Seriously, Maureen Lipman? Seriously?

There's a film under development about the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and Helen Mirren is playing Meir. 

I love Helen Mirren - I'd watch her in anything. And I'm sure she'll do an excellent job portraying this fascinating figure. 

But some folks aren't exactly ecstatic. 

One of the not-so-glad is British actress - and Helen Mirren's fellow Dame - Maureen Lipman. 

In comments reported by the Jewish Chronicle, Lipman said she “disagreed” with Mirren’s casting. She added: “I’m sure [Mirren] will be marvellous, but it would never be allowed for Ben Kingsley to play Nelson Mandela. You just couldn’t even go there.” (Source: The Guardian)

Oy! 

And that analogy? Nelson Mandela's Black-ness is essential to his being. So you wouldn't want a white man playing him. Or even someone like Ben Kingsley, who had a British (white) mother and an Indian father. 

Morgan Freeman has played Mandela. As has Idris Elba. Excellent choices.

Sure, Jewishness was central to Golda Meir's being. But what does it mean to be a Jewish actress? Lauren Bacall was Jewish. Not that I know her full catalog, but I don't recall her playing anyone who was identifiable as Jewish. Other Jewish actresses: Goldie Hawn. Natalie Portman. Scarlett Johansson. Bette Midler. Gil Gadot. Are they the only ones who can play Golda Meir? 

I'm reminded of the wonderful Levy's Jewish Rye Bread ad campaign of the 1960's and 1970's. (I saw these ads on the subway when I lived (regrettably briefly) in NYC in the early 1970's.) They represented diversity and inclusiveness before we knew the words. Needless to say, my favorite was the Irish cop.

So my thinking here is: You don't have to be Jewish to play Golda Meir.

For Dame Maureen Lipman - an actress I was not familiar with but, I understand, is quite well-known in England where she's played, among other roles, an Anglican vicar - I sense a bit of sour grapes. Maybe she thought she should have been tapped for the role.

Lipman isn't the only one bringing up the topic of who should play someone Jewish. There've been complaints about, e.g., a non-Jewish (Rachel Brosnahan) actress playing The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, a character who's Jewish. And Sarah Silverman - who, I note, share's a birthday with me and Bette Midler - went to the mat when non-Jew Kathryn Hahn was cast as Joan Rivers in a project that's now on hold.

These are seen as instances of "Jewface," a play on Blackface, in which a non-Jew plays a Jew too broadly, playing on Jewish stereotypes.

If that's the case, criticize the performance, not the actor. Or criticize the character - it may all be in the way the character is written or directed.

A skilled actor should be able to play anyone and anything. 

I understand that people are (justifiably) concerned with representation. But if you have to be Jewish to play a Jew, does it mean that a Jew can only play a Jew? That Catholics can only play Catholics? That a gay actor can't play someone straight?

I realize this isn't always symmetrical. For example, a lot of roles will be closed to an actor who's wheelchair bound. They can't play a runner, or a Navy Seal. So why not give them a shot when the role calls for someone in a wheelchair? 

But sheesh.

No like it.

Any more than I like the criticism of writers who use their creative powers and imagination to write stories about characters that have nothing to do with their lived experience. If the writer doesn't get it right, criticize away. But not their right to write whatever they want. I'm not talking about someone pretending they're someone they're not, palming something off as autobiographical when it's squarely a lie. I'm talking about a writer being able to make up a character in their mind and put it down on paper.

And unless a role calls for a specific, central physical aspect - such as Black skin or the ability to ski jump - I don't see why an actor/actress can't play anyone. 

Because you don't have to be Jewish to like Levy's Jewish Rye.

Just like, as is obviously the case when it comes to Maureen Lipman, you don't have to be Irish to have your parents stick you with the name Maureen.

Influencers marooned? Let them influence their way out.

The pandemic has been hard on everyone, especially the young folks. 

One thing for us old geezers to have to hunker down and stare out the window, play solitaire, and download books that we'll never read to our Kindles. (Too busy staring out the window and playing solitaire.) Quite another for those with some wild oats to sow, who want to get out there and par-tay, or whatever it is wild-oat-sowers and par-tay kids like to do. So I do have some sympathy for those who've been cooped up for a couple of years. Except maybe when they're a bunch of Canadian nimrods - or, as PM Justin Trudeau termed them, idiots and barbarians - who partied (maskless, natch) their way down to Mexico on a chartered flight. 

