Glad it’s finally catching up with them

Last week, five people – all former Insys Therapeutics execs- were convicted:

…of racketeering conspiracy for bribing doctors to prescribe a highly addictive painkiller to patients who didn’t need it and tricking insurers into paying for it. (Source: Boston Globe)

No sentences announced as of yet, but the Insys Five may be put away for up to 20 years.

Their product – Subsys – is an oral fentanyl spray that was supposed to be used for cancer pain.

Having watched my husband die of cancer, I’m all for anything that can alleviate pain.

Jim was fortunate in that, up until the last few days of his life, he didn’t experience much by way of intolerable pain. Even post surgeries, he didn’t take much by way of pain medication. But those last couple of days, the pain – both existential and physical – that Jim had was pretty terrible, and, in the end, he was taking morphine.

But there are types of cancer – stomach, pancreatic et al – that are supposed to be spectacularly painful, and it’s wonderful that there are drugs that can dull or eliminate extreme pain, especially in end-of-life situations where there’s no worry about someone getting hooked.

Insys had quite the model for getting doctors hooked on prescribing Subsys:

Prosecutors said the five defendants ran Insys like mobsters, displaying “brazen audacity.” They pressured sales staff to persuade doctors to prescribe higher and costlier doses of Subsys, and got physicians to abandon their duty to “first, do no harm.” Most patients who were prescribed Subsys didn’t have cancer, according to the government, and some got addicted.

I’ve had episodic pain during my life – a couple of broken bones, here and there a bad back, a cracked tooth on a transatlantic flight – but I’ve never experienced relentless, day in, day out pain. Hard not to be sympathetic for those who do have it, but if the opioid epidemic has taught us anything, it’s that it’s too damned easy for a doctor to throw an opioid after pain, rather than offer non-addictive (and non-pharmaceutical) methods for dealing with chronic pain.

But Insys wanted to sell more and more Subsys, and would do whatever they needed to do to make more and more possible.

As part of the conspiracy, prosecutors said, eight doctors and medical practitioners got more than $1.1 million disguised as “speaking fees.” Insys also set up a reimbursement center where employees allegedly lied to health insurers about patients’ symptoms to get them to cover Subsys for people without cancer.

Don’t know which idea is more evil: bribing doctors or doctoring up symptoms. (In case you’re wondering, some doctors who took kickbacks from Insys have been sentenced to prison time. I was going to say that having doctors in the hoosegow might improve the health of the prison population. Then I remembered that these are greedy, lazy-arse doctors who casually doled out opioids in exchange for a few bucks.)

Anyway, the topper for me:

One of the defendants, Sunrise Lee, a sales executive and former stripper…allegedly performed a lap dance for a doctor to get him to prescribe Subsys.

Her lawyer noted that this incident “was probably pretty funny”. I guess you had to be there.

I will add that it’s nice to see someone’s career progressing, but I don’t know if pharma sales is actually a step up from being a stripper.

Pharma companies in general have a pretty bad rap, but Insys sounds like an especially sleazy outfit. They hired attractive, but otherwise unqualified, young women as sales people, and trained them to hold the hands of doctors while encouraging them to push more Subsys.(Awwww, sweet….)

They created higher dose packages for the express purpose of getting patients hooked.

They deliberately sought out the sorts of doctors that were most likely to become drug pushers for them. (And if there’s any doubt in your mind about the doctors being aware that they were being played, if a doctor went below the required ratio, i.e., they didn’t hit their target of $2 worth of Subsys sold for each $1 they were paid in “speakers fees,” they were dumped from the “speaker” program

I understand aggressive sales. After all, I spent my career in high tech marketing, largely working around high ticket products. I worked with sales folks who cut deals. I worked with sales folks who wined and dined their prospects. I’m guessing there were at least a few visits to strip clubs and cigar bars that I wasn’t invited to.

I worked with sales folks who promised all sorts of product enhancements to close a deal. (Those of us in marketing/product management were always thrilled when we were handed that list of promises.)

I occasionally got wind of something that was a bit shady. I remember one deal with a hardware vendor, where our company agreed to buy x amount of their gear in exchange for them ordering y’s worth of our services. Seemed a bit fishy to me…

But I sure don’t remember any sales person providing a lap dance, or directly bribing a prospect.

Anyway, I’m glad that Insys’ execs bad behavior is catching up to them. Good!

Now bring Purdue Pharma on!

Let them serve cake

By any reasonable standards, Nancy Saltzman is a smart cookie and an accomplished professional. She’s an Amherst grad with a law degree from Hofstra. She spent a couple of years at a white-shoe law firm (Dewey Ballantine), and then served as general counsel for a couple of good-sized firms. So, real chops. She’s no kid, either. Based on her college graduation year (1987), she’s in her early fifties.

She was the most senior woman at ExlService Holdings, which was her last gig.

Saltzman didn’t find Exl a great environment for women, to put it mildly. Metaphorical push came to metaphorical shove, and after four years with the company, she was fired. Although there’s email evidence to suggest the contrary, Exl claims she resigned. Saltzman says no way, and she’s suing Exl for $20M.

Having enjoyed/survived a career in largely male high tech, I can identify and sympathize with Saltzman’s story. And I’m disheartened, but not surprised, that the situation for women in senior positions in male-dominated companies hasn’t changed all that much over time.

Here’s the particular event that precipitated Saltzman’s eventual action against Exl:

For some Exl employees, the afternoon of May 21, 2018, was a celebration — it was the company’s 19th anniversary.

For Saltzman, it was a breaking point.

Of the more than 20 employees in attendance, only four of whom were women. The complaint said Kapoor “personally directed that Ms. Saltzman,” as one of the “ladies” in the room, “serve cake to the Company’s junior male employees.”

“Humiliated, Ms. Saltzman was forced to walk across the room to cut and plate slices of cake for the Company’s male employees,” court documents recount, “the vast majority of whom were subordinate to her in rank.” (Source: WaPo)

Sigh.

It so reminded me of an incident that happened midpoint in my glorious career.

I was a senior product manager, and it was my product’s “turn” to be examined by the company’s senior executive team. My boss, not incidentally a woman, informed me that I was not invited to this all day event. “Product managers don’t come to this meeting.” Which I understood to not be the case 100% of the time. And which made no sense whatsoever. Who would know more about the product, the market, the competition, future plans, etc. than the product manager? No one.

I made my case to my manager, but it was no dice. (I don’t think she bothered to push the issue with “the boys.”)

Instead, I was asked to create all the supporting material that she’d need to talk about my product. Including creating an easy-enough-for-her-to-give product (actually a beta for an upcoming release) demo.

I was galled to find out that, while I wasn’t going to get a golden invite, my counterpart in engineering, i.e., the lead developer on my product, was going to be in attendance. I got along with this guy. We were quite good buddies. And he was my organizational peer. Oh, yes, as it turns out, he would be giving the demo I scripted.

I was even more galled when I was told that “they” needed to borrow my PC to give the demo. This meant that I would need to spend the day working on a crappy old spare computer in a remote, windowless conference room.

But the galling request to end all galling requests came when, at about 11 a.m., my manager popped into that remote, windowless conference room.

“I think I’ve found a way for you to get into the meeting,” she told me. I was, of course, all ears. “You could go out an get pizzas for us. Then, when you bring it in, you can stay.”

No way, I told her, was I going into that meeting as the waitress. “If you want someone to go fetch pizza, I suggest you ask your admin.”

Harrumph!

Anyway, toward the end of the day, my manager popped back in to apologize.

“I wouldn’t have asked you, but you’re usually so good-natured about things, so willing to do whatever needs to get done for the team.”

I enumerated the reasons why asking me to Domino-deliver for her wasn’t exactly an empowering career thrill. Why not call me in as the expert who could answer the questions she couldn’t? Why not have me give the demo? We didn’t say FFS in those days, but FFS.

Furthermore, I told her, “You know, you’re the only woman on that team. So you might want to think twice about you’re always being the one to jump up and get lunch for the boys.”

This was more than 30 years ago.

Serve the pizza, serve the cake.

Apparently, some things just don’t change.

After the cake incident, things went from bad to worse.

She took her grips to Exl CEO Rohit Kapoor. He claimed she was being over emotional:

— a criticism that she said was “grounded in sexist stereotypes” — Saltzman reported the gender discrimination to two executives. She asked the company to form a plan to remedy the situation. Fearing retaliation from Kapoor, she also expressly asked that she be told if he was informed of the allegation. Saltzman planned to take protective steps.

Kapoor had other things in mind: getting the Exl board to authorize him to fire Saltzman.

So he went ahead and fired her.

Now he’s he-saying that when Saltzman came to him with her complaints, he considered it a resignation.

Obviously, the cake story isn’t the only reason for the $20M suit. There was a pattern of discrimination at Exl. But the story is exemplary. The icing on the cake, as it were.

And when it comes to reasons to root for Nancy Saltzman success with her lawsuit, the cake story is just one of many. But for me it’s good enough to hope that Saltzman wins big time.

Let her serve cake? Not this career gal, mister.

Joan of Leeds: you go, girl!

