orders are dying out. Over the years, even when we were in that heady Church Triumphant era of the 1950’s, nuns were paid next to nothing for staffing parochial schools. They were provided with a pittance, and that pittance also went to support the older, retired nuns. It all worked because there were plenty of new young nuns to support the golden agers. And then there were no longer that many new nuns. And a lot more grey-haired nuns out there.

I think that in some cases, the Church was shamed in to providing support for convents. But orders of nuns have also sent out plenty of pleas to former students to help keep Sister Mary Filter of the Holy Smokes in sensible shoes.

So I’m guessing that this will be an awful lot of money for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to part with. And much like the Catholic Church having to shell out so much money to settle molestation suits, having a scandal – even one as somewhat ludicrous as the gambling jones of a couple of old nuns – can’t help with fundraising.

The good sisters aren’t defending their rogue members.

"As a religious community, we will not defend the actions of our Sisters," said the order in their statement. "What happened is wrong. Our Sisters take full responsibility for the choices they made and are subject to the law."

There may, however, be no legal repercussions:

The archdiocese notified police, but doesn't plan to press charges, reports the AP.

Okay, I really don’t believe that justice will necessarily be served by shipping the duo of Sister Mary Margaret and Sister Lana – kind of a kippy nun name, no? – off to the hoosegow.  Especially since they look like they’d be buddies of my mother. That said, they might be helpful as embeds doing some sort of prison ministry. They could help inmates get their GED’s, and plenty of other things. After all, people do serious time for doing a lot less. Think of the woman in Texas who’s in the slammer for 8 years because she didn’t understand that people with green cards weren’t eligible to vote.

In any case, I suspect that the Church is relieved by having this sort of scandal on their hands, rather than the usual fare.

I have to say that I am a bit surprised by this.

I knew plenty of nuns growing up. Sure, there were many who were kind, good teachers, etc. On the other hand, plenty of them were mean. Plenty of them were cruel. And plenty of them were crazy – and I don’t mean good crazy either.

But larcenous nuns on gambling sprees? Not something I can reconcile with the nuns I grew up under.

The greatest incident of dishonesty I remember occurred in the fifth grade.

In grammar school, we were members of something called the St. Dominic Savio Club. Dominic Savio was a child saint, an exceptionally pious little Italian boy of the mid 19th century who died at the age of 14 of TB. Exceptional piety and child death being two favorite memes of nuns of my era, we heard a lot about St. Dominic. (His canonization was pushed by a priest who had taken what today we might generously characterize as a creepy interest in the boy.) Even a child as religious as I was found Dominic Savio a boring little prig.

Anyway, our class belonged to this Club which meant that once a month we had a meeting where we sang a song about St. Dominic Savio:

St. Dominic Savio
A saint of great power.
In Don Bosco’s garden

Don Bosco was the priest who favored little Dominic.

A fair youthful flower.

Ooo boy…

We also got to read the monthly Club newsletter, which was a nice break from the usual.

Now one of the things that nuns would do regularly was to change the classroom seating arrangement. Out of nowhere, Sister Whatever would order us all to “Take our books, pens, and pencils” and stand next to our desks while she announced where our next seat would be.

There were a couple of normal patterns: seated by name, seated by height, and – the most common – smart row girls, smart row boys, average row girls, average row boys, dumb row girls, dumb row boys. But occasionally they mixed things up.

On the occasion I recall, Sister Saint Wilhelmina did something of a random distribution.

After we were all settled in, she handed out the December issue of the club bulletin.

Low and behold, the monthly contest promised a prize to a classroom where a student with the initials MC (for Merry Christmas) was sitting in the second seat in the fifth row (December 25th being Christmas Day).

Low and behold, Sister Saint Wilhelmina had miraculously assigned Michael Curran that seat.

Even as gullible fifth graders, we knew the fix was in. It served us right that, although Willy wrote right in to the Dominic Savio Club, we didn’t get a prize. It’s highly likely that pretty much every other classroom that had a kid whose initials were MC landed that kid in the prime seat. We were too late to the game. The prize would probably have been a picture of St. Dominic Savio and/or St. John Bosco, so no great loss.

Anyway, that’s as close to a larcenous nun that I ever experienced. But who knows what might have happened if Sister Saint Wilhelmina had run into Sister Mary Margaret and Sister Lana. She might well have been blowing on dice and muttering under her breath, “Sister Baby needs a new pair of black lace-up shoes.”