Of course, it doesn't make me feel more benevolently that the crowd was composed of influencers. Or influencer wannabes. Or those easily influenced by a "true" influencer. Talk about vapid vapers. 

So who was on board for the onboard funfest?

[Trip organizer, influencer James William] Awad, who operates 111 Private Club, organized the trip including a group of social media “influencers” and reality TV stars, such as Karl Sabourin from the popular Quebec show “Occupation Double” and Sandrine Seguin and Anna-Maelle Laprise, who both appeared on the province’s version of “Love Island.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Good to know, I guess, that Canadian youth are as caught up in the same stupefying stupidity as our kids. But cold Northern comfort for those of us who fantasize fleeing to the sanity of Canada if and when the U.S. becomes untenable. 

It goes without saying that the merry travelers shared their good time on social media. Which had an unintended consequence. 

Sunwing Airlines cancelled the return charter flight from Cancun that had been scheduled for Wednesday and Air Transat and Air Canada also both said they will refuse to carry the passengers. 

The reason for the refusal to carry this wretched refuse was the overarching "obligation to ensure passenger and crew safety."

Then there's the superspreader angle.

Rebecca St-Pierre is a 19-year old Quebec student who won a free trip on Instagram, so of course wanted to escape the frozen north for some fun in the sun. Alas, on the day she was supposed to fly home, she tested positive and is isolating in a hotel she doesn't know how she'll pay for. She thinks that there may be another 30 from the trip who have contracted covid. 

“The organizer just left everybody. I don’t know who’s still here. All the flights have been cancelled,” an emotional St-Pierre told The Canadian Press.

Just 19? Okay. I do have sympathy for Rebecca. I hope she gets home safely. And I hope she gets James William Awad to pay for whatever her extended stay in Mexico ends up costing.

"I was expecting a relaxing week, where I was going to be careful," she said. "But this turns out to be an expensive trip for something that was supposed to be free."

And while I do think the organizer/bad influencer should pay up, I hope Rebecca learns something here. Maybe she should have read the fine print, which I'm thinking may have included a disclaimer or two. And maybe she'll grow to appreciate the distinction between "going to be careful" and actually being careful.

The bad behavior is rumored to have accompanied the partiers once they landed and headed to the hotel, where many of them continued to act like out of control a-holes. And where some of them, prior to attempting to find flights back, put "Vaseline up their noses in an attempt to thwart COVID-19 testing."

Some of the marooned influencers - not the ones who've tested positive, but perhaps including the Vaseline brigade (does that really work?) - are now making their way back to Canada, where they're being met with a welcoming committee of Canadian authorities (Ministry of Health AND Quebec PD). If someone's found to have "violated Transport Department regulations, [they] could face fines of up to $5,000 Canadian per infraction (US $3,930)." Which is  fair amount of scratch for someone to come up with. 

Meanwhile, organizer/bad influencer Awad is coming out swinging. On Sunday, he tweeted:

Reality of the story, sheeps are mad because people partied on a private chartered plane where partying was allowed. Wake up!!

I have no idea whether this bit about partying being allowed is true or not. I mean, it was put out on Twitter, but who knows?

Anyway, this attitude probably doesn't bode well for the prospect of Rebecca St-Pierre getting her unanticipated costs paid off. Sometimes you just have to pick up the tab for your own bad choices, and influence your own way out.

Another year of living covidly

Like pretty much everyone else, as we enter our third covid year, I've had it.

Which seems like a pretty ridiculous and self-centered thing to say, given that my life has tootled along just fine. With one exception, no one I care about has had a severe case. And his case, while awful, wasn't severe enough for hospitalization.

But overall, the last couple of years...

2020...It started out okay-ish. Word of the pandemic starting to mosey around our consciousness. But what of it? It was just there, lurking. Lurking. Lurking.

In January, I went to the 65th birthday party for my friend Jake. Were we talking about the pandemic? Maybe a little. Mostly we were talking about Jake. Hundreds of folks. A nice tribute. It was, we all knew, Jake's big Irish wake. He was dying. ALS.

