It's beginning to look too much like Christmas

It began at 12:01 a.m. on November 1st. All at once, the witches and goblins were out of the windows and off the shelves at CVS, replaced by dwarf-sized Santas, hideous offbrand toys, wrapping paper, cheezy decorations, and - but of course - all sorts of candy. Because just as every pop singer in the biz puts out a Christmas album, every candy-maker brings out special versions of their goodies for the holidays. Sometimes it's just a matter of packaging: those Hershey's Kisses in Santa caps are just Hershey's Kisses in Santa caps. But those Dove dark chocolate/peppermint chocolates wrapped like little gifts. Well, they are little gifts. Which is why Dove rolls them out for the holidays. And calls them Dove Gifts. And in between something-just-change-the-packaging and something-special-for-the-holidays come items like red and green M&M's.

It's not just CVS, of course.

My grocery store is well into the spirit of the season, already busting out the packages of lousy but festive looking cookies, fruit baskets, tiny little fir trees in the flower department.

I haven't been into Macy's - need to go basis only - but their all red lights Christmas tree has been glaring at me for a while.

The other day, I dropped into Home Goods, hoping that by chance they had a small orange cylindrical pillow that I wasn't able to find on Wayfair - despite their carrying something along the order of 14 million orange pillows. 

But, no. 

There were plenty of pillows, but they were all of the "Naughty or Nice," "Home for the Holidays", and "Here Comes Santa Claus" variety. 

I poked around a bit, and everywhere I looked, what to my wondering eyes did appear were all sorts of decorations. 

Santas in all shapes and sizes. Fake pointsettias. Red metal dump trucks - vintage (like me) late 40's - hauling Christmas trees. 

Christmas-themed cookware. Glassware. Serving dishes. Full sets of dishware. (It's not just Home Goods. Was it in Anthropologie that I saw Christmas spatulas and measuring spoons?)

Who needs all this crap?

I'm a good one to talk.

Each year, I bring out my Christmas platters and bowls. My Christmas pickle dish, the pitchers. I'm pretty eclectic in my tastes. I've got a few gorgeous pieces of Villeroy and Boch. Plenty of Spode. A number of Nicholas Mosse pottery pieces from Ireland - the reindeer theme. I've got coasters. Candle holders. A festive table cloth. 

And don't get me started on my decorations. I don't think I go overboard. But I've got nearly 200 ornaments, and all sorts of objets that I scatter around. 

Back at Home Goods, on Dasher, on Dancer! To the gift wrap, bows, ribbon, and boxes. The candies, the cookies, the red and green popcorn in 2 gallon tubs.

Did I leave empty handed? What do you think, I'm some sort of Scrooge or something?

I bought a couple of bags of Christmas-themed pasta before I could dashaway all.

It's not that I don't like Christmas.

I actually like putting my tree up and enjoy my annual visit with my ornaments. Some were on the tree at our house when I was growing up. A couple are from my grandmother. I have ornaments that were gifts, and many that I've picked up in my travels. 

I like hosting Christmas Eve for my family, especially running the Yankee Swap.

I love having the lights up on the Boston Common. If it has to be dark, cold, and winter, let there be lights! They now keep them up until the end of January, and I'm all for it.

But there is something wretchedly excessive about the entire commercial enterprise that is the holiday season, and the wretched excess is either getting worse every year, or my patience is just wearing thin. 

Anyway, I'm pretty much done my Christmas shopping, so I can absolutely stay out of the stores between now and Christmas. 

The day after, I will no doubt be buying next year's cards at half price, and picking up a roll or two of wrapping paper. 

Then I'll sit back and wait for the stores to drive me crazy with New Year's Eve, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, and Easter crap. 

Not that there's anything wrong with any one thing. It's just the overwhelming "wherever you look there's something holiday-related"-ness about it. 

There's really such a thing as it's beginning to look too much like Christmas.

70 is the new, ah, 70?

If you google “70 is the new…”, you’ll find that it’s the new 50. Or the new 60. Or, according to the government, the new 65. There’s even someone out there – completely misinformed, IMHO - who’s claiming that 70 is the new 40. As if…

I’ve only been 70 since yesterday, so it may be too soon to tell, but I do believe that 70 is actually the new, well, 70.

And that’s okay by me.

I must admit that I had been dreading this birthday.

No, I haven’t been feeling sorry for myself. Or been depressed. Still, there really aren’t many people who sit around thinking “I can’t wait to be old.” (Other than 9 year-olds who want to be 10.)

Because there’s no getting around the fact that 70 is old.

No, it’s not ancient. But any way you look at it, 70 is elderly, senior citizen, old.

Oh, I should still have some time left. Depending on which actuarial table I look at, I could live until 83.7, 85.6, or – yikes – 95. (That was a financial services company trying to scare me into thinking my money is going to run out.)

I’m told I don’t look 70. Whatever that means, I lap it up. Who wants to look 70? Whatever that means.

But if I don’t look 70 – which I most decidedly do not – it’s mostly due to a) people (especially young folk) not knowing what 70 looks like; b) still wearing jeans 90% of the time; and c) my having inherited my mother’s wrinkle-free skin. (This is aided by being a bit zaftig, which does seem to keep some wrinkles at bay. Take that, slenderellas!)

At 70, I’ve made it farther than any male in the past two generations of my family. My father died at the age of 58. His father was in his mid-forties. His only brother was 65.

On my mother’s side, her father died in his early 50’s. One of her brothers died at 52, the other at 45.

My mother lived to be 81, so I’ll probably make it that far. Her mother died at the age of 78, but her sister, my Aunt Mary, made it to 93 (fully with it and independent up until the last year of her life). All three had “eternal youth” skin, by the way.

My paternal grandmother was a month short of making it to 97, and several of her sibs made it well into their 90’s. My Aunt Margaret lived to be 85.
I’m likely here for a while, so why not be happy?

I’m healthy, financially secure, have a little interesting work and a lot of interesting volunteer activities. I have a wonderful family, most of them close by, and terrific friends. I have a very comfortable condo in a fancy-arse zip code.

Lucky me.

Still, I had been dreading the big 7-0 in a way that no earlier “marker” birthday gave me pause.

That is, I was dreading it until about 10 days ago.

That’s when I got the call from a friend’s wife letting me know that he’d just been diagnosed with ALS.

This fellow is not an especially close friend, but he’s a friend nonetheless. A vibrant, funny, brilliant, kind, generous, goofy man in his mid 60’s, on top of his game professionally, a regular marathoner, philanthropically engaged (and then some). He’s got a great family. And he’s one of the best men I’ve ever known in my life.

ALS.

Fuck, just fuck.

I had seen him a few week ago and thought he was a bit off. I asked him if he were okay and he said yes. A few days later, he got the diagnosis. They were hoping for Lyme Disease. No such luck.

I’ve seen him since the diagnosis and we didn’t talk about it. Business as usual, kidding around. Other than to say "fuck this" when I saw him. Which could have been about any number of things, especially things in the political realm, but it was of course about his diagnosis. He knows I know that he knows I know. But business as usual is the way he wants to keep it. I’ve spoken with some mutual friends, and we’re keeping our tears to ourselves and each other. The way our friend wants to keep it.

At some point, I will put my feelings in words and send him a letter. Not quite yet.

Everyone who knows this man is gut punched by the news.

I have spoken with his wife a couple of times since haring the diagnosis.

I don’t know her as well as I do her husband, but she is an equally wonderful person.

I also know one of their kids. A really great young man, a complete chip off the old block. When I saw him after learning about his father's ALS, we kept it business at usual. But I gave him a squeeze and he squeezed me back.

If his friends are gut punched, you can only imagine how his wife and kids feel.

ALS.

What a horror show.

My friend is unlikely to make it to 70.

What have I got to bitch about?

Hearing the news about my friend came on a Friday.

On Saturday, I got an email from an old friend. An old friend in both senses. We’ve known each other for nearly 40 years, having been work buddies back in the day. We kept up our friendship even after we no longer worked together. This past summer, she turned 90.