The cat’s out of the bag: we’ve got to stop horsing around

I’m not overly PC. One of my favorite jokes remains:

Q. How do you know Jesus was Irish?

A. Who else would be a 33 year old unemployed carpenter with 12 drinking buddies and a mother who thinks he’s God.

I’m laughing just typing this. I’ve also heard it told with Italian substituted for Irish. And I know there’s a Greek version, too. But the boy-o version works for me every time.

That said, I’m all for removing racially and ethnically offensive terms from day-to-day vocabulary.

Every once in a while, I start to use the word “gypped”, which was quite common when I was growing up. And then I think, hmmm, this is from the word “gypsy”. So not good. Not as bad as “jewing” someone down for bargaining, but still not good.

Easy enough to substitute “screwed” for “gypped,” which I guess will only offend those who are offended by the word “screwed.” Ah, well, screw ‘em.

There are other words/terms that are best retired: Dutch courage. Indian giver. But what’s so terrible about Irish whisper? It does, of course, imply that, when they whisper, the Irish are sometimes pretty loud. But this does seem to be a brogan that at least sometimes fits, so why not wear it.

Years ago, my husband and I were in Inishmore (one of the Aran Islands). We had met a fellow-tourist on the flight over, and had spent the day hanging out with her. She needed to cash a Traveler’s Check – this’ll date the episode – so we headed off to the island’s little tourist center. The woman who waited on us said that she’d check to see whether the person who cashed Traveler’s Checks was around. She ducked behind a curtain that was no more than 3 feet from where we were standing. Thus we were easily able to hear her say, “So, I’m to tell them that you’re not here, is that it?” A classic Irish whisper, I’d say.

There’s there’s Paddy wagon, which seems to hail from the day when police vans were full of Irishmen. (I will note that there is an Irish company that runs vans to tourist sites called Paddywagon. I’ve seen their luridly-painted buses around, so I guess the Irish aren’t completely sensitive to the term.)

In any case, while recognizing that there’s a broad sensitivity continuum, and that what makes one person laugh may cause another to cringe, I do understand why people want to purge offensive terms from the world’s vocabulary.

But getting rid of animal-related expressions because they might be offensive to vegans and vegetarians? I’m so not there, even though some folks believe that they “could be rendered obsolete because they are out of touch with the zeitgeist.”

Researcher Shareena Hamzah has written:

“The increased awareness of vegan issues will filter through consciousness to produce new modes of expression…

“While these phrases may seem harmless, they carry meaning and can send mixed signals to students about the relationship between humans and animals and can normalize abuse.

“Teaching students to use animal-friendly language can cultivate positive relationships between all beings and help end the epidemic of youth violence toward animals.” (Source: Independent/UK)

Among the suggestions Hamzah has: replacing ‘flogging a dead horse’ with ‘feeding a fed horse’, and ‘killing two birds with one stone” with “feeding two birds with one scone.”

Well, don’t those new terms just trip off the tongue. I’m sure we’ll be hearing them in use any day now.

And I’m guessing that the sort of young folks who are part of the “epidemic of youth violence toward animals” aren’t the sort of young folks familiar with these terms to begin with.

Then there’s PETA.

They don’t want us to be guinea pigs. They want us to be test tubes? (Huh?)

They want us bringing home the bagels rather than the bacon, even though – to my mind – bringing home the bacon brings someone who’s worked to mind. While bringing home the bagels brings to mind someone running an errand.

Rather than ‘taking the bull by the horns,’ PETA suggests ‘taking the flower by the thorns.’ I dunno about that. “Taking the bull by the horns” connotes jumping into the fray, going up against a fierce and mighty foe, putting your all into something. “Taking the flower by the horns”? Sounds like something that’s just plain dumb. (Those thorns can hurt you!)

I’m all for kindness to animals. If I thought about it hard enough and long enough, I’d probably be a vegetarian. Some of our animal brethren are, of course, closer to humans than others. Certainly, great apes should be treated with plenty of respect and decency.  Bonobos and common chimps share more than 99% of our DNA, after all. And dogs, of course, have extraordinarily wonderful DNA, however it matches up against ours.

But we are way further up in the animal kingdom than, say, chickens. Not that chickens should be treated cruelly. But chickens aren’t chimps. Or dogs.

And getting rid of colorful, animal-related terms from our vocabulary? I’m not as yet convinced.

In fact, while I wouldn’t exactly say I have a bee in my bonnet over this, but, doggone it, enough’s enough, and I for one won’t be cowed by PETA.

(What, no comments? Cat got your tongue?)