In early March, there was a big retirement party for my brother Rick. Hundreds of folks. A nice tribute. A nice night. But that was the last big public anything for a while. Did we talk about covid? A bit. The next weekend, I was supposed to go out to eat with my sister Trish, but we looked at each other and decided "nah."

And then things really started getting pretty awful, what with the uncertainty, the terrifying reports coming out of NYC, the isolation. The panicked search for masks, for gloves, for Lysol wipes, for toilet paper. 

Those first few months, I barely saw anyone, other than on Zoom. I took my walks, I went masked to the grocery store as needed, and I had a few masked meet-ups - me on the sidewalk, friends and family in their cars. 

Rick started coming over for a weekly dinner. Then his daughter Caroline began joining us. They were my pod. 

My sister Kath and I share a hairdresser, and in June 2020, Kath had Rita come to her backyard to cut our hair. Other than when Rita was clipping our hair, we all kept our distance; we all stayed masked. 

Other than from the sidewalk, I don't remember when I finally saw my sister Trish. She and her daughter Molly came for my truncated 2020 Christmas Eve not-much-of-a-celebration, but I'm pretty sure that, when things started easing up a bit during the summer, we must have seen each other a time or two. But it's a blur. 

In August, I "attended", via Zoom, the funeral of my cousin's daughter. 

In September, I masked up and took my chances with a bus trip to the Cape, and lunch on the front porch at my cousin's. 

That month, I also ventured out to the finale of a fundraising run for Jake. I had a distanced chat with a few friends. Masked. Within a month, Jake was gone...

I started taking masked walks with my friend K, but neither of us ventured back to volunteering at St. Francis House.

In October, we had lunch outside at the Seaport. It was a moment.

In November, I went to City Hall to early vote for Joe Biden.

The Saturday after the election, K and I were on the bridge heading over to the Esplanade for our walk when we heard horns starting to beep and people starting to cheer. Biden had been declared the winner. Thank God!

Thanksgiving, I "celebrated"with a sausage and pepper sandwich - the one I hadn't been able to have at Fenway Park during the baseball season since there was no Fenway Park in 2020. 

Right before Christmas 2020, I took a masked walk with a small group of friends to see the lights on The Common, in the Public Garden, along the Commonwealth Mall. 

Other than the January insurrection - and that's a pretty big other - 2021 started with the promise that we'd soon have the vaccine.

And, sure enough, after a mad - and I do mean mad - scramble to find a shot, in late February, I got my first jab. Friends and family were getting theirs, too.

Then 2021 got pretty damned good. 

All of a sudden, you didn't need to wear a mask when you were outside. Friends and family could get together. For real. We could actually go and sit down in a restaurant. I was back to volunteering at St. Francis House, and for my friend Jake's charity, Christmas in the City. Christmas Eve and my house was - get this! - completely normal.

And then...

Here comes omicron.

The Tuesday after Christmas, I had lunch with a couple of friends, including my friend Peter who was the friend who'd had the worst bout of covid (just pre-vaccine) of anyone I'm close to. Trish was supposed to be there, but she bowed out with a cold. I brought along a covid test (which my cousin MB had brought as a hostess gift for Christmas Eve) which our friend Michele - who lives near Trish - dropped off. Negative. Yay!

I was exposed to covid the Wednesday after Christmas. I was fully masked, and the contact was with a fully masked and vaxxed/booster staff member at St. Francis. He was perfectly fine at the time. But that night he wasn't perfectly fine, and he tested positive with his home test kit.

The head of volunteers let me know on Thursday, and sent me home with a test kit and some hot chocolate mix (complete with marshmallows, candy canes, and a mug).

I isolated. No New Year's Eve at Trish's. I watched the kiddie fireworks on the Common at 7 p.m., and was in bed by 10. 

On Monday, I used the home test. Negative. Just to be sure, I did it again on Wednesday. Negative. (Can I have a yay?)

More and more, we're seeing breakthrough covid. But the vaccine is holding. Most cases are mild - if they even rise to that level. Like a cold, we're hearing. The people getting sick, the people dying, are for the most part unvaxxed, unmasked. Sorry/not sorry, but I have zero fucks to give for these folks who, through their ignorance, stubborness, and selfishness, are - at this late date - prolonging the pandemic for everyone else.