She has been failing for the past few years, never really having recovered from the death of her husband seven years back. It’s been a couple of years since she got out of the house for much other than doctors’ appointments, so when we’ve gotten together, it’s been at her place.

We’re a little Gang of Four – all having worked at the same place and stayed good friends – and when we have lunch, we (20 years her junior) bring the food. Some visits, we help her to bed after, she’s so tuckered out.
I called her a couple of weeks ago and she told me that she was tired and winding down.

We made a date for the Gang of Four to get together in mid-December, as her November calendar was wonderfully full of visits from her kids and grandkids.

Then she called me to tell me that she is now in home hospice, receiving family only. She no longer has the strength for a phone call, but she’s still able to look at emails and is hoping to hear from the Gang.

I called the other gang members and we all got sad together. She was a big part of all of our lives.

We all got an email from her son, who is with her to the end, managing visits and health issues and the housekeeper and the house. He will let us know when the end comes.

Meanwhile, I sent a longish email to my friend. Not overly long, as she is flagging, but highlighting a few remembrances of things past. Letting her know how much I have valued our friendship.

I got a brief and loving email back.

Over and out...

Her death is not tragic. It’s not like getting diagnosed with ALS in your 60’s. But it will be sad.

And the death of my ALS friend will be even sadder, as he’s probably not going to turn the 70 corner. (ALS patients typically last 3-5 years, but my friend has a more aggressive form of this rotten disease, and the prognosis is more dire in terms of “how long.”)

All things considered, turning 70 isn’t bad.

70 may be the new 70, but, hey, it beats the alternative.

This is my broken record holiday

I’ve said it before, and here’s one of the time’s I said it: Thanksgiving: My broken holiday record.

Actually, a better way to say it might be this is my broken record holiday: I always say and feel pretty much the same things.

Anyway, for today, I’ll ignore the things making life miserable and just wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all in need of a Happy Thanksgiving.

And just as most companies now give the day after Christmas as a holiday, Pink Slip will be taking Black Friday off.

I will NOT be shopping. (Been there, done that.)

But I might well be wrapping and addressing Christmas cards.

Downton, things will be great when you’re Downton

I resisted for the longest time.

Oh, yes, trusted cultural advisors – the kind who knew better than to recommend, say, Game of Thrones -  told me that I really should get with the program programme and start watching Downton Abbey.

Nevertheless, I resisted.

And then with the movie coming out, I decided that I needed to give it a look see.

Let the watching of the most high-tone soap opera in the history of broadcasting begin!

In the same way that men would say that the read Playboy for the articles, I would be lying if I said that I watched Downton for the costumes. But those costumes…

I am, of course, referring to the clothing worn by the upstairs folks – the Crawleys and their friends, relations, and non-friend/relation houseguests. (The downstairs brigade – maids, ladies’ maids, housekeeper, cook,cook’s helpers, butler, valet, first footman, second footman, chauffer – until he married up and got better things to wear - was outfitted in livery or drab.)

The clothing was ridiculously gorgeous. And, until the last season or two, the only one I ever saw wearing the same thing twice was Edith, the middle sister.

And there were an awful lot of changing of the clothing, given that you were more or less casual during the day – and the Crawleys idea of casual is, I assure you, not likely to be your idea of casual – and then dress for dinner. There’s a big breakthrough when Robert Crawley, Lord Grantham, started occasionally wearing black tie for dinner rather than white. Stuffed shirt all the way, but when black tie first appeared the reaction was what one might expect in a “no shirt/no shoes/no service” establishment if someone showed up in cutoffs and flipflops.

The women wear fabulous gowns to dinner, but, oddly, except for the grande dames over 60, all of those fabulous gowns are sleeveless. And no one wears a shawl. But we see nary a goosepimple on any of those arms, even though we all know that a pile like Downton – 300 rooms 100,000 square feet – was going to be downright chilly, even in the three-minute dead of a Yorkshire summer.

I don’t care how roarin’ the roarin’ fire was, there is no way to take the chill out of that place, unless you’re sitting in the hearth.

Not that I’ve spent a lot of time in great houses.

But for starters, I do live in a old house. Drafty and poorly insulated are the operative words attached to all that charm.

And I did spend a night or two hosteling in Scotland in what had been a great house that had fallen so low that it had become a youth hostel. In its fall from your grace, this mansion had been an RAF officer barracks during World War II, and the names of the officers were still stenciled on their doors. (Wonder how many of those poor boys survived.)

You never warm up in one of those places.

Aside from the clothing, what’s not to like – except some of the ludicrous plotlines.

Did they really have to haul out – and then drop without much resolution – the heir to Downton cousin who’d survived the Titanic only to show up as a burnt-beyond-recognition survivor of the World War I trenches, suffering from intermittent amnesia. This little plot hiccup would have made more sense if they’d at least given the fellow an upper crust British accent. But, no, they had to claim that he’d lost his accent because he’d spent a few years in Canada. Huh?

Then there’s the age-old beautiful young daughter who marries the chauffer plot twist.

Of course the chauffer was a dashing Irishman who was a political rebel, not just any old chauffer. (Or Irishman.)

I will cut this character, Tom, a lot of slack, as he was one of the few male characters I found in the least appealing.

The only other one I really liked was Edith’s lover, Michael Gregson. Who, of course, was married – a la the Paul Henreid character in Now Voyager – to a madwoman who he could never, ever in a million years divorce. Until he could, but that meant moving temporarily to Germany, where poor Michael Gregson was beaten to death by Nazi brown shirts just about the time of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch.

I was also rather fond of the man Edith eventually marries, Bertie Pelham.

Admittedly, I probably liked Edith’s men because I liked Edith, who once the beauteous Sybil – she of the marriage to the Irish chauffer – died in childbirth, became the kind, generous, spunky sister who forged a career for herself as a writer and magazine editor. (And yes, I did cry when Sybil died.)

Edith who, compared to her sisters Sybil and Mary, was a plain Jane, was the perfect foil for her gorgeous bitch of a sister Mary. I almost cheered when, late in the game, Edith called Mary out – supported by the Irish chauffer widower/brother-in-law who was so closely embraced by the Crawley can. (As if.)

Anyway, I found most of the upstairs men to be unattractive fops. But maybe that’s just downstairs me. (For the record, my great-grandfather Matthew Trainor was a stable boy at the Anglo-Irish big house in his village in Ireland. At least one of my Irish great-grandmothers was a maid when she came to the States. And my German grandmother, as a new immigrant, cleaned houses so the family could pull the money together to open a butcher shop. No question which end of the spectrum I would have been on.)

I did enjoy the Dowager mother, played by Maggie Smith, and her growing friendship with Mrs. Crawley – not to be confused with Lady Grantham (an American Lord Grantham married for her money) who was also a Mrs. Crawley if the high-faluters went by such a pedestrian name. I liked Lord Grantham’s sister, and watching Shirley Maclaine chew the scenery as Lady Grantham’s mother was a hoot.

But so many of the upstairs people were just plain odious.

Not that I was in love with all the downstairs folks, either. But most of the servants I liked well enough, especially the women. Mrs. Patmore, the cook. Daisy, her assistant. Mrs. Hughes, the housekeeper. Mrs. Baxter, a lady’s maid.

(For the record, I found Mr. and Mrs. Bates boring, even if they were both falsely-accused jailbirds.)

Anyway, when the last episode of the last season rolled around, I was sad to see Downton Abbey go.

I haven’t seen the Downton movie yet. Too busy watching season three of The Crown.

Rule Britannia soap operas!

Coal mining 101? Talk about the mind being a terrible thing to waste.

The title of the article says it all:

Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining

A career training center in Pennsylvania coal country offers over 100 courses. Federally-funded, so the price is right.

But when one fellow thumbed through the virtual course catalogue, there was only one that caught his eye: coal mining.

"I think there is a coal comeback,” said the 33-year-old son of a miner. (Source: Reuters)

Unfortunately, Mike Sylvester has been misinformed. By none other than the misinformer-in-chief.

"I have a lot of faith in President Trump," Sylvester said.