I am a 16 year product of Catholic schooling, all at the hands of the same order of nuns.

When I was really little – third grade, the year we had a nice, young, pretty nun – I wanted to become one of them. For Halloween, I went out as a nun, the all-purpose witch costume my mother had made a few years earlier (with ample hems to take out as I grew) easily repurposed into a nun’s habit.

I’m not sure how successful I was in figuring out the headpiece part. On Halloween, we were allowed to bring costumes – as long as they represented a saint, holy person, or historic figure – and wear them for the afternoon. As the patrol lines were forming, Sister asked me whether I was supposed to be a nun. Hmmmm.

Anyway, by the time I reached the true age of reason, somewhere beyond the age of eight, I realized that having a vocation would be a terrible thing. I prayed against having one.

Seriously, who would want to be a nun?

So many of them seemed miserable, angry all the time and taking it out on the kids. Sure, there were some who were kind and good teachers, but you were just as likely to spend your schooldays with a sadist who shouldn’t have been anywhere near children. They were mean, bullying, psychologically (and on occasion, physically) abusive.

The worst nuns seemed to be in grammar school. Take the first grade nun who told a group of boys who’d had the audacity to stretch their arms out, lightly blocking a kid’s return to his desk, that they were heading to reform school.

“If you brought your lunch today” – and very few kids brought their lunch; most of us legged it home for our soup and sammy – “it’s your last meal. If not, breakfast was. And I hope you kissed your mother goodbye, because you’re never going to see her again.”

Then there was the nun who, on December 2, 1958, the day after a fire at Our Lady of Angels Grammar School in Chicago took the lives of nearly 100 children (and a few nuns), told us, “God seldom makes mistakes, but in this case he made one.” Because we were so awful and sinful, she continued. “He had intended to burn down Our Lady of the Angels in Worcester. But there was a slip up.”

A fair number of crazies appeared during my grammar school years. There were also some nutters when I was in high school, but proportionately there were fewer of them than there had been in grammar school. (By college there were few of them in evidence, and they were as far as I could tell pretty much intelligent and sane.)

But the high school nuns did dispense some fairly odd “wisdom.” Ringo Starr, we were told, was retarded and, thus, we should avoid The Beatles.

If you read Catcher in the Rye, you will lose your faith. So don’t!

And this gem: “Just because you did better on your math college boards, it doesn’t mean you’re a homosexual.” Thanks, Sta, for letting us know.

No surprise, then, that I didn’t want to be one of them.

And no surprise when I learned about what formation had been like for those woman when they’d entered the convent. “Our” order was semi-cloistered. Once a girl – and they were girls, often the daughters of large, poor Irish immigrant families – joined up, she had little contact with her family, little access to news, scant opportunity to go out in public. They weren’t allowed to make friendships with other nuns, let alone with anyone in the parishes where they served. They were transferred around regularly, and didn’t know until mid August what school they’d be teaching at in September, not even the city where they’d be living. A pretty grim life.

With my history with the nunny-bunnies, as we not-so-affectionately called them, I was naturally amused when my sister Trish came across an article in The Guardian about Joan of Leeds.

A team of medieval historians working in the archives at the University of York has found evidence that a nun in the 14th century faked her own death and crafted a dummy “in the likeness of her body” in order to escape her convent and pursue – in the words of the archbishop of the time – “the way of carnal lust”.

A marginal note written in Latin and buried deep within one of the 16 heavy registers used by to record the business of the archbishops of York between 1304 and 1405 first alerted archivists to the adventures of the runaway nun. “To warn Joan of Leeds, lately nun of the house of St Clement by York, that she should return to her house,” runs the note written by archbishop William Melton and dated to 1318.

Melton, writing to inform the Dean of Beverley about the “scandalous rumour” he had heard about the arrival of the Benedictine nun Joan, claimed that Joan had “impudently cast aside the propriety of religion and the modesty of her sex”, and “out of a malicious mind simulating a bodily illness, she pretended to be dead, not dreading for the health of her soul, and with the help of numerous of her accomplices, evildoers, with malice aforethought, crafted a dummy in the likeness of her body in order to mislead the devoted faithful and she had no shame in procuring its burial in a sacred space amongst the religious of that place”.

After faking her own death, he continued, “and, in a cunning, nefarious manner … having turned her back on decency and the good of religion, seduced by indecency, she involved herself irreverently and perverted her path of life arrogantly to the way of carnal lust and away from poverty and obedience, and, having broken her vows and discarded the religious habit, she now wanders at large to the notorious peril to her soul and to the scandal of all of her order.”

Trish (only 12 years in Catholic school; only 8 with the semi-cloistered nuns) was, quite naturally, quick to share this story with me and my sister Kath (a fellow 16-year product). She passed the link along with the comment, “You go, girl!”

Kath wrote, “If only I could have selectively faked my death to escape some of the Psycho Killer Nuns.”

I dubbed Joan of Leeds “our new hero.”

Trish hoped that she got away with it.

I imagined that the head nun’s response was “over my dead body.”

The professor who led the project trumped us all. She likened the discovery to a Monty Python sketch.

No information has been unearthed to indicate whether Joan was dragooned back into the convent, or whether she made a full escape.

But I like to think that she had a good old irreverent life, wandering at large, with plenty by the way of carnal lust, etc.

You go, girl, indeed!

I’ve got a horse right here…

Well, tomorrow is the running of the 145th Kentucky Derby.

As usual, I will not be donning a big hat or flowing, flowery dress.

I will not be wagering a bet.

I will not be watching those high-priced ponies tearing around Churchill Downs.

The Sport of Kings just ain’t my cup of Mint Julep.

The closest I ever got to the horsey set was an old guy who lived in my neighborhood growing up. Mr. Downey had a rackety old barn behind his house – which, oddly enough, was in a densely packed urban neighborhood. But, why not? The barn was broken down enough that we could sneak in and look at the old junk – radios from the 1930’s, broken vacuum cleaners, dried up paint cans – that was stored within. A child’s delight. Bonus points because the barn was creepy and broken down.

In the 1930’s, that barn, I believe, also served as an occasional stable of sorts for Mr. Downey’s horse, Billy Direct.

Billy Direct was a harness racing horse, and he was no slouch. He is, in fact, a Harness Racing Immortal and member of the Harness Racing Hall of Fame.

We knew about Billy Direct because we lived in the same ‘hood my father had grown up in, and Mr. Downey lived kitty-corner across the street from my grandmother’s. Living with Mr. Downey was his nephew Alton, who had gone to high school with my father.

So we were practically related, although they were Protestants, so we couldn’t have been.

(Alton, by the way, had a Catholic girlfriend, Martina, who he had been dating from high school on. Alas, they could not get married until Mr. Downey and Martina’s parents died. Fortunately, that eventually happened and the happy couple was hitched by their 35th South High Reunion.

Other than Billy Direct, most of what I know about horses comes from watching Westerns on TV as a kid.

Roy Rogers’ Trigger. Gene Autry’s Champion. My Friend Flicka. Fury.

That and local kiddie show star Rex Trailer’s Goldrush. One of the most exciting things that happened to my friend Bernadette was when her family came upon Rex and Goldrush with a flat tire and helped them out.

As for actually pressing any horseflesh, I’ve never been on a horse that wasn’t wooden and going in around in circles.

And I’ve only been to the track – Narragansetts, Suffolk Downs - a few times.

My betting MO was always the same. Spend no more than $10 over the course of an evening – $2 bets only! And pick the horses intuitively, based on some combo of the jockey’s silks and the horse’s name. Surprisingly, this usually worked out well enough for the $10 to last through all the races.

I would be hard put to pick a win, place, or show based on the names of the horses running in this year’s Derby:

TACITUS

WIN WIN WIN

HAIKAL

GAME WINNER

MAXIMUM SECURITY

CUTTING HUMOR

SPINOFF

WAR OF WILL

CODE OF HONOR

ROADSTER

BY MY STANDARDS

PLUS QUE PARFAIT

LONG RANGE TODDY

VEKOMA

IMPROBABLE

GRAY MAGICIAN

TAX

COUNTRY HOUSE

BODEXPRESS

MASTER FENCER (JPN)

Okay. A few are okay: Maximum Security, War of Will, Country House. With the 75th anniversary of D-Day looming, Omaha Beach would have been a good one, but it scratched. So I’d have to go with Roadster or Cutting Humor. (And the silks are reasonably good: pink and white for Roadster, blue and yellow for Cutting Humor.)

Mostly, nothing leaps off the card.

So just as well I won’t be there with my $2 parlay.

Even without my two bucks, there’s big money on the line for both bettors and horses. It’s estimated that $200M will be wagered on the Derby Day. And the prize money for the horses is nearly $2M.

At stake is a win that can add millions to a horse’s value and set it on the path to chasing the most lucrative title in equine sports: the Triple Crown. Already in their short careers, the 20 contenders have won a combined $12.5 million for their owners, jockeys and trainers. (Source: Bloomberg)

But the big money’s not in the purse. It’s that “horse’s value” that matters.

When their racing careers end, males become studs. They can command as much as $100K for a stud fee, and may be put out to that particular pasture as many as 100 times a year.