Fingers crossed that the pandemic burns itself out in the next month or so. Or gets itself under control so that we can once again resume the new normal, at least at the level we enjoyed this past summer and fall. 

Like pretty much everyone else, as we enter our third covid year, I've had it with living covidly.

Dashing through the door...

I'm not a DoorDash user. 

It's not that I don't order takeout. It's that I'm either ordering from a place that's within walking distance or, if I'm having the meal(s) delivered, I'm working directly with a restaurant that has its own delivery system. At some point, I'm sure that I'll decide it's too crappy to go out and fetch my order, or the restaurants that still hire their own drivers will give up on it and start using a service like DoorDash. 

But I know that there are plenty of people who use it regularly. And I'll probably end up being one of them.

DoorDash is, of course, part of the gig economy, and all the bad and good that this entails. The good is the flexibility. For those who don't want (or can't find) a full-time corporate job, who want to be artsy but still eat, who want to pick up some extra bucks through a side hustle, DoorDash et al. is, if not a dream come true, then at least a way to eke out a living.

The bad is, of course, the lack of benefits and any sense of permanency, the need to be perpetually hustling, the struggle with often truly shitty working conditions and practices. (A few years ago, DoorDash got clobbered for screwing its drivers out of their tips.)

So, DoorDash - except for the investors and founders, who got rich off of this unicorn - is a decidely mixed bag for the gig workers who make it possible. And will be until DoorDash replaces those gig workers with robots. 

But until that day arrives, DoorDash has a program - WeDash - the requires all employees, from the CEO on down, to go out there and dash - i.e., work as delivery drivers (or shadow in some outside-facing role, like customer support) - a minimum of one day a month.

WeDash is the company's flagship employee-engagement program, which aims to have workers "learn firsthand how the technology products we build empower local economies, which in turn helps us build a better product," a DoorDash spokesperson said. (Source: Yahoo News)

Personally, I think that this is an excellent idea. 

Sure, the beancounters will not doubt come up with ways to count more beans - and to do so in ways that won't make them look like they're trying to rip off the drivers. And the techies focused on robotics will spend the time figuring out how to perfect non-human delivery systems. In fact, the company has a division dedicated to robotics, and it's been around for a few years. Here's a rendering from a patent application that DoorDash filed. But basically it's not a half-bad idea for people throughout an organization to understand what "the help" has to go through on a daily basis.

I haven't seen it in years, but I used to, on occasion, watch a TV show, Undercover Boss, in which Mr./Ms. Big disguised himself/herself and went out to labor for a week or so among the proles of the organization. The head of Waste Management went out to pick up porta-potties. The CEO of Wolf Lodge went out to one of the lodges and fished kid-turd out of the pool. 

Each show ended with the no-longer-undercover boss revealing that they would be fine-tuning their processes to make a few minor changes that would make work life better at the lower end. And, in a Queen for the Day like riff, would choose one employee deserving of something special: a new car so they didn't have to hitchhike twenty-miles during an ice storm to get to to work; a modest college scholarship for some loyal worker's kid. 

Nothing fundamental about workers' pay or benefits ever changed. New things that were implemented tended to be a skimcoat. And it always amazed me how insanely grateful the one chosen employee was for the benevolence that was shown them. 

Anyway, WeDash kinda-sorta reminds me of Undercover Boss. Only without the one employee who wins something.

Still, I believe it's worthwhile for employees to have at least some sort of understanding of what the "little people" go through. And the higher up the stack those employees are, the more worthwhile I believe it to be.

But one employee, an engineer - said to make $400K per year - wasn't having any. On Blind, a social platform that allows employees to anonymously grumble up a storm, they (and here, I'm pretty sure I mean he) wrote:

"Mandatory 'WeDash' starts from next year. You need to dash once a month. WILL BE TRACKED IN PERFORMANCE REVIEWS!! What the actual fuck? I didn't sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this."

A number of other DoorDash employees chimed in. The disgruntled engineer had their (his) defenders, but others defended the program. 

"Most of my coworkers and I are excited. DD pays well and I get to better understand what I'm working on, and hopefully improve the experience for our dashers. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯," a DoorDash user posted on Blind.

Someone from another company added: 

"Seriously? They're paying you 400K and want you to deliver food once