It is true that, since Trump took office, employment in coal mines has nudged up by a couple of thousand jobs. But these may be wiped out by coal industry bankruptcies and the continued decline in the number of power plants fueled by coal. (Renewables now account for the same percentage of electricity generated as does coal.) The stark truth is that at its peak, the coal industry employed 1 million miners. Today, it employees about 50,000.

Even a president hell-bent on rolling back any environmental regulations that peskily get in the way of us being able to grab lung-fulls of coal-infused air can’t hold back the tide that’s running against coal.

Still, in areas where there are still ample coal reserves – enough coal reserves to give people a glimmer of hope that coal with make a comeback - folks aren’t jumping into training programs, which are way undersubscribed.

Not that retraining will necessarily turn into new opportunities.

What many experts call false hopes for a coal resurgence have mired economic development efforts here in a catch-22: Coal miners are resisting retraining without ready jobs from new industries, but new companies are unlikely to move here without a trained workforce. The stalled diversification push leaves some of the nation's poorest areas with no clear path to prosperity.

One might well ask why the government is even offering courses in coal mining. It sounds so, well, buggy whip. Or teaching people how to operate a switchboard.

Well, the program the Mike Sylvester is interested in was set up by a company that’s looking for temporary “contract laborers” (for a whopping $13/hour) to help with a slight uptick in foreign demand, which some have described “as a temporary blip driven by production problems in the coal hub of Australia.”

Anyway, those who want to mine coal – even for $13/hour – want to mine coal.

In one coal country county, not even jobs in adjacent fields hold much appeal:

Not a single worker has enrolled in another program launched this summer to prepare ex-miners to work in the natural gas sector, officials said.

The economic development people often hope that a big company – think Amazon, with a distribution center – will save them.

But even if Amazon comes to the rescue, how long before most of those (ill-paid, backbreaking) distribution center jobs are automated out of existence?

Mike Sylvester isn’t the only coal miner wannabe out there.

Sean Moodie and his brother Steve spent the last two years working in the natural gas industry, but see coal as a good bet in the current political climate.

“I am optimistic that you can make a good career out of coal for the next 50 years,” said Sean Moodie.

Coal jobs are preferable to those in natural gas, they said, because the mines are close to home, while pipeline work requires travel. Like Sylvester, the Moodie brothers are taking mining courses.

We never seem to be able to have an adult conversation about the nature of work, and what people are going to do for work moving forward, when more and more old-school jobs are no longer needed and where every process that possibly can be automated will be.

I feel plenty of sympathy for those who want to stay close to home, who want to work at the jobs their families have worked at for generations. It’s hard – even in your thirties – to rethink your future and take a clear-eyed look at reality. But if folks just refuse to accept reality, if they’d rather listen to the snake oil salesman promising a cure-all elixir, rather than some scold telling them not to waste their money on snake oil, well, it’s hard to keep that sympathy going.

A pink slip from your own mother? Oh, Prince Andrew…

My husband had relatives who ran a family business – 3 generations (and multiple branches) worth, at one point – so I understand that working en famille can be fraught with all sorts of fraughty things. And it’s got to be even worse when everything your family does is out in the public. Let alone when everything your family does is paid for by the public. Let alone when you yourself have led a somewhat feckless and dissolute life – feckless and dissolute even by the standards of the British Royal Family.

As is the case of Prince Andrew, Duke of York whose lost a cushy gig cutting ribbons, showing up for exhibitions, and doing whatever else “full-time working members” of the royal family do. As gigs go, Prince Andrew’s was pretty good. He was paid quite a bit – plus travel and expenses - with no heavy lifting in return.

It was a job – the only one he’s held in the nearly 20 years since he left the Royal Navy - that gave him plenty of time to swan around with charmers like Jeffrey Epstein. And maybe even – as is alleged – plenty of time to do something a bit more than swan around with some of the teenage girls that Epstein specialized in exploiting.

The precipitating event that prompted Queen Elizabeth to give the royal pink slip to her second son was an interview Andrew did with .the BBC in which he attempted to explain away his relationship with Epstein.

It was pretty much a fiasco.

There was his failure to show much sympathy for the Epstein’s victims.

He said that he’d stayed at Epstein’s place in New York, even after Epstein had done time as a convicted sex offender, because it was “convenient.” And, I’m sure, the price was right.

Andrew also gave a laughable – even if it is true – explanation of why a woman who claims to have had Epstein-forced sex with Andrew on three occasions is not being truthful. Among other things, Virginia Giuffre has said that Andrew was a sweaty dancer.

Tut, tut, saith the prince. It couldn’t possibly be moi. Not that royals don’t sweat. It’s that Andrew has a condition, stemming from his war action in the Falklands, that prevents him from sweating.

Andrew was allowed to say that it’s his choice to withdraw from royal duties, but the decision was the Queen’s, with a big boost from Andrew’s older brother, who told their mother that Andrew’s behavior was putting a serious hurt on the monarchy. (Oh, not that…)

Off with his head! Or his income, at any rate.

The cut off will be painful.

The prince's access to public money to fund travel and expenses will end.

For example, a three-day visit to Bahrain by the prince on behalf of the UK government in April 2018 cost £16,272, paid for by the taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant.

The Sovereign Grant is public money which pays for the cost of official royal in exchange for the surrender by the Queen of the revenue from the Crown Estate. (Source: BBC)

And many of the organizations that Andrew has been associated with are pulling back. No one, it seems, wants Prince Andrew’s name and style on their letterhead.

It’s not just Andrew who’s losing out. Andrew has tried to put his daughters – Beatrice and Eugenie – on something closer to the economic footing that William and Harry (who are much closer in the line of succession) enjoy. If anything, the girls may find their paid appearances pared down. And there may not be much appetite for paying a $2M bill for Beatrice’s upcoming wedding, which they did for Eugenie.

Bet that’s not gong down all that well with Bea.

Although Andrew’s financial wings have been clipped, he does have a little something to fall back on: his allowance. 

There is also an annual payment to the prince from the Privy Purse - the Queen's private income - recorded in 2011 as being £249,000.

A princely enough sum for most people, but one which precludes pricey trips to Bahrain.

Asked about whether this funding would continue, Buckingham Palace said only that the Duke of York's office was funded privately by the Queen.

And he’s not being kicked out of his free housing, either.

Freed up from royal duties, Andrew will have more time to devote to legal matters.

Lawyers for Epstein's victims have urged the prince to speak to US police.

Andrew’s getting a lot of advice here about whether to go voluntarily or wait to be called. I did read somewhere that his personal lawyer has warned him to stay out of the United States for the rest of his life.

Even if there’s no criminal actions against him, it’s easy to imagine a victim getting a civil judgement that would entitle them to a few coins from Andrew’s Privy Purse allowance.

In case you’re worried that we won’t be hearing any more from Prince Andrew, “it will not be a complete retirement” for him.

It is understood the prince will continue to support his entrepreneur programme, Pitch@Palace, although it will take place separately from the palace.

So he’ll need a new brand. Pitch@BackseatOfMyBentley?

Prince Andrew's attendance at Royal Family engagements, such as the Trooping of the Colour, Remembrance Sunday or Christmas at the family's estate in Sandringham, Norfolk, is not thought to be affected.

Mostly, however, “his public life is over.”

And the monarchy is shaken.

Yeah, well, shaken but maybe not stirred to do much about real reform.

Andrew’s parents – Elizabeth (93) and Philip (98) – have both lived to great old age, so Andrew, who’s just 59, could have a good few decades in front of him.

But is he employable? Forget about age discrimination. How many jobs are there for someone who was a royal glad-hander? With atrocious judgement.

Poor Andrew may need to get by on his allowance. Or maybe he could sell his story to a tabloid. Wouldn’t that just make the royals crazy…

WeWork? Not much longer for about 4,000 WeWorkers

Back in the day, nearly 20 years ago, I worked for an Internet Services Provider named Genuity. I was there when we had our IPO which, at the time, was considered one of the all-time champeen failed IPO’s in history.

It didn’t even go out the door at the initial offering price, and it was all downhill from there.