The real studs can charge even more. Last year, Justify won the Triple Crown (Kentucky Derby, Belmont, Preakness). He’s now home on the range and is expected to rake in $75M over the next few years.

Most race horses, of course, don’t make anywhere near the big bucks:

Out of all the horses that raced in North America last year, fewer than 4 percent earned more than $100,000, according to bloodstock analyst Bill Oppenheim.

Which is, of course, more than most Americans earn. But not that much if you’re talking about horse shoes, stables, and oats.

Anyway, no Kentucky Derby for me. Still, may the best nag win and all that.

There’s nooo business like shoe business

Massachusetts has never exactly been an industrial powerhouse. The Commonwealth has never been a Pennsylvania, an Ohio, a Michigan. But when I was growing up, it was a state where plenty of stuff got made.

Some of it was industrial stuff: Norton made abrasives. GE made aircraft engines. But a lot of our plants were knitting mills. (Every summer, my family made an excursion to a mill in either Ware or Fall River to buy tee-shirts at a mill store.) Or shoe factories.

I spent a summer working in one of them: H.H. Brown, which made work boots, combat boots (including paratrooper boots for the South Vietnamese military), and boots for the workers in nuclear energy plants. (These were chartreuse with red top stitching – so loud that no one would ever wear them outside the plant by accident. This was in the 1960’s, before men began wearing clothing with more flash. By the early 1970’s, chartreuse with red stop stitching would barely have raised an eyebrow.)

But H. H. Brown is long gone, as are a lot of the other Massachusetts shoe factories. A lot of our heavy manufacturing plants are gone, too. And the textile mills and furniture factories fled south, then east, long ago.

We became a state that became known for (and got rich, relative to most other states, on) medicine, education, financial services, high tech.

But a funny thing happened on the way to becoming a state that really didn’t make much of anything.

We became, once again, a state known for shoes.

Of course, across the U.S., the vastly vast majority of shoes sold here are imported.

But to some extent, Shoes ‘R’ us.

Most of those shoes are sneakers, and we’ve been “doing” sneakers for quite a while. When it comes to athletic footwear, Massachusetts is something of an ur source.

Saucony (HQ: Waltham, Massachusetts) started out in 1906 as a company making ten-cent slippers out of carpet remnants.

Converse (HQ: Boston) has been around almost as long – since 1910. The Converse All Star was introduced in 1917, before the idea of the NBA existed, let alone the concept of basketball all stars. They became Chucks in the 1930’s. When I was a kid, Chucks came in black and in white. And only boys wore them.

Now they’re co-ed, and come in all sorts of colors, not to mention all sorts of crazy prints. My personal favorites are the pale blue ones with the flamingos on them. Not that I wear Chucks. Not enough support for me. Not to mention that someone who wears a size 11 and is breathing down the age of 70 doesn’t really need to be moseying around in pale blue high tops with flamingos on them.

Still, I love Chucks, the very idea of them.

There are other sneaker companies around here.

Reebok may have started life in England, but their HQ is in Boston.

Puma’s US headquarters is just outside of Boston, as is Clark’s of Wallabees fame.

Having your headquarters here doesn’t, of course, mean that you’re making your shoes in Massachusetts.

But New Balance, which has its headquarters in Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, does make some of its sneaks here.

…and Alden Shoes cranks out shiny penny loafers in Middleborough. (Source: Boston Globe)

Ah, penny loafers. When I was in high school, Bass Weejuns were the thing. My first loafers were actually a pair of Old Maine Trotters, which I got because they were the only loafers that came in my size. (Then: 9.5 AAA/10 AAAA) Someone in town started carrying Weejuns in odd sizes, so I was in teen-age heaven.

Never put the pennies in them – that just wasn’t done – but I wore out a few pairs of Bass Weejuns during my high school and college years.

But Bass Weejuns aren’t native to Massachusetts. They’re Mainers. (As were Old Maine Trotters.)

And it’s Massachusetts that’s got the leg up when it comes to shoes.

Tom Carleo is a VP at New Balance:

Carleo says the talent base that has grown up working in the shoe industry in Massachusetts is one reason it has remained rooted here. There are also technologists and entrepreneurs, he says, thinking about how new technologies, like 3-D printing, will change the way shoes are made.

Bring on the 3-D printing! Can’t wait to have a pair of shoes that fit perfectly.

I’m not going to romanticize jobs in shoe factories. Been there, done that, know too much to romanticize the experience. Yet I am happy that there’s actually something tangible, something concrete that’s, if not always manufactured, then at least managed in Massachusetts.

I am someone who benefited greatly from Massachusetts making the transition from manufacturer of tee-shirts and combat boots, to a more abstract, intellectual property kind of economic system. I worked in high tech, and it gave me a lot more challenging and lucrative career than if I’d stuck with polishing and cleaning the glue gunk off of combat boots.

But it sure is easier to wrap your head around something you can wrap your hands around. Like sneakers.

Thank you, shoe business!

And, now, for the anti-foodies out there

There’s so much foodie in the air these days.

Farm to table. Nose to tail. Foam this. Nasturtium that. Vegan. Fregan. Oat milk. Sustainably, fair trade sourced 100% cacao. Paleo only, please.

How can an eater possibly keep up? Sometimes it’s enough to make me want to flip open a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli and eat it cold, right out of the can.

So it’s a good reminder that there are those out there who aren’t focused on whether what they ingest is tasty, interesting, novel, outré. Folks who take a more utilitarian approach to eating.

Some of those folks are customers of Soylent, “the contrarian food replacement company that made its name hawking beige, drinkable meals to time-crunched Silicon Valley workers.”

Where to begin?

Well, obviously with the name Soylent, homage to the 1973 dystopian classic Soylent Green, which included the line – I was going to say “deathless line”, but obviously that wasn’t the case – “soylent green is people.” That was because soylent green was made of human remains. And no, it didn’t taste like chicken.

Anyway, the folks at Soylent thought that this macabre name was fitting for their “beige drinkable meals.”

How time-crunched do you need to be that you resort to “beige drinkable meals”?

I mean, I’ve been time-crunched, but that usually translates into PB&J and an orange. And if I’m really time-crunched, I’ve been known to throw nutrition to the wind and down a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints or a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.

Beige and drinkable?

Towards the end of his life, my husband drank plenty of Ensure, and, well, no one wants a steady diet of Ensure, even if it comes in chocolate (brown), strawberry (pink), or vanilla (white) – not beige. If you’re on a liquid diet, you’re probably not in a great place, healthwise.

Anyway, Soylent wanted to expand their product line into solids, and at first they were thinking it would be in the form of a cube – a 21st century meatless bouillon cube, I guess. And then they discovered that cubes, unless it’s a bouillon cube or Ex-Lax, “are really difficult to do.”

So a couple of weeks ago, the company:

…unleashed the next-best-thing: Soylent Squared, a 100-calorie, very much chewable “mini-meal,” which is not a cube, but instead a perfect (perfect!) square.

“We basically start as a meal replacement drink mostly consumed in the morning and powder in a ready to drink format,” Mr.[Bryan] Crowley [the company’s chief executive] said. “Now we’re a complete nutrition platform that you can enjoy any time of the day in multiple formats.” (Source: NY Times)

Nutrition platform?

Jeez Louise. Why does food have to have a platform? Am I the only one nostalgic for the days when a platform was something you the wedding party sat on, or a political party stood for.

Platform is a term that took over the tech world a decade or so back, and things that used to be products – or, yuck, solutions – all of a sudden had to be platforms. Whether they were or not.

And multiple formats?

Big deal.

Food comes it lots of different formats. Liquid. Solid. Foodie foam. Animal. Vegetable. Mineral. Round. Square. Oblong. Oval. Banana-shaped.

Multiple colors, too!

The only food in my fridge that’s beige are eggs. I get those beige eggs because “brown eggs are local eggs, and local eggs are best.”

But I have a lot of real colors in there. White milk. Red peppers. Blueberries. Oranges. Yellowish cheese (cheddar). White cheese (feta). Red with some green apples. Green grapes. Darker green parsley. Purple grape juice. A veritable rainbow of delights.

Anyway, Soylent’s bringing out an actual use-your-teeth food stuff rather than its original gulp-and-go liquid signals the company’s evolution.

When it first emerged from Silicon Valley in 2014, Soylent was billed as a step beyond food — that time-consuming, tooth-exhausting replenishment favored by everyday humans. It was superfood for the teched-out super-person, an extreme lifestyle choice adapted by people who felt comfortable with extremity.

The product’s inventor, Rob Rhinehart, an electrical engineer by training, claimed in a blog post introducing the product that upon drinking it, he felt like “the six million dollar man.”

And maybe the six million dollar man felt plastic and too teched out? Have you thought of that? Did Colonel Steve Austin ever once say “I feel really great?” If so, I don’t recall the episode.

I must also add that I tend to avoid food products that were “invented”. Products that are invented sound way too Hot Pocket-y. I prefer food products that are naturally themselves, like oranges. Or cooked up. Half baked, even.

Invented? Never!

But I’m not one of those techies looking for:

…a new tool to maximize their efficiency, something that could enhance performance by requiring them to waste less time eating.

And there are at least a few of them out their: “the Soylent Reddit community today is nearly 34,000 strong.”

Soylent’s not the only one in the tech’d out food biz, but I’d just as soon avoid all of it, even if Soylent is trying to make sure that its products are “tasty and enjoyable.”

An earlier foray into solid food was apparently not so successful:

…the first attempt at solid Soylent — the Food Bar — was quickly pulled from circulation after customers reported vomiting and diarrhea.

Maybe they should have included bottles of Pepto Bismol. A liquid chaser, making it a multiple format offering. And the pink would provide color diversity. What a platform! Maybe I have a future in food invention.

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A tip of the toque blanche to my sister Kath, an excellent cook, who pointed this article in my direction.

Cassowary for sale

There’s something to be said for dying while doing something you love, and that’s what happened a few weeks ago to a Florida fellow.

Marvin Hajos was a 75-year-ld Bronx native who became bird breeder.

To each his own, and bird breeding was Hajos’. Make that exotic bird breeding.Make that ratite breeding, a group that includes ems, ostriches and cassowaries.

A cassowary is a large flightless bird, a close relative of the emu – the bird currently starring in the Liberty Mutual ads – Liberty Mutual. Emu. Get it? Yes and no.

Cassowaries can’t fly, but they can run 30 mph and leap almost 7 feet into the air. And they’re big: 5 feet fall, maybe even 6 fett tall, and well over 100 pounds.

"The cassowary is rightfully considered the most dangerous bird in the world!" the [San Diego] zoo says. "Each 3-toed foot has a dagger-like claw on the inner toe that is up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) long! The cassowary can slice open any predator or potential threat with a single swift kick.” (Source: CNN)

Hajos was on the receiving end of a swift cassowary kick when he fell and one of hisbirds attacked him.

Cassowaries aren’t for the faint of heart pet owner.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission considers cassowaries Class II wildlife, meaning they pose a danger to humans and are subject to specific cage requirements. Owners must also have “substantial experience with the animals, the commission says.

Class II is the same category as alligators, honey badgers and clouded leopards, while Class I includes more traditional predators such as a lions, tigers and bears.

Lions and tigers and bears. Oh my. (Honey badger don’t care.)

Well, with Mr. Hajos no longer on the scene, his survivors needed to see to what would become of his “animal estate,” and estate that includes macaws and kookaburras. And a few cassowaries. Including his killer.

The auction was held last weekend, but as of this writing, I’m not sure what became of the cassowary with blood on its claw.

Bill Grotjahn, who investigated the death for the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Mr. Hajos had died from trauma inflicted by the bird. He called it “such an unusual situation.”

“I’ve been doing this for 18 years and I’ve never had a thing like this,” [Bill Grotjahn, an investigator with the Florida Medical Examiner’s Office] said. “I’ve had them killed by alligators and snakes but never by a bird like that. I know ostriches and emus have their moments, but cassowaries are an extremely, extremely dangerous bird. You don’t want to fool around with them. They have no sense of humor.” (Source: NY Times)

Personally, while I’d prefer to have a pet with a sense of humor, but it wouldn’t be a deal breaker for me. But that “extremely, extremely dangerous” would give me pause. Especially a known killer.

Not that murder-by-cassowary is all that common. The last known killing was nearly 100 years ago in Australia (their native turf).

It was not clear why the bird that killed Mr. Hajos was not put down after the attack.

Certainly the question that inquiring minds are asking themselves.

Mr. Hajos, by the way:

…did not need a permit for his cassowaries because he “employed an agricultural exemption for his possession of cassowaries for agricultural use.”

That would be “meat, eggs and live animal sales.”

Inquiring minds might be asking a few more questions. Like who eats cassowary meat? Does it taste like chicken? And who eats cassowary eggs? What size omelet do they make?

I did find someone out there in Internet world who does raise cassowary because the chicks are, ahem, “adorable.”

“Adorable”?

Maybe as a chick. But once it grows into a six-footer with a dagger claw and no sense of humor. Plus a nasty disposition to boot.

I think I’d be a bit wary of a cassowary.

Not to mention that the cost could be as high as $10K.

As for Mr. Hajos, may he rest in peace.

Imaging surviving a Bronx childhood to get ripped apart by a cassowary.

I know he wasn’t singing about cassowaries, but John Prine was sure onto something when he wrote “It’s a big old goofy world.”

Make new colleagues but keep the old

I had lunch last week with four former colleagues. We had last worked together more than twenty years ago, but had all stayed in light contact over the years. The last time we were all together was at my husband’s memorial service, five years back. When someone or something came up, there might be an email or LinkedIn exchange. I’d seen most of them once or twice since Jim’s service. But that was about it.

Our shared experience was at a wacky little company where I spent nearly 10 years.

I’d been there for quite a few years before any of these fellows joined. I’m not sure what our joint tenure was: three years? five years?

In any case, we were all pretty tight when we worked together. It was a small company, so you knew everyone, but some colleagues became better buds than others. These guys were all on the better buds list – some better than others.

One of the guys, George (who remains just about the funniest, laugh-out-loud person I’ve ever known) had been my “work husband”, the man at work I was tightest with. We had lunch pretty much every day. And over the years, we got in the habit of George calling me while he was commuting in to work. (I was an earlier arrival than he was.) We’d chew over what was up – we were both on the management team, which doesn’t take much to achieve in a small company. We’d trade speculation, indulge in a bit of gossip. He called me once from the hospital where his wife was in labor. He assured me that she was dozing, but I refused to talk to him. Enough was enough!

On occasion, we went on business trips. The most memorable was a trip to central Illinois, where, among other things, we called on a client – we ate in the company caf, where they served several jello mold options. My mother would have loved it. 

But the jello wasn’t what made the trip so memorable.

The trip was winding down on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, and as we drove through the soybean fields on our way back to O’Hare, we tried to tune in AM stations along the way to get the news. We caught snatches, and just didn’t know what to make of it. Someone had blown up a pre-school? What???

Andy was the boss man – the president of the company. I left the company when he fired me. We were planning a dire-necessity layoff, and Andy and I were having a disagreement on how we were going to position the layoff to the survivors. Our disagreement ended with me telling him “you say what you’re going to say, I’ll say what I’m going to say, and we’ll see who they believe.” Oops. Not the wisest thing to say if I wanted to keep my job.

I didn’t speak to him for a while, but about a year after he fired me – and he was tossed by the company that had acquired our little outfit about a month after he riffed me – someone put together an alumni dinner and we did the work equivalent of kiss and make up.

The other two guys – Rob and Brian – were both salesmen, and I’d worked with them on deals, staffed trade shows, gone on calls, etc.. I can count on one hand – maybe a hand plus a couple of fingers - the number of sales folks I actually enjoyed working with over the years – and yes, dear V, you are one of them! – and both Rob and Brian (another person with an excellent sense of humor) are on the short list.

During my full-time career, I specialized in crazy, generally dysfunctional companies. Maybe every company is, but the places I worked all had an special edge. I was obviously drawn to the intrigue and the meshugas.

This particular company was dysfunction off the charts. We’d blown $40M in investment – this in an era when $40M sunk into a pokey software company (however brilliant the techies, and ours were plenty brilliant) was a huge amount of money.

When our lunch gang of five was all there together, the spigot had pretty much been shut off. Occasional we got a trickle of cash, but mostly we were on our own.

Our function was survival, and, dammit, we were pretty good at it. Until we weren’t.

Thanks to Andy, we’d been acquired, but the acquiring firm wasn’t interested in investing in us. A hardware company that was eager to get into the software biz, they wanted us to merge our technology with that of some skunkworks they had going.

Our principal product was what we termed “robust”, “industrial strength”. Just another way of saying it was brutal to use, and there were only about three people in the world who could actually succeed with it without a brain transplant and/or our services team doing all the work for them.

As it turned out, the skunkworks technology the acquiring company tried to foist onto us was – quite unimaginably – even uglier and harder to use than our baby. The merger of these two products never occurred.

But even though we disappointed our new owners by not consummating the technology marriage, we were survivors. And we survived by getting enough companies to buy our software. Until we weren’t able to get enough companies to buy our software.

Ah, the good old days…

At lunch, we shared war stories – and we all had plenty of them.

I can’t remember when I’ve laughed so long and so hard.

Sometimes, we didn’t even need to tell the stories.

All someone had to do was say the “magic word” – Zamboni, R2D2, Roll Tide, drooping fudgsicle, The Decordova, mullet; mention a name - and we’d all just burst out laughing.

Some of the stories were of the ‘had to be there’ variety. But some were just good stories.

Here’s one of mine:

Our VP of development was a very nice guy who hated to make presentations – way out of his comfort zone. But for our user group, he really needed to get up there and talk about ‘what next’ for our product. I.e., what we were going to do to it that would somewhat improve it, at least to the level where someone would choose our product over getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick.

Anyway, I helped Marty pull together his preso, coached him, rehearsed him, etc.

At the management meeting after the user group, Marty thanked me for being “such a good wet nurse.” (You need to know two things: I was the only woman on the management team; and during our meetings, Marty was almost always doodling nose cones and other breast-like images.)