This was in the heady early Internet days, and fortunes were being made. Or, in the case of Genuity, lost.

I had gambled a bit and purchased 1,000 shares in advance, for a total of $11K.

I had decided going in that $11K was an amount I was willing to lose. Good thing. By the time six months rolled around, and I could now sell those shares, the price was approaching zero. At least I got the capital losses…

But I was one of the lucky ones. I had plenty of colleagues who’d invested quite a bit, not wanted to miss out on a golden opportunity. In the days leading up to the insider purchase date, I saw people faxing info to their banks taking out second mortgages. I knew people who were taking their kids’ colleges funds and investing them in Genuity shares. Colleagues were inviting friends and family to get in on the friends and family deal.

One couple I knew – both husband and wife worked for Genuity – put in the max allowed. (It might have been the equivalent of your salary – something like that.) They’d missed out earlier on the opportunity to get in on AOL’s friends and family offering. They weren’t going to lose out again.

On IPO day, the halls were full of stricken faces.

The folks who had refused to put any money in tried not to gloat. Those who’d lost big tried (sometimes unsuccessfully) not to weep.

One of my friends just shrugged. “My father-in-law didn’t like me to begin with…”

The company had planned a celebration in our courtyard – pricey appetizers and champagne, plus goody boxes that contained a polo shirt, a fleece, a camera to take pictures of the great event, noisemakers, and – oddly enough – a nylon foolscap.

There was, of course, precious little to celebrate, but everyone wanted to make sure that at least they walked away with a goody box.

Unfortunately, there weren’t enough to go around, and people who may have just lost $100K or more got a bit out of control. They charged the barricades – tables behind which the goody boxes were stacked – and started hurling goody boxes out to their friends while the young women of marketing tried in vain to defend.

It got pretty ugly, and reminded me a bit of the last copter taking off from the roof of the US Embassy the day Saigon fell.

My comment was that there weren’t enough office supplies in the place to make good on the losses that people had taken. There’s only so many staplers and post-it notes you can walk off with…

I can’t remember when the layoffs began. I actually think we may have lasted a year before the company really began teetering. But teeter it did, and eventually topple. I spent my last year there making out quarterly layoff lists for my group until I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked to be put on a list myself.

WeWork didn’t even manage to pull their IPO off.

Last winter they were a high-flyer, valued by Pitchbook at a cool $47B. Then the company went into a self-inflicted cum market reality catching up with them swoon, only to be bailed out by Softbank for a not-quite-so-cool $9.5B.

And now the company – which was primarily involved in shared office space for startups and individuals – is laying employees off.

Starting this week, and moving on in through the holidays, WeWork will be shedding 4,000 employees – about one-third of their workforce – “through a combination of layoffs, divestitures of the company’s ancillary businesses or through transfers to a contractor.”

WeWork Executive Chairman Marcelo Claure told employees that layoffs would begin this week, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post. Claure said the layoffs would be “difficult” but necessary to create a “more efficient, more focused and even more customer-centric organization.” (Source: Washington Post)

In other words, even with the cash infusion from Softbank, we’re running out of money and have to let a ton of folks go.

The company had, of course, gotten a little ahead of its skis by hiring so many people to begin with. They focused on go-go growth, rather than figuring out the boring stuff. Like how to turn a profit.

So the pink slips will be flying.

Double whammy for those who’ll be losing their jobs.

First, they’re losing their jobs, and even if this turns out to be for the best – which most of the time it does – it’s still tough to be shown the door. Loss of pay, loss of purpose, loss of routine, loss of the social aspects of work. Never easy.

But the fact that it’s coming on the heels of the loss of fantasy money makes matters worse. Because I can guarantee you that an awful lot of employees had the money they were going to make on that IPO already spent. It was going to buy a car. Or a down payment on a condo. Pay off tuition loans. Pay for a wedding. It was going to be socked away for a rainy day, or to build up the new baby’s college fund.

For more senior employees, the IPO would have been worth a lot more. Vacation home. Start a business. Trip around the world. Twice. Early retirement…

It’s never easy to lose your job, but this time of year – it’s dark, it’s cold, there’s all this holiday cheer going on – it’s especially bad.

Good luck to the WeWorkers. Better luck next job.

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

Here’s an earlier Pink Slip take on WeWork.

Those who can, do

I’ve never really liked the saying “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

Teaching in itself is something that people “do”. And not everyone who wants to teach actually can teach. When we encounter someone who’s a great teacher, we know it right away. And it’s a thing of beauty to behold.

Whether I like the saying or not, it sure came to mind when I read about University of Miami professor Bruce Bagley, an export on crime in the Latin America. Turns out, he was putting what he’d learned into action:

…laundering at least $3 million in dirty Venezuelan money through his own U.S. bank accounts and keeping about $300,000 as a fee for himself. (Source: Miami Herald)

Both doing and teaching, as it were.

In a story that sounds straight out of a Carl Hiaasen (who specializes in crime novels set in Florida, and populated with all sorts of eccentric characters and wild situations), Bagley set up bank accounts for South American no-gooders.

State records show he had operated “Bagley Consultants,” along with his wife, Annette Bagley.

According to a federal indictment, Bagley in November 2016 opened up an account at a bank in Weston in the company name. State corporate records show the company was dissolved some time in the following year.

But the account remained open, going little used until about November 2017, when he began receiving monthly deposits of “hundreds of thousands of dollars from bank accounts located in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates,” according to the indictment.

The deposits came from two companies not named in the indictment…Their accounts were controlled by someone described in court papers only as a “Colombian individual.”

Swiss banks? UAE? “Colombian individual.” Nothing to see here. Move along, folks.

According to the feds, once the deposits were made, Bagley would get a cashier’s check for 90%, made payable to an unnamed person.

The individual and the professor discussed they were moving the money on behalf of the Colombian and that “the funds represented the proceeds from foreign bribery and embezzlement stolen from the Venezuelan people.”

Bagley, as it turns out, had written the book on the topic of bad actors: Drug Trafficking, Organized Crime, and Violence in the Americas Today. Guess he just couldn’t resist turning what he’d written into action. Guess he didn’t read (or write) the fine print.

Bagley is facing some serious time. He’s 73, so 20 years x 2 (or even x 1) would effectively be life in the stir.

The University has placed him on administrative leave.

And presumably, his life as an expert – commenting in top tier papers like the New York Times and Washington Post, acting as an expert witness – has come to a screeching halt.

As an expert witness, he hasn’t always appeared on the side of the angels:

In October, Bagley took the stand as an expert witness for the defense at a major drug-trafficking trial in Miami federal court. The trial featured a Colombian syndicate accused of conspiring to ship 20 tons of cocaine into the United States.

Teaching, Punditing. Experting. Conferencing.

And he threw this all over for a piddling $300K?

Maybe he was looking at his 401K and found he needed to sock away a bit more to ensure a more comfortable retirement for himself and Annette. Maybe he’s just greedy. Maybe the money was just too easy. Maybe writing about all that illegal money flowing to the bad guys was so frustrating, he felt the overwhelming need to wet his beak. As they say in wise-guy speak. 

The feds have had their eye on him for a while now – maybe they read the book – and last February caught him in a sting, sending nearly a quarter of a mil to his accounts, and telling him:

…the money came from corrupt sources in Venezuela, and watch[in]g as he happily accepted the cash. (Source: Miami New Times)

Bagley’s lawyers’ fees will likely exceed whatever he made through his money laundering. (Of course, he could have been doing this for years and have a lot more squirreled away that the feds haven’t found. Yet.)

Bet he’s wishing that he’d stuck to teaching instead of doing.

Meanwhile, there’s another bizarre rogue professor story making the rounds. This one is about a couple of chemists at a university in Arkansas who’ve been nabbed for running an on-campus meth lab.

Straight out of Breaking Bad.

Life imitating art.

Bet those fellows wish they’d stuck to teaching, too.

Talk about a job from hell

Last Friday, a woman sitting in front of us at the Elton John concert spent the entire concert with her nose in her smartphone, checking in on Facebook and Instagram. She kept going back to the same picture – a long distance shot of the stage – comparing and contrasting hers to those that her friends at the concert were also posting. What a waste of a ticket.