Wetnurse! Wetnurse? My response: “If I were going to pick a wetnurse, it wouldn’t be someone over 40 who’d never had a kid.”

“Help me out here,” Marty said (whined, actually), “What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Nursemaid, Marty.”

As you get older, the conversations often take a  backward look. You’re with family, old friends, old colleagues, and you just start in on the reminiscence.

We left agreeing that we wouldn’t wait so long to do it again.

It was a total hoot, and we just tapped a few of the stories.

Looking forward to the next meetup.

Make new colleagues, but keep the old. One is silver, but the other gold.

These guys are definitely gold…

According to Webster…

I enjoy seeing the words that Merriam-Webster adds to the dictionary each year. While I’m not exactly a stan - “an extremely or excessively enthusiastic and devoted fan” -  I do like seeing what they come up with. The list is always a pretty good finger on the cultural pulse.

Overall, W-M added 640 words. I haven’t seen the full list, but the ones I’ve seen plucked out are pretty good.

There are original ones – like stan – and old words with new definitions.

Remember when we used to say that no too snowflakes are alike? When we used to stick out our tongues to catch one? When a highlight of the Christmas pageant was the Grade 3 girls rendition (with dance) of “Here Comes Susie Snowflake?” These days, a snowflake is someone who thinks they’re special. Or for “someone who is overly sensitive.” Widely used as a diss on Twitter.

Other repurposed words include purple. Given the shorthand references we make to blue states and red states, I guess it was inevitable that swing states would become purple.

Tailwind and headwind made it onto the list because they’re “now often used figuratively to refer to a force or influence that either helps or hinders progress.” Seems to me that this figurative usage has been in use for quite a while. Guess it just never made it definitionally up until now.

I like peak - something that’s at the “height of its popularity, use, or attention.” But I do believe there may be another meaning, and that’s quintessence. As a 3 a.m. spittle-flying (metaphorically speaking) rage tweet in which Trump goes after traitorous Democrats and fake news would be peak Trump. Maybe I’m misusing peak. Or maybe I’m on to something. Listen up, Merriam-Webster.

Some of the newbies are words I was vaguely familiar with. I’d heard swole, a description of someone who’s muscle bound. Not anything I’m personally familiar with, but I have heard it in passing.

And although I don’t watch the awards shows, I do know the word EGOT, which stands (stans?) for someone who’s won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony.

But bottle episode? It’s not like I never watch television, but I guess the series I watch – like Bosch, and Shameless – don’t tend to do any purely talking head episodes in which there’s only one setting for the entire show.

There are other compound words.

Compound terms are those made up of two or more words that have become lexicalized and are no longer self-explanatory—so they need their own definitions.

Maybe I’m tired, but I feel that this paragraph could easily have been found in the Collected Works of Jacques Derrida. If someone wants to ‘splain it to me, have at it.

Anyway, the compound words that have been lexicalized (and, to me, do seem self-explanatory…) are page view, on-brand, garbage time, go-cup, and screen-time. As I noted, these all seem pretty self-explanatory to me. Maybe I’m must a natural born lexicalizer.

There are a few science words. For some reason, the one I like most from that subset is traumatology: the study, diagnosis, and treatment severe, acute physical injuries sustained by individuals requiring immediate medical attention. But please let me extend that definition a bit to include the study of blue and purple staters who do not understand for a New York (blue state) minute how anyone can approve of DJT.

Fitbit and all the other health and fitness monitoring devices appear to be having an impact on the words of the world. I give you salutogenesis which asks us to think about our health in terms of “promoting well-being rather than measuring disease.” (Averaging 11.5 steps+ per day, baby. I’m just a living, breathing salutogenesis kind of gal.)

There are a couple of goodies from the business world.

As much as folks try to convince themselves that working freelance is a far better way to live than wage slavery (yes and no: good for me at this point in my life, but I’m happy I had real work for real companies), we may live to regret that the gig economy became a thing.

And it’s about time that vulture capitalism has gotten the recognition it deserves.

In addition to EGOT and bottle episode – (bottle episode? really?) – entertainment brought us the word buzzy. While buzzy is a perfectly good word for something that generates buzz, I can guarantee you that no Bostonian of a certain age will ever hear the word buzzy and not immediate think of Buzzy’s Roast Beef, a crummy looking late-night sandwich joint that stood for years right next door to Mass General Hospital and right next to the Charles Street Jail. Even though at one point I lived less than a 2 minute walk away, I could never bring myself to eat there. But I do know a few folks who did and lived to tell the tale. One of those is my old friend Tommy, husband to my even older friend Joyce. They’re coming to Boston in September and I think they’ll be staying at the Liberty Hotel, the fancy boutique hotel that occupies the old Charles Street Jail and uses the Buzzy’s site as its entryway.

One of the wonderful things about words is word association. Thank you snowflake, thank you buzzy for sending me on a couple of strolls down memory lane.

Meanwhile, I have a suggestion for next year: fren, which is doggo-speak for friend.

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Source throughout: Merriam-Webster

Why buy the suit when the body’s free?

I saw my doctor the other day. As I expected, other than for a few mechanical difficulties – one quasi-frozen shoulder, two creaky knees, an occasional hip twinge, tingling in the balls of my feet, and ankles that swell when I stand too long in one place (good thing I don’t need to work retail!) – I’m in good shape.

I’m doing my best to make sure that the aging process stays in a holding pattern for as long as possible. Or even – tingling toes crossed – getting some slight improvements. But mostly, things are going in one direction. Seventy might be the next fifty – come December, I’ll let you know – but, darling, you are growing old.

Other than those mechanical difficulties, I don’t feel all that old. But old age depends on where you’re sitting on the age continuum:

On average, adults between the ages of 30 and 49 think old age begins at 69. People who are currently 50-64 believe old age starts at 72. Responders who are 65 and older say old age begins at 74. (Source: LiveAbout)

They didn’t ask me, but I think I’d have said that old age begins at 80. Just sayin’.

Whenever old age starts, I’m delighted that there are researchers out there trying to make things better for us geezers as we advance further and further into geezerhood.

Corgan is an architecture firm working to make travel a more pleasant experience for the elderly.

So they have created an “age simulation suit” that lets designers experience what it’s like for older folks to get around a busy airport. For Samantha Flores, donning 30 pounds worth of gear did the trick:

Goggles and headphones “impaired” her sight and hearing. Gloves reduced feeling and simulated hand tremors. Weighted shoes, along with neck, elbow and knee movement restrictors, approximated mobility limitation. (Source: NY Times)

Remind me not to get old.

Once she’d put the suit on, Flores found:

The signs were hard to see, the announcements were hard to hear and the people rushing by made her feel unsteady on her stiffened knees.

Remind me not to get old. (Sorry, us old folks tend to be repetitive.)

Using the suits is one way designers who work with airports and the travel industry in general are starting to look at creating spaces for different groups of people. And older people are one group whose numbers are growing.

Yep. There are a lot of us and, even though it all ends up with the inevitable, there are going to be a lot more of us. By 2035, the 65+ set “will outnumber children for the first time.” I know that this is primarily because we’re living longer, and not just because some of us never got around to replacing ourselves, but I still find it pretty depressing.

But here we are and here we come.

Airports are adapting to us geezers on the go by putting more benches along the way so we can’t rest up more frequently. I haven’t noticed any of these. What I do increasingly see is those speeding golf-carts barreling around terminal corridors, laden with old people in Hawaiian shirts and shit-tons of luggage. (Remind me not to get old.)

Then there’s this:

Research conducted by Corgan found that elderly people were more likely to look down while they were walking, which means they could miss directional signs above their heads. So the company suggested that its airport clients place more information closer to the ground.

Now we’ll have the choice between craning our necks and stooping to read ankle-level signage. Swell. What’s wrong with eye level?

Another finding is that older travelers are so anxious to get to their gates that they take a pass on the main concession areas. The recommendation: make sure there’s more places to grab food near the boarding gates.

This seems to be happening, and I’m all for it. I’m someone who likes to get to the gate and settle in without having to backtrack for a shrink wrapped sandwich, bottle of water, or bag of M&M’s.

The firm also found that shiny floors should be avoided because they could appear wet and cause people to worry about falling.

Even when I was a lot younger, I came to the realization that shiny floors should be avoided everywhere. I’ve never understood marble floors polished to a mirror shine. Forget that they “appear wet”, they’re actually slippery.

There are some technical changes that are being deployed for the old folks on the go – gate announcements beamed directly to someone’s hearing aide, for one instance – and there are some human factors, too. Seems that older people like to interact with fellow human beings. Who knew? Other than Walmart, with all those folks in the vests…

Hotels are getting in on the act, too. Some are getting rid of bathtubs and swapping in walk-in showers. Yes! I’ve never understood why hotels want their guests risking life and limb to step in and out of tubs in order to take a shower (especially in a bathroom with highly polished marble floors). Sure it’s fun to luxuriate in a tub once in a while, but safety first.

My favorite accommodation was one that a “travel expedition company” came up with:

On one family’s trip to Costa Rica…a grandmother traveled along in a submersible vehicle with a pilot while her grandchildren snorkeled around her.