This woman was no kid. Not as old as I am, but certainly 50ish. So no “she grew up with social media” excuse.

How about enjoying the concert and grabbing pictures and videos afterward, posted by someone with a better vantage point.

But, no. It has to be in the moment (which means you can’t enjoy the moment), and it has to be mine, all mine.

I just don’t get it.

With a few exceptions, I can take or leave social media.

Obviously, I’m a blogger. But by social media standards, blogging – long form blogging, which I do – is the rotary dial phone of social media. Strictly for the olds who have nothing better to do than write stuff and read stuff. TLDR territory.

Not that I am totally social media avoidant. While I rarely post anything, I am a dedicated follower on Twitter, where I mostly keep up with breaking news. Occasionally, I respond to a tweet, and had a little thrill the other day when I responded to a tweet from writer/pundit Charlie Pierce and he responded to my response. Be still my twittering heart! (Charlie is a Worcester native, and his post was about diners.)

I do have a Facebook presence – not under my full name – which I set up solely for the purpose of being able to post and answer information requests on the FB page of a non-profit I volunteer for.

Admittedly, to an entirely non-social-media person, I probably sound like a social media maven. But, truly, I’m so not a social media person. I don’t feel I need to record every stray thought I’ve had in real time. Let alone share with the world a picture of myself wherever I am, whenever the urge to share hits.

So even if I lived in Manhattan, the last job on the face of the earth that I’d apply for is one that recently appeared on Craigslist.

Social Media Photographer/ Coordinator and Mother’s Helper (Upper East Side)

Manhattan family looking for a photographer to work with them on a regular basis as their Social Media Coordinator, either FT or PT. This person MUST have advanced knowledge of of Photoshop and Lightroom, have experience working with/shooting young children/families and be comfortable acting as Mother’s Helper on days when not shooting/editing. This person should also have experience in fashion photography and be internet/IG savvy.

Compensation will be hourly or daily rate.

Please do not apply if you do not have the required photo editing experience. Thank you

Where to begin…

Okay. Here’s where to begin.

I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ no babies, but if I were looking for a mother’s helper, I don’t think I’d be looking on Craigslist. Maybe it was seeing the Craigslist Killer movie, or that it took place in Boston. But I think that if I were looking for a mother’s helper, I’d ask my friends and/or trusted daycare provider and/or local college with an early childhood education major. Or something.

My second thought after wondering who’d go looking for a mother’s helper on Craigslist was are Ivanka and Jared moving back to New York?

My third thought was who needs a FT social media co-ordinator for their family? I would think that even someone as brand-conscious and media-pushy as Ivanka wouldn’t need someone fulltime to promote how fashion forward her children are, how perfectly posed her life is.

This leads me to believe that this job is mostly mother’s helper, with an extra layer of responsibility for chronicling the more attractive aspects of the job.

You get to change the poopy diapers and Insta up a cutie-pie snap of bébé, rosy-cheeked in their $500 snowsuit and mini-Uggs. Or whatever the boot du jour is. You get to nag the kids into doing their homework – or do it for them – and picture and post them making Martha Stewart cupcakes. And for the holidays, hoo-boy. Help mother with her list, do the ultra-perfect wrapping, then post the family around their professionally-decorated tree, pretending that the kids are allowed to get anywhere near it.

Can you imagine anything worse than playing mother’s helper to a woman who is likely a mega-narcissist, a crazed perfectionist, a superficial beeyotch who treats her children like props? (Bet she’s an influencer, too.)

A tip for anyone applying for this choice position – a position that would have Mary Poppins prodding someone’s bum with her umbrella, or conking them over the head with it: go for the hourly, rather than the daily rate. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that those days might be really lllooonnnggg…

Folks commenting on this posting – which I saw on Twitter, source now lost – noted that this would be an excellent job for a would-be writer who’d be able to get a novel or a true life “horrors of the Upper East Side” book out of it.

Would even that make it worth it?

Altogether sounds like a complete and utter job from hell.

1-2-3-4 Sky Bar

The Sky Bar was never my favorite.

The caramel piece was pretty good. Peanut was okay – sort of like a Reese’s. But the vanilla was bland. And the fudge piece? Yuck. More like Ex-Lax than fudge.

Still, I had a few over time, and it was nice to have an easily sharable candy bar. Especially if you had a friend who actually liked the fudge piece. You could be generous without having it cost you anything. (Sort of like offering up the green Chuckle.)

Still, the Sky Bar was one of my remembrance of things past boo-hoos when the New England Confectionery Company closed up shop last year.

Necco Wafers were picked up by the company that makes those ghastly orange circus peanuts of all things. Talk about a marriage made in heaven! That company also took the Sweethearts candy hearts, which are fun and definitely useful as cupcake decoration for Valentine’s Day.

Other New England Confectionery confections were saved by candy companies.

But where did the Sky Bar land?

Well, in case you were wondering:

Sky Bar became the property of Louise Mawhinney, a former biotech executive originally from Scotland who runs an eclectic gourmet gift shop called Duck Soup in Sudbury, Mass. She had never made candy before, but a customer told her about the auction and she just couldn’t let Sky Bar disappear. (Source: Boston Globe)

Running a gourmet gift shop would be enough of a great second career for someone who’d been a biotech CFO. But becoming a candy maker? You go, Louise!

"I didn't realize it was my dream," she says. "The whole thing about it is it's just 100 percent fun."

Which I’m guessing wasn’t quite what she got out of being a CFO, which I can imagine would, at best, come in at 80-90 percent fun.

Anyway, Mawhinney went all in on the Sky Bar and are now figuring out how to ramp up production to accommodate a growing number of distributors.

Ramping up isn’t all that simple, especially given that the Sky Bar is pretty complex, by candy bar standards, as “segmented candy bars with different fillings are rarities.” One of the few out there has been defunct for 40 years. And:

Cadbury's limited-edition Spectacular 7, introduced in 2015, was very limited indeed. Just 50 were made, and the only way to get one was to win it on Twitter.

While Mawhinney had acquired the Sky Bar brand, she had to take a pass on the equipment, which was way old and too big to fit in her manufacturing space. So she had to invest in new equipment. Then she brought in Necco VP of R&D Jeff Green to help make sure she got things right. That including taking a look through all the old Sky Bar recipes – which Mawhinney had acquired – and picking the best. Apparently that was a formula used in the 1970s, which was well past my Sky Bar consuming days.

Interestingly, they’re using local ingredients for the fillings where they can. So Teddie Peanut Butter – that would be my peanut butter brand of choice – is used for the peanut filling, and marshmallow Fluff for the vanilla. So:

Sky Bar, the only Necco product still made in Massachusetts, is now more of a local product than ever.

Yay!

There is some concern about who the Sky Bar fan base is. Which is old geezers getting older. There was a one suggestion that might appeal to the younger folks, while also resonating okay with boomers increasingly coping with aches and pains:

Someone suggested making a CBD-infused version called the Sky High Bar, but Mawhinney nixed the idea.

She may have to rethink that one. It might bother the purists, but it sure would give the brand an overall boost.

Anyway, the writer of the Globe article did a taste test on the new and improved Sky Bar:

The chocolate is so much better than the waxy coating on the last Sky Bar I ate, which was the last Sky Bar I thought I’d ever eat. The caramel is silky smooth. It raises no alarms and merits no particular praise, which tells me it must be pretty darn close to the original, my favorite of the old Sky Bar fillings. The vanilla is sweet and lightly gritty, a little like a glaze you might make from confectioners’ sugar, only thicker. (For me it was always the weakest link, and I’m not changing my mind.) Then the peanut, which turns out to be the tour de force. I didn’t like the old version much. This new filling tastes like actual roasted peanuts. It’s excellent. And, for the finish, the fudge, which is like a squishier version of the shell that contains it.

But the new version sounds pretty good.I may have to give it a whirl. Maybe I’ll order a batch to give out on Christmas Eve.

Until then, 1-2-3-4 Sky Bar, a jingle from a TV ad from way back in the day, is at the moment pinballing around in my brain.

I guess that’s why they call it the blues

Last Friday, I went and saw Elton John’s Farewell Tour stop in Boston. The concert was predictably wonderful. Elton John is a brilliant performer with a brilliant catalog that has stood the test of time. His backup band is terrific, and the graphics/video that accompanied the show were varied and interesting. With the exception of a band-only piece, when he did a quick costumer change, Elton John was on stage without stop for over 2 hours, hard physical work for anyone, let alone someone in his 70’s.

But Elton thrives on the crowd energy, and he was born to perform live.

Anyway, I don’t know what prompted me to get tickets for this concert. It’s not as if I’m some sort of die-hard Elton groupie.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always enjoyed his music. I may even have a greatest collection CD around here somewhere. (Would I have filed it under “E” or “J”?) But I’ve never been a fan fan.

Maybe it was turning 70 that got me to thinking that seeing Elton John in concert would be nice. It was.

We do go back a ways, Elton and I.

“Your Song” – still a fave – was released in late October of 1970, a few weeks before my father was hospitalized for the final time.

Back then, in those pre-hospice days, if you had a long terminal illness – my father died after suffering through years of progressive kidney disease – they let you stay in the hospital for extended periods of time.

Anyway, between late November 1970 and late January 1971, I spent a fair amount of time in the family car, with the radio on.

I was in college in Boston, which is where my father was hospitalized. During this period, my mother stayed with my aunt and uncle in West Newton, and, weekdays, my cousin Barbara – then a young mother with 2 pre-schoolers – lived in Worcester to take care of my younger brother (15) and sister (11). On Fridays, I went out to Worcester for the weekend shift.

And so it went, with me running errands and chauffering “the kids” in our balky, bottle green Ford Galaxy (a.k.a., The Green Hornet, which had replaced Black Beauty. For a while there, we named our cars.) With the radio on.

So I heard a lot of “Your Song.” The other two songs that always seemed to be playing were Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” and James Taylors “Fire and Rain.” Or was it “Sweet Baby James”?

I remember so much, but not everything.

In any case, Elton John, Gordon Lightfoot, and James Taylor are indelibly associated with the dying and death of my father.

Most of my Elton John recollections aren’t so gloomy.

I took an aerobics class that used “I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues” as the cooldown. It was all I could do at the concert to not fling my arms out the way we did 30+ years ago in my Jackie Sorensen class.

And if there’s a better tune for rolling down the windows and hollering along with than “Crocodile Rock,” I don’t know what that tune might be.

So many classics. “Rocket Man.” “Tiny Dancer,” “Daniel”

On our way over to the concert, my sister Trish and I were chatting about Elton John songs we really liked. When we got to “Daniel”, Trish told me that it held special meaning for her. “Daniel” came out in 1973, just about the time I took off on a 5 month trek around Europe. Trish, who is 10 years my junior, told me that, whenever she heard “Daniel” played – it’s a song sung about an older brother – she thought about me, somewhere in Europe, having an adventure.

Then there’s “Candle in the Wind.”

My husband and I were in Ireland shortly after Princess Diana died, and the Diana-version of “Candle” was on the radio everywhere. In one pub, the barman had had enough of the sappy British monarchy worship, and snapped off the radio when the song started. Still, it’s a beautiful song. (And, yes, the original Norma Jean version is still the greatest.)

All of my favorites, which also happen to be everyone else’s favorites, were all performed, interspersed with songs that were lesser known to me but which true Elton John fans would know.

Anyway, the concert brought me back, and in a good way.

Last Friday would have been the 70th birthday of my old and dear friend Marie, who died a couple of months after my husband did, in 2014.

I have no idea whatsoever whether she liked Elton John or not.

For some reason, although we talked about everything under the sun, I don’t remember ever talking about music with her. We must have at some point. We were high school friends when the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan. So we must have.

The only concert I remember her ever mentioning was Arrowsmith, but I’m guessing that Arrowsmith was more her husband’s thing that it was Marie’s.

Another music discussion: when Marie’s son Chris was a toddler, he was fixated for a while on a song about Big Bird on a Sesame Street Album. I was visiting, and Chris was sitting there on the floor with his little record player, bringing the needle again and again to the Big Bird Song.

At asked Marie whether it was driving her nuts (as it was me), and she just shrugged. “Don’t you have a favorite song on an album that you play over and over again.”

She was right, of course.

I am hurtling down the Mass Pike in The Green Hornet, heading back to Worcester. It’s another caretaking weekend. Are Trish and Rick in the car with me, or am I flying solo?

All I know is that they’re playing “Your Song.” And I’m singing along:

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind
That I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

“Your Song” is not, actually, my song. That would be “Sweet Baby James.” After all, how many songs mention my birthday? (“The first of December was covered with snow.”) Bonus points for singing about a James – my husband’s name – and for being on the turnpike driving into Boston.

The concert was great. It brought me back in a good way. Just a little bittersweet.

Thinking about my father.

Thinking about Marie.

Thinking about turning 70.

I guess that’s why they call it the blues…

Wicked good slang? Uff da to that.

I am always a sucker for a list, and one promising to reveal the “most popular” slang in each state was pure, unadulterated click bait.

Of course, I knew even without clicking through the first 20 states that “wicked” would be the slang term for the august Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

As slang words go, wicked – a modifier that more or less stands in for “very” - is just fine. And it certainly is associated with our fair state. But – and maybe this is the company I keep – the only time I hear it used is in movies that are set in Boston – some of which, admittedly, are wicked good. That and when people are making fun of people who use the word wicked as a modifier. As in wicked awesome, wicked pissah, wicked smaht. 

I also see wicked (pissah/smaht) on tee-shirts that street vendors sell.

But actually hear it in a conversation that Ben Affleck or Denis Leary, playing some Southie tough, isn’t part of? Nah…

Rhode Island’s slang word is “packy”, which would have done for Massachusetts as well. And is actually a word that everyone I know has used at some time or another. (For those who don’t speak New England, a packy is a package (liquor) store. If you’re lucky, there’s a wicked awesome packy on your corner.)

Or they could have gone with “youse”, which is attributed to Pennsylvania, but could just as easily been used for Massachusetts (or Rhode Island).

Connecticut’s word is “apizza” (pronunced “abeets”), which is their way of saying pizza or pizza joint. I have never heard this one before, but I’ve got to wonder. I don’t remember a movie called Mystic Abeets, do you. My cousin MB, who lived for many years in Connecticut before regaining her senses and moving back to Massachusetts, is at present in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on a cruise ship. I will have to check with her.

Another New England slang word I’d never heard is “XYZ”, which in New Hampshire means “eXamine Your Zipper.” In other words, “close the barn door.”

In Vermont, a “dink” is an “idiot”. I haven’t heard that word in years – decades even – but back in the day, it was not uncommon to call an idiot a dink in these parts.

Maine’s most popular slang word is “ayuh.” As with “wicked”, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the word “ayuh” (think “yup”), other than in a movie portraying Mainers or when making fun of/pretending to be a Mainer. But in real life? Nah…

Some of the slang words on the list don’t seem particular to any particular state.

Something that’s great in California is “the bomb”. But isn’t that used pretty much everywhere?

Folks in Kansas who spend too much time at the packy “get loaded”, as they do here as well.

New Yorkers say “deadass” for “really” or “seriously,” which folks in these parts have been known to say. But New York is right next door, so…(We are more likely to say that someone is a “grownass” man or woman, which is a variation on a theme.)

“No see ums” are teeny-tiny bugs, whether you’re in Florida or anywhere else, no? Maybe there are just a lot more of them if Florida.

And “snowbirds” are Northerners fleeing to the South for the winter, to Arizona or anyplace else that’s warm. But it’s listed as Arizona slang.

Other terms were new to me. I like that someone in Arkansas who’s impatient is “bowed up.” If you’re laughing really hard in Delaware, you’re “bagging up.” “Spendy” is Oregonian for expensive. I may adopt that one.