Now this sounds like fun. Too bad I forgot to have kids (and, thus, grandkids).

As for that “age simulation suit,” don’t think I’ll be needing one anytime soon.

Why buy the suit when the body’s free?

Hey, Culligan! A dog in your ad named Maureen????

I was only half paying attention to the Culligan ad. That is until I heard my name.

I looked up.

Oh, the young woman in the ad is named Maureen. Odd, that. A name that was wildly popular when I was a girl – at least in precincts that were loaded with Irish Catholics – has gone the way of Bertha and Ethel. Not to mention less fogeyish but nonetheless obsolete names like Karen, Nancy, Linda, and Sandy. Even at the height of its popularity, Maureen as a name occurred more in real life than in books, movies, songs, ads.

There was a Maureen character in one of Joyce Carol Oates earlier novels. And Maureen was, as I recall, the bad cousin in a novel by priest-potboiler-writer Andrew Greeley. (The good cousin was Ellen, I believe. Art imitating life??? I’ll have to ask Ellen.)

Maureen is a character in Rent.

I’ve never heard my name in a song, although I could have sworn that in “Look at Killer Joe Go” (1963), Killer Joe was dancing with Maureen. Nope: Marie.

Sigh. No one wants to “Take You Home Again, Maureen.”

A meh name.

That has now made it into an ad for Culligan Water.

But it’s not the young woman in the ad who’s named Maureen. It’s her pug. In case you missed it, here’s the copy:

You didn't choose just any dog, you chose Maureen. Don't give her water smelling of chlorine! Your family of all shapes, sizes, and breeds deserves filtered Culligan water, so why wait? Ask your Culligan Water Expert for more information at heyculligan.com.

Hey, Culligan. You didn’t just choose any name for that dog. You chose Maureen. Huh?

Although it’s something of an insult to dogs, I have no problem with humans giving dogs human names. After all, there are so many ways in which dogs are better than humans. They have exceptional EQ. They’re honest, unpretentious, and  know themselves.  I realize this argument could go either way, but I’ll come down on the side of it being okay to give a dog a name generally associated with humans.

Even in my childhood, when dogs had dog names, there were dogs with “real” names.

Sure, my neighborhood had Shep, Blackie, Dapper, Clipper, and Queenie. Then there were Brian Boru (a Kerry blue) and Rasputin (a German shepherd), which are human names. But there were also a couple of doggos with more pedestrian human names: Cindy the beagle, Sid the mutt.

My grandmother had a string of black Labs: Midnight, Thunder, and Lightning. But my Uncle Jack had a mutt called Luke.

In books and on TV, dogs were mostly doggily named: Lassie, Old Yeller, Rin Tin Tin. One of my favorite books featured Pantaloon, a black poodle.

But there was also Harry the Dirty Dog.

My bottom line: I’m fine with dogs with human names. (Although on the day my niece Molly was born, I was somewhat taken aback as I walked down Charles Street and passed a woman talking to her yellow lab, Molly.)

In my building there’s a yellow lab named George, a Frenchie named Henry. Someone with a mutt named Rosco is a frequent visitor. As is a Chihuahua called Frito. A friend recently lost his Dalmatian Lily.

A cousin of my husband had Jack Russells named Jackie and Russ. And a German shepherd named Britta. My sister-in-law had bichons called Addie and Coco.

My friend Marie had a mutt named Hazel, followed by a chocolate called Boomer, and a yellow lab named Wilbur. Wilbur died a couple of years after Marie did. The new dog in her house is called Rufus. (Marie’s family dog when we were in high school was Sam.)

My family had a German shepherd named Grimbald, a mighty German name. But mostly it came from Miss Grimble Cheesecake.

My sister had a beloved black lab called Jack.

When I’m out and about, I run into a lot of Charlies. Maggies. Maxes. Sams.

But a dog named Maureen? And a pug at that.

If you’re going to name a dog Maureen, could it at least be a charming, adorable lab of any color. Or a smarty pants pupper – say a border collie, a poodle.

But a pug?

It’s not their fault, they were bred that way. But that pushed in face, the snuffling because they can’t breathe all that well? I’m sure they’re sweet and all that.

But thanks but no thanks.

In any case, Maureen is just not a particular good dog name. Some names just aren’t.

Pete is a decent dog name; Paul isn’t, for some reason.

Maggie works. But who’d call a dog Margaret?

In general, nicknames work better than proper names. Jack vs. John. Charlie vs. Charles.

So why not call the Culligan dog Mo(e)?

Moe makes a quite good dog name. I believe that Subaru uses it for a labby in one of their ads.

But Maureen as a dog name? Just plain weird. Not insulting, mind you. Just weird.

I will note that Culligan is an Irish last name. Perhaps there’s a Maureen Culligan out there, and naming the pug Maureen is an in joke.

I am thinking (seriously) about getting a dog. I have shortlisted some names. I’m leaning girl, and am leaning Miss Pym, after the writer Barbara Pym. Her nickname would be Pymmie. I like Maisie, but I believe my niece Molly has dibs on that.

For a boy, I like Roscommon, after an ancestral county in Ireland. Rosco for short.

I’d also consider Diggy or Diggs, nicknames that my husband went by. (Jim’s last name was Diggins.) It would make an excellent dog name, and I know that Diggy would get a kick out of it.

But a dog named Maureen? What was Culligan thinking?

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In case you’re interested, here’s a link to the ad. Arf!

I’m gonna get on my pony and ride

My sister Kath, who has a keen eye for the cultural oddity (both home and abroad) pointed me towards a fairly peculiar Finnish subculture that was chronicled in the NY Times on Sunday. Her comment was “and you thought the Japanese are bizarre.”

Not that we find all the Japanese bizarre. Kath’s reference, of course, was to idiosyncrasies like the young men who date stuffed pillowcases with the image of a video game or anime girl. The fellow last fall who married a hologram. (Congratulations and best wishes with that one.) And then there’s the fetishization of school girls, and the worship by young women of all things Hello Kitty.

It’s not, of course, that Americans aren’t bizarre. But the bizarrities of our culture – like gun worship and conspiracy theories, Nazis and incels – tend to run along the axis of evil, not the axis of weird.

And I’ve got to admit that Finland’s hobbyhorse girls are somewhat weird.

But the more I think about them, the more good weird this group is.

The hobbyhorse girls, like many of their adolescent and pre-adolescent counterparts, are into horses. At recent event:

A dozen girls waited in line in a Helsinki arena for the dressage competition, ready to show off their riding skills, their faces masks of concentration.

The judge put them through their paces — walk, trot, canter — and then asked them for a three-step rein-back, that classic test of a dressage horse’s training and obedience. The judge looked on gravely, occasionally taking notes. (Source: NY Times)

But instead of real flesh-and-blood, nostril-flaring, carrot-munching steeds, these girls are “riding” hobbyhorses. I.e., a stuffed-animal horse head on a pole. The kind of toy that most kids outgrow by the time they’re four or five. Except in Finland.

Admittedly, it’s a bit oddball. Especially considering that they’ve got vets advising the girls on their horses’ vaccinations and nasal discharge. And the girls compare “hobbyhorse bloodlines and hobbyhorse temperaments, hobbyhorse training routines and hobbyhorse diets.”

But the dressage parody? The hurdle jumping? The galloping around the woods? Why not?

Whether they’re intentionally parodying dressage or not, if ever a “sport” called for parody, there it be. And here are the hobbyhorse girls sending them up and, unlike dressage, which is rich girl and snobby, anyone can get in on the act. All they need is a horse head on a stick.

It looks like fun.

Fanny [Oikarinen] and her friend, Maisa Wallius, are training for summertime competitions. They have choreographed a two-part dressage routine to a song by Nelly, the rapper.

And running around for an hour pretending you’re riding a horse is pretty good exercise.

Of course, part of the appeal is being whatever the female equivalent of Peter Pan is. Riding around on your hobbyhorse is sure a way of telling the world “I won’t grow up.” At least not for now.

Not growing up has much to recommend it, especially in the world where terrorists blow up churches and hotels, the polar bears are trying to survive on incredibly shrinking ice floes, adolescence as ever is a hormonal minefield, and teens get totally clobbered by social media.

When the hobbyhorse subculture started forming, maybe a decade ago, the girls who participated had – kids being kids – fun poked at them. But then hobbyhorsing around took off and now, in Finland, it’s a thing. An official thing. There’s a national championship, and it’s also a Finnish export. It’s taking off in Sweden, Russia, and the Netherlands.

And it’s not just the oddballs who are into it.

Asked which types of girls are drawn to hobbyhorses, [Nelly choreographer] Maisa [Wallius] thinks for a while before answering.

“Some are sports girls,” she said. “Some are really lonely girls. And some can be the coolest girl at school.”

Selma Vilhunen is a filmmaker who focuses on the lives of adolescent girls. She came across hobbyhorse aficionados on the Internet, and made a documentary – Hobbyhorse Revolution – about it. Here film (2017):

…captured its subjects in long spells of raucous joy…

“Little girls are allowed to be strong and wild,” she said. “I think the society starts to shape them into a certain kind of quietness when they reach puberty.”

Every childhood should contain plenty of those “long spells of raucous joy.” Plenty of time to sit around mooning about boys and worrying about your unibrow.

Sure, it’s bizarre, but it kind of makes me wish I were 11 again and could take off with my friends Bernadette and Susan, tearing around the woods that bordered our neighborhood, riding our hobbyhorses and screaming our heads off.

Giddyap, go!

Cycling back into jeans? Guess I’m fashion forward for a change

In high school, I wore denim Bermuda-length shorts and wheat jeans. In college, I wore bell bottom hip huggers – sometimes hemmed with a fancy patterned trim – and cut offs.

When I was skinny in my twenties, I wore boy jeans.

I always had jeans for casual, weekend wear when I was working full time. But since I made my way out of corporate, jeans have been my uniform.

Somewhere along the line, I started getting all my jeans from LL Bean. They fit well, wore well, and they come in medium tall length, which used to be a bigger deal before I shrunk an inch, but which is still nice.

I wear a lot of jeans.

In the winter, I pretty much wear jeans or jean-style cords every day.

In the summer, I wear lightweight jeans on occasion, but it’s mostly linen pants or some sort of khaki.

But spring and fall, it’s all jeans, all the time.

I probably have 10 pairs of jeans, a combo of dark blue, washed blue, and black. A combo of straight leg and boot cut. I like the ones with a bit of stretch something-or-other in them. (Just, as the old-time Modess ads used to say…Because.)

The worn out-ish jeans, I wear when I’m working in the kitchen at St. Francis House.

The really worn out-ish jeans – and there’s a few pairs of them in the mix – are going into the recycle bag. (Note: you can bring clean used clothing that’s not good enough to donate into an H&M and they’ll take care of recycling.)

The others I just plain wear.

Day in, day out, I just plain wear jeans.

I will give LL Bean one more try, but I may be in the market for a new provider.

I recently ordered two pairs – same style, different colors. The dark blues were baggy in the thighs, and the material was stiff and scratchy. I wrote to LL Bean, and they said the material hadn’t changed. Maybe the material didn’t, but the finish sure did. After a couple of washings, back they went.

The black pair fit well, and while the material was a tiny bit stiff and scratchy, they’re softening up after a couple of washings.

I’m in no dire need for more jeans at the mo’, but when I am I may be looking for a new provider. Recommendations welcome.

Anyway, because I am such a jeans aficionado, I never noticed that jeans had gone a bit out of fashion, replaced, apparently by yoga pants.

Hmmmmm.

But they’re making a comeback.

In all, shoppers bought 364 million pairs of women’s jeans last year, a 5 percent increase from the year before, according to newly released data from market research firm NPD Group, which analyzed jeans sales between February 2018 and February 2019.

“Consumers are finally starting to show interest in jeans again,” said Marshal Cohen, an adviser for NPD. “The fact that we’re seeing more relaxed fits, more comfortable styles, is what’s getting people to say, ‘Okay, I have a reason to buy jeans again.’"

After four straight years of decline, the U.S. denim market grew 2.2 percent to $16.7 billion last year, according to Euromonitor. (Source: Washington Post)

According to the article, mom jeans are leading the comeback. Talk about back to the future.

Anyway, I’m not now, never have been, and never will be a mom, so, no thanks. (And I trust my sisters to let me know if I slip up and slip into something a bit mom-ish.)

This reminds me of some non-jeans I bought years ago: a pair of blue and white striped summer pants from Land’s End.

I went back and forth in my mind whether they were stylin’, or completely fuddy duddy. Then I wore them out to Worcester, where my Aunt Margaret was visiting my mother. This was quite a ways back. I’m guessing that, at that point, my aunt would have been 70ish (i.e., my current age) and my mother would have been 60ish.

When I walked in the door, Peg and Liz couldn’t get over how much they loved those pants. They were sharp, smart, really attractive, I’d wear those.

Well, once the old gals weighed in on them, I was no longer so interested in wearing those. Into the donation bag those went.

Definitely the pants equivalent of mom jeans…

There’s another reason for the resurgence in jeans, one I find more plausible.

Jeans are becoming more comfortable, too, as companies use elastic and materials with stretch to win over legging-loving shoppers.

I also learned that the high-priced jeans are no longer as popular as they once were, other than with me. Those who monitor the markets aren’t “seeing $300-plus denim selling the way it used to.”

I recently saw a pair of $300-plus jeans come into the clothing room at St. Francis House.

I can’t remember the brand name – something Japanese - but someone donated them and I pulled them out of the sorting bin.

They were a very small man’s size, and had a strip of red material with gold dragons crawling up the back legs. We laughed about them, but when I got home, I looked them up and saw that they retailed for about $300. And the next time I was in the clothing room, they were gone.

Anyway, the world is apparently “starting to cycle back into jeans.”

Mom jeans aside, I’m pretty fashion forward here. “Starting to cycle back into jeans”? Harrumph! I never left.

Let them eat vegan cake, while sitting in a terrarium next to a former homeless encampment

My friend John, who keeps his eyes and ears on the zeitgeist, blogged the other day on a new restaurant in Toronto. The title of his post – More signs of the age of guillotines – gives a bit of his thinking away.

Dinner With A View:

…just wanted a pop-up restaurant that was highly Instagrammable, because why do anything that doesn’t generate some good Instagram? But they didn’t think about the optics of taking a site where a homeless encampment was just swept away and serving $150 dinners in little terrariums.

That’s right.

The City of Toronto, citing public safety, recently swept away the non-homes of the homeless, who were living in their tarp shelters, sheltered from the elements by a highway overpass.

With John, I’m not anti-expensive dinners. I’ve been known to eat out at really nice places. With John, I’m not someone who needs to make every experience Instagrammable. (Au contraire…) With John, if someone wants to eat in a terrarium, have at it. And with John I feel that:

Doing it in a place where until recently the most marginalized people in your community were trying to find a place to sleep without freezing to death is a bit clueless, though.

As it happens, through my volunteer work, I’m acquainted with a number of homeless folks.

They come into St. Francis House for a shower, for breakfast or lunch, for some clean clothing. Some of them come in for more: help finding housing, help getting back on track with their lives, legal assistance, medical care, mental health counseling, a spiritual lift, the chance to be a bit creative in the art room.

We do have some units of permanent housing, and on an emergency basis, we have had folks stay overnight, but St. Francis House is primarily a day shelter for the homeless and for the just plain poor. People sleep overnight somewhere else (including some in their own homes), and hang with us during the day.

Many of our guests who are homeless spend the night in a shelter like the Pine Street Inn. Others opt to sleep rough. Sometimes it’s because shelters make them crazy. Sometimes it’s because you can’t drink or do drugs in a shelter. Sometimes it’s because they want to stay with a mate, and the shelters don’t offer co-ed sleeping arrangements. Sometimes it’s just because. And sometimes it’s because they’ve built up a community in a homeless encampment.

I have no doubt that the Toronto homeless encampment closed do to make way for Instagram terrarium dining was a dangerous and nasty place.

The reasons why people find themselves experiencing homelessness are varied, but the prime ones are mental illness, substance abuse, criminal past, and living on the economic margins where it’s pretty difficult to recover from an unfortunate event like losing your job or getting hit with a rent increase. (The one thing that every homeless person I’ve ever met has in common, by the way, is bad luck.)

Yesterday morning, I had a conversation with a fellow who works as a sausage vendor at Fenway Park, and at Bruins and Celtics games. He spends part of the days he’s not working at St. Francis House, but he sleeps at the Pine Street Inn. Unless he’s working a night game – and most games are. Pine Street closes its gates at 7 p.m. So, on game nights, this fellow sleeps on a couch in the warehouse where the sausage carts are stored. He’s trying to save up enough to get a place of his own, but, as you can imagine, this is pretty hard to do. But he lives like homeless people live: on the edge. For some, the edge is under a highway overpass.

Anyway, I’ve seen encampments from a distance, and I have no fantasies about them being swell places. Still, for some in Toronto, it was home, and the juxtaposition (time- and location-wise) of shutting down an encampment and in short order and nearby, opening up a precious little “concept dining” spot, well…

Dinner with a View had nothing to do with rousting out the homeless. And they were working with a non-profit that does arty multi-culti things in the under the highway space. But they might have thought this through a bit better.

They were, however, thinking loftier thoughts, like wanting to offer:

A completely luxurious dining experience in a highly unexpected setting. The adventure begins as guests are ushered into a unique outdoor space - a wondrous environment perfect for sharing via social.

Our domes are transformed into terrariums with distinct terrains. A terrarium is an elegant encapsulation of an ecosystem; a living biosphere captured in time. Here, we bring that notion to life inside our domes, each corresponding to a different region of the earth’s terroir: tundra, tropical, grasslands, arid and boreal forest. These extraordinary spaces are designed using resplendent materials such as live flora, luxurious textiles and elegant illumination…

Artistic spectaculars will frame the stage which will offer opportunities to capture that perfect photograph against an iconic urban background. Source: Dinner with a View).