A party before a function is a “pre-funk” in the state of Washington. Good one!

I kind of got a kick out of folks in Illinois referring to Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive as “LSD”. Knowing the slang for popular spots always separates the natives from the tourists. (No one in Boston says Massachusetts Avenue. It’s Mass Ave. And Commonwealth Avenue is Comm Ave. I’ll leave it to my cousin Ellen – at present a snowbird wintering in Florida – to let me know whether or not people in Chicago actually do say that someone is on LSD…)

A few of the slang terms were for local food or bev options. One was especially ghastly:

A “hot brown” is an open-faced sandwich that was introduced to the state of Kentucky in 1926 at the Brown Hotel in Louisville. The toasted sandwich features a slice of bread topped with turkey and bacon and a Mornay sauce of grated Gruyere.

Not that I need another reason to stay out of Kentucky.

Montanans say “cowboy up” instead of “man up.” Thanks you, Montana, for letting Red Sox fans adopt this term during our team’s ill-fated pennant run in 2003. It may not have worked then, but there must have been some residual magic that produced the Red Sox’ first World Series win in 86 years in 2004. Cowboy up, indeed!

There’s an odd bit of slang in South Dakota: “kattywampus” for crooked. Wonder how many tongues that word actually rolls off of…

To the north of the land of kattywampus, North Dakotans say “uff da” when they mean “oy vey.”

A fun list to browse through, even though it’s one of those annoying ones you have to view one state/page at a time.

At any rate, I found the list entertaining. But what do I know? I’m just a Masshole…

Florida OJ? Oh No-J!

Count me in as an OJ fan. No,not that OJ? Him I can’t even bear to think about. Fortunately – unless he shoots up in some news report and I can’t get to the remote fast enough – there is no reason to think about him. But there is, apparently, reason to think about OJ-OJ. As in orange juice.

I don’t drink a ton of juice, but I generally have some on hand. What’s in the fridge now is apple cider and a bottle of white grape juice. The cider is a relatively recent acquisition, but the grape juice has been there for a while. And every once in a while, I pour myself a small glass. Yummy. Cider I’ll have on hand through Christmas.

But I do have orange juice pretty regularly. Mostly Tropicana. During the colder months, I almost always have oranges and/or clementines around to snack on. And at Christmas, I bake orange-chocolate pound cake, which requires juice oranges, which aren’t as easy to come by as navel oranges, but which are far superior when it comes to juicy-ness.

Growing up, we almost always had oranges in the house and almost always had OJ. When I was really young, my mother squeezed her own with a juice press. But soon enough modernity took over and ours was made from frozen concentrate: Minute Maid. I still remember the intense taste of that concentrate that you got when you licked the spatula used to spatch all the concentrate out of the can.

Sometimes my mother made us frozen orange-juice pops – cheaper than paying for store-bought – which were pretty darned good.

So, oranges: yay!

But there’s a big nay! going on down in the Sunshine State, where the orange groves are being wiped out

Ninety percent of the state’s groves are infected by a bacterium called huang long bing [translation: yellow dragon sickness], which, like oranges, originated in China. The pathogen often prevents raw green fruit from ripening, a symptom called citrus greening. Even when the fruit does ripen, it sometimes drops to the ground before it can be picked. Under Florida law, citrus that falls from a tree untouched cannot be sold.

As the state prepares for the November to May harvest, thousands of growers have already quit, leaving “ghost groves” in their wake. More than 7,000 farmers grew citrus in 2004; since then, nearly 5,000 have dropped out. (Source: Washington Post)

Down to roughly 2,000 from 7,000? That is some industry hit. And I imagine those “ghost groves” look pretty forlorn. I remember being in Ireland after their housing collapse, and going by “ghost estates” full of partially built houses, Tyvek and plastic window coverings flapping in the breeze. Abandoned cement mixers and wheelbarrows sitting around abandoned lots. Depressing.

More depressing, of course, if you’re one of the nearly 5,000 citrus dropouts. Not to mention those who’ve lost their jobs as the industry – the state’s second largest, after tourism – and an industry that produces 80% of the orange juice in this country, has gone bust.

About two-thirds of the factories that processed fruit to juice have shut down. The number of packing operations – which make oranges, tangerines and grapefruit look polished for picky buyers – has nosedived from nearly 80 to 26. And 34,000 jobs were eliminated in the 10 years up to 2016, according to a University of Florida study.

Fortunately, the University of Florida does more than monitor job-loss stats. University of Florida researchers, as well as other research groups, are:

…frantically trying to develop new root stocks to create trees that can better tolerate disease and genetically engineer new types of oranges to replace traditional varieties that are more vulnerable.

So far, the best “cure” for what ails Florida citrus groves is to get rid of the existing trees and start from scratch with more disease-resistant varieties. Which is a costly endeavor.

Some fear that, within the next 15 years or so, the Florida orange industry will have disappeared.

There will still be orange juice, of course. It’s just that the oranges won’t come from Florida. (I hope we don’t end up with that ghastly European “orange juice.” Watery, green, bitter. Yuck!)

But the idea of Florida without orange juice is like a Florida without sunshine.

Of course, with the sea levels rising, it’s just a matter of time before Florida becomes one disappeared alligator-infested swamp. The end of the orange industry may be the least of their – and our – worries.

But folks are resilient, and the Florida orange industries did manage to survive having Anita Bryant as their spokesperson. So there’s that.

Meanwhile, thanks to rising temperatures, the “yellow dragon sickness” will be making its way north. Not clear whether it will start moving in on other crops, but if I were a Georgia peach farmer, I’d be on the lookout.

Spies really are everywhere, including Twitter

One of my classmates in business school was a Saudi woman. She was from a very well to do family but not, as far as I know, part of the royal family. After graduation, she stayed in the States. There was no way she could have had much of a business career if she’d gone home.

Saudi Arabia: no country for women, young or old.

It’s also no country for dissidents. male or female, young or old. Those who oppose “reformer” Mohammed bin Salman routinely end up imprisoned and tortured. In the case of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it was torture, death, dismemberment…

Social media has afforded Saudi dissidents some element of “freedom” but, of course, the Saudi government invests in spying technology – and in spies - to try to sleuth out who’s saying what under cover of Facebook or Twitter anonymity.

And they’ve apparently gotten Twitter employees to help them figure out who’s tweeting anything that they perceive as against their regime.

“Saudi agents mined Twitter’s internal systems for personal information about known Saudi critics and thousands of other Twitter users,” U.S. Attorney David Anderson in San Francisco said Wednesday in a statement announcing the criminal complaint. (Source: Bloomberg)

The Twitter employees – both former employees – used “their employee credentials to gain access without authorization to certain nonpublic information about the individuals behind certain Twitter accounts.”

One of those ex-employees is Ahmad Abouammo, 41, of Seattle.

Now for all I know Ahmad Abouammo is the John Smith of Arabic names. And Seattle may be crawling with Ahmad Abouammos who are social media gurus who used to work for Twitter. But there is someone (still) on Linkedin who fits the bill, and his tagline is:

I build digital brands

Indeed.

Currently, Ahmad is the cofounder of a startup that focuses on redefining social media. Previousl [sic: the “y” is missing] Ahmad led branding and content strategy for multiple orgs in Amazon, developing and implementing strategic digital media and marketing at scale. Prior to Amazon, Ahmad was Head of Middle East and North Africa at Twitter, where he successfully helped launch Twitter in the region and drove users growth and content, making the Middle East the fastest growing market on Twitter.

So, he “successfully helped launch Twitter in the region and drove users growth and content…” Hmmmm.

In addition to being charged with “acting as [an] illegal agent of a foreign government,” the feds claim that Abouammo messed around with records that their investigation was after. Not a good look.

According to Abouammo’s Linkedin profile:

His time in the region enabled him to build a strong, comprehensive foundation of the region and how brands can transcend boundaries by understanding, contextualizing and adapting. Ahmad endeavors to forge stronger relationships between brands and consumers and transform and build brands for digital age. He is heavily influenced by creative art, innovative design, and social connections.