Wonder if they removed all traces of the encampment detritus: blue tarp, grocery carts, torn sleeping bags with the stuffing falling out, or let them stay to create some atmosphere. After all, homelessness is another iconic urban background, isn’t it?

Dear John Henry: A Modest Proposal

It’s Thursday evening, and I’m doing what any Boston sports fan would be doing on a night when she wanted to avoid the talking political heads: I’m toggling back and forth between the Bruins – who just won 6-4, and the Red Sox, who’ve blown a 3-1 lead and ended up losing 5-3. (A grand slam’ll do that to ya.)

Ah, the Red Sox…

I am a sports fan in general, but a baseball fan in particular. And a Red Sox fan in particular particular.

As far as the Red Sox go, I’m a lifer.

How long have I been a Red Sox?

Well, I was a Red Sox fan when Ted Williams cryogenically preserved head was still attached to his body. And, in my first game ever (July 1960), I even got to see Teddy Ballgame hit a homer.

I was a Red Sox fan even before then. Back when this was the Red Sox logo. It was retired in 1959, so if you run the numbers, I’ve been a fan for at least 60 years.

The main reason I became a Red Sox fan was that my father was one, and we listened to games on the radio together, and watched the televised weekend games. But this logo didn’t hurt any. So cute!

Fans didn’t have as much team-related gear back in those days, so I didn’t have anything bearing this logo until a couple of years ago, when they offered caps with the retro logo. So I got me one. (I have been asked man times what team it represents. Pretty obvious to me that this is a Red Sock…)

Anyway, through thick and thin, and in there has been plenty of thin, especially back in days of yore, I’ve root, root, rooted for the home team.

I watch a bit of most games, and get to a few games each year.

My first game of the season was last Monday, Patriots’ Day, when the Red Sox were trounced by the Orioles 8-1.

As my sister Trish said after we’d watched a few lackluster innings, “This is a really lackluster team.”

Last year, the Sox were anti-lackluster. Their record was 108-54, and they won the World Series.

I don’t expect the Red Sox to have a record like that, let alone win the World Series, every season.

But given that they consistently have one of the highest payrolls ($224 million this year!), highest ticket prices, and highest concession prices in the major leagues, I don’t expect lackluster.

And game in, game out, that’s mostly what the Red Sox have been this season.

If they’d pull out a win tonight – which they didn’t -  our cellar-dwellers would have been 7-12 on the season. With a loss, they’re 6-13. At the rate they’re going, their record will be the observe of their 2018 outing. Ouchie…

How bad was Monday’s game? Well, there were four middle-aged guys sitting in the row in front of us. At the end of the 7th, when they stopped selling beer – by the by, a can of Bud Lite was going for $10.25 – one of the guys stood up and announced, “If I can’t get another beer, what’s the point of staying for this game?” His buddies agreed, and they all headed off to the Boston Beer Works.

Everyone in the vicinity made light fun of them. What kind of fans…

But it got me thinking.

Here we were, soaking in the lackluster and hunting for the peanuts in the pack of Cracker Jack. I turned to Trish and said, “I feel like I’m owed something. I’m thinking they should give us all a bobble-head doll or something on the way out the door.”

Those tickets were $129 per. Crazy money, I know, but I don’t go that often. And I really love going to a game.

But when you’re putting such a cruddy product out there – and it wasn’t just the game I was at; tonight’s 5-3 loss, while respectable, followed an 8-0 blowout at the hands of the Yankees the night before – I really do feel that I’m owed something.

Especially when us fans are the ones paying that bloated payroll with our subscriptions to NESN (for the televised games), more for tickets, more for concessions, and a ton for gear. (My estimate is that at least two-thirds of the fans at any game are wearing a Red sox and/or a shirt and/or a jacket. Or in the case of my sister Trish and myself, Red Sox earrings.).

So a modest proposal for owner John Henry.

How about this:

If the Red Sox are playing less than .500 ball, and they lose a game by four runs or more, we get a little something or other.

Hand every fan a coupon for five dollars at the concession stand for their next game. It wouldn’t get you much: a bag of Cracker Jack, a Sports Bar. But, as the saying goes, “The gift is small, good will is all.”

Give us all a pennant to wave A coupon for a free tour. A bobble head doll. (I’m sure you’ve still got a closet full of Manny Ramirezes somewhere in the bowels of Fenway.)

For the 50-50 raffle, if the Sox are down by four in the seventh, when the winning number is drawn, give away the ENTIRE amount, and make up the amount that would have gone to the Red Sox Foundation out of your own pocket. You can afford it. Better yet, spread the wealth. Give the winning number half the amount collected – which is what they bought the tickets thinking was the prize – but pick two more numbers and give them 30 percent and 20 percent. At least three people will walk away happy. (Or if they left  the game early in disgust, three fans who’ll be pleasantly surprised when they get home and check the winning number on line.)

 I will continue to root for the Red Sox.

They can’t win ‘em all.

But this bunch better pull their sox up.

I’m scheduled for three more games this year. And I may do an impromptu, game-of walk out to Fenway to take in a game by myself.

I’m really hoping that the high point of all those games won’t be singing “Sweet Caroline” in the eighth inning. That or booing the lackluster performance of an overpaid, under-lustered team.

The Internet goes black hole on Katie Bouman

I’m by no means a science buff. I keep a vague eye on breakthrough news, but I don’t live for it, and seldom get too excited about it. But it was hard last week not to get at least a tiny bit caught up in the first photograph of a black hole.

Not that I know all that much about black holes. If I thought about them, I’d probably be a little scaredy. (As a metaphor, however, it’s hard to come up with anything better, that’s for sure. So I use the term frequently.)

The best aspect of the photograph – other than the image itself – was that a woman scientist played a key role in making it possible.

There aren’t a lot of women scientists at Katie Bouman’s level. She got her PhD from MIT, has been doing a post-doc with the Event Horizon Telescope (which was set up 25 years ago to capture a picture of the black hole), and is about to start teaching at Cal Tech. So she’s got great credentials.

It was Bouman who was instrumental in creating the algorithm that let the Event Horizon Telescope to at long last capture the first image of black hole.

There is another iconic picture associated with this event, and that’s the picture of Katie Bouman’s reaction when she realized what had happened.

Who could resist?

Sweet-looking young nerd girl. MIT-CalTech wonk. STEM hero in the making.

As excitedly as the geek-Internet went gaga over the first photograph of the black hole, it began going nuts about Katie Bouman. The Internet being the Internet, all of a sudden, Twitter was full of effusive tweets that might lead one to believe that Bouman (who for the most part isn’t on social media) had sole responsibility for this breakthrough, rather than playing a critical role as one of many equally brilliant scientists associated with the project. Bouman herself immediately jumped in on Facebook and acknowledged this.

“No one algorithm or person made this image,” she wrote. “It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat.” (Source: The Atlantic)

There had been a bit of lightish pushback from Bouman’s colleagues on the project, pointing out that this was a joint effort. But the Internet being the Internet (and incels being incels), Katie Bouman just had to be smacked down. So:

…within hours, another strain of interpretation started metastasizing. Memes and videos across Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, and other platforms called Bouman a fraud and “debunked” her contributions to the discovery.

These were not “shared success” interpretations. They were “Katie Bouman had nothing to do with it” stories. Instead, “they” (“it”?) were claiming that one of her collaborators had written the algorithm.

The colleague, Andrew Chael, defended Bouman. None of the claims was true, he tweeted. “If you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away,” he added. It’s difficult to imagine internet sleuths digging for proof of dishonesty if the poster child of the black-hole discovery had looked like Chael. (Chael, in an interview with The Washington Post, called it “ironic” that his new fans chose him, a gay astronomer, as their hero.)

Well, good for Andrew Chael.

But the Internet being the Internet, things got even worse:

Dozens of accounts (some now deleted) appeared on Instagram and Twitter bearing Bouman’s name and picture. None of them, her colleagues said, was real.

These were, of course, take down accounts, promoting the take that Bouman was part of a politically correct, diversity conspiracy to deprive a (white) man of his rightful place.

Saying that she was part of a larger team doesn’t diminish her work, or minimize her involvement in what is already a history-making project. Highlighting the achievements of a brilliant, enthusiastic scientist does not diminish the contributions of the other 214 people who worked on the project, either. But what it is doing is showing a different model for a scientist than the one most of us grew up with. That might mean a lot to some kids — maybe kids who look like her — making them excited about studying the wonders of the Universe. (Source: The Verge)

Amen to that!

During my many years in the tech world, I worked with many brilliant software engineers. Most of them were men. The few female core systems software engineers were equally brilliant, but there weren’t all that many of them. (The two I can think of were both MIT grads. Yay, Massachusetts Institute of Technology!)

I don’t know what keeps women from entering STEM professions in better numbers. I mean, it’s been a couple of decades since Mattel’s Talking Barbie was bitching about how tough math is.

But it sure is a shame when the forces of the dark can’t stand any attention being paid to an accomplished woman computer scientist. These trolls should just go back to whatever hole they emerged from.

I’m guessing that Katie Bouman is going to have a truly kick-arse career. Which is a lot more than you can say for those trolls.