Well, the Saudi brand – other than in the White House – is pretty awful. But maybe that’s just me and my unwillingness to “transcend boundaries by understanding, contextualizing and adapting.”

But I’m struggling to see how, in giving Saudi agents information that puts dissidents at risk, he is helping “forge stronger relationships between brands and consumers.”

I do get how Abouammo is heavily influenced by social connections, especially  bad actors who got him to play footsie.

It’s one thing for those of us in free societies to wing something off in 280 characters worth of Twitter without having to worry about being rubbed out by our government. (For now, anyway.) But if you’re in a terrible place like Saudi Arabia, it’s very risky. And that risk is heightened when a malign government gets social media insiders to help them do their dirty work.

Omar Abdulaziz, a Saudi dissident exile living in Canada, is suing Twitter, claiming that Twitter never bothered to tell him that his account had been hacked. (The person Abdulaziz believes is responsible is not Abouammo but, rather, one of the other men charged.)

Abdulzaia, in his filing:

…claimed the hack led Saudi agents to discover plans for a social media protest that he was planning last year with Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Months later, Khashoggi was slain in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul.

Aboudammo appears to be from Lebanon, not Saudi Arabia. Maybe he got duped (or blackmailed) into giving up confidential information that’s put others at grave risk.

On his personal Twitter account (dormant for a year now), he bills himself as a “social media preacher” and “digital believer.”

Something tells me that his career as a digital believer, building digital brands, is about to come to a crashing halt.

Career suicide is always painful to see…

So, were the Made in the USA labels actually made in the USA?

Oh, they’re a small company – only $90M in revenue over a 10-year period – but they’re big on “corporate philosophies”. Here’s what Aventura Technologies has to say about their Values, Mission and Vision.

At Aventura our corporate philosophies are not merely words but actionable items. These words are the foundation, which have made Aventura the success it has become. Value, mission and vision are the core principles we live by.

Our values are how we conduct ourselves in our everyday business:

• Commitment to quality, health and safety
• An open door policy and personal relationships with our employees based upon mutual respect
• Transparent environment with complete accountability
• Utmost of integrity in everything we do
• Fiscal responsibility to our stakeholders

Well, the Feds have a somewhat different definition of “utmost of integrity” than the spinners at Aventura. They’ve accused this security technology outfit of slapping Made in the USA labels on products that were made in China. And selling these products to the military:

Because of misrepresentations made to the US government, Aventura was paid tens of millions of dollars for Chinese manufactured surveillance systems that ended up on Army and Air Force bases, in Department of Energy facilities, on Navy installations and even on US aircraft carriers," [Richard P. Donoghue, US attorney for the Eastern District of New York] Donoghue said. (Source: CNN)

Risky business, for U.S. security.

"Obviously when you have Chinese-made cameras with (Chinese) software loaded into them networked into sensitive installations such as Army bases, Navy bases, Department of Energy facilities, and even American aircraft carriers, that causes great concern for our national security," Donoghue said.

"Had we known that this was Chinese software, we may have been able to take steps to patch it and address that risk but because this was masked and we did not know this was Chinese software, in many instances those steps were not taken," he added.

Aventura apparently didn’t try all that hard to cover up their fraud. The scheme finally unraveled when someone noticed screens on “Made in USA” devices coming up in Chinese. Oh. Maybe this was just Aventura being transparent. After all, transparency is one of the company’s philosophies.

Seven current and former employees have been charged, including Aventura’s founder, Jack Cabasso, and his wife Frances. Her involvement was primarily lending her name to the enterprise so that it could take advantage of women-owned-businesses programs. The Cabassos are also accused of money-laundering, passing money through to shell companies that benefited them. They got to use some of the scam proceeds to buy themselves a 70 foot luxury yacht. Because of course.

All part of their “fiscal responsibility to their stakeholders” I suppose.

Jack Cabasso sure didn’t lack for balls. Among other things:

…prosecutors allege he attempted to rat out other government contractors for running the exact same scheme as his company.

In one email exchange with a government official, he complained that there is a “big problem” with vendors “listing from a company that is actually the Communist Chinese Government and has ‘significant’ cybersecurity issues,” according to court documents. (Source: NY Post)

Lame! I know from personal experience – as a four-year-old pointing out that my brother Tom wasn’t eating his peas -  that this point the finger strategy can only buy you so much time.

This is not Jack Cabasso’s first run in with the law. He has a decades-long track record of convictions of “a handful of crimes relating to fraud, grand larceny, and corruption,” including juror intimidation.

Looks like he and his crew may be trading in their “open door policy” for some time behind the closed bars in the slammer. And the Aventura corporate philosophy of “complete accountability” will sure be getting a tryout.

Having written quite a few mission and vision statements over the year, I appreciate that they can be utterly full of shite. Generally well-intentioned shite, but shite nonetheless. Aventura’s shite doesn’t even sound well-intentioned.

What I always wonder when I read about cases like this is whether folks just “honestly” believe that they can pull scams like this off. That Aventura was able to do so for a decade or so suggests that, yes, they can.

They may have been able to get away with it for so long because they’re so small potatoes. The US defense budget is roughly $700B. Aventura’s 10-year rake-in from the Feds was only $20M. Trace elements.

I’d hate to be a legit Aventura employee – if there are any who weren’t in on the con - showing up for work – if there is still work – and having to deal with this mess.

There they are, pondering the Aventura “corporate philosophies” and asking themselves the big question: Were our Made in the USA labels actually made in the USA?

Veterans Day 2019

Like pretty much everything else – for better or for worse – Veterans Day ain’t like it used to be.

For one thing, it used to be a day off. For pretty much everyone. Now it is a federal-state-local day off, but few businesses observe it. It may have been a holiday when my career began, but – like Columbus Day – it got swapped out over time for the day after Thanksgiving or Patriots Day. Both days I’d much rather have off.

Then again, I’m not a vet.

But back in the day, pretty much everyone (male edition) was a veteran. The fathers of my generation pretty much all served in World War II. Post-war, there was a draft, and pretty much everyone (male edition) was swept into some branch of the service or the other.

Now it’s almost a surprise to find out that someone has been in the military. Because most people have not.

Those who have served, we faux honor with the “thanks for your service” nods that I understand most veterans and members of the service think are a crock. At baseball games – at least at Fenway Park – there’s typically a shoutout to a couple of active service members, and everyone has to give them a standing o. To sit during this little display wouldn’t be worth the heckling you’d have to put up with from the sunshine patriots. (Most, I will note, don’t bother to sing along with the national anthem. Which I do. Just sayin’.) So I stand for the local heroes, but don’t put much energy into clapping.

It’s not that I begrudge the soldiers, sailors, and airmen/women their moment of glory, But it always feels so cheap and bogus. Better to vote to ensure that they get the benefits they’re entitled to. Better to vote to ensure that they’re not sent off to get blasted to smithereens by IEDs in some ill-thought-through, purposeless war to begin with.

I owe my existence to war. A good war, I suppose.

My father spent part of his war years stationed at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago, where he met my mother on a blind date.

I’m pretty sure my father would have laughed in the face of anyone who thanked him for his service.

Shortly after Pearl Harbor, he signed on for the duration, which for him turned out to be four years in non-combat situations. (He was in peril on the seas a few times, on ships sailing through U-Boat prowled waters to get him to and from Trinidad, where he spent a couple of his Navy years.)

My mother, for her part, more or less owed her presence in Chicago to World War One.

My last year’s Veterans Day post was a shout-out to my grandfather Jake Wolf, who was more than happy when The War to End All Wars ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. He was in to win it, I suppose, but he was fighting on behalf of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his side lost. (And a couple of his brothers lost their lives.) Anyway, within a few years of the war’s end, he was on his way to America to make a new life for his family in Chicago.

I don’t imagine that Jake Wolf would have expected any dankes for his service, either.

So, thanks to Al Rogers and Jake Wolf, I’m here on Veterans Day 2019, blogging away.

A posthumous Happy Veterans Day to both of them, and a live, real-time Happy Veterans Day to those who are still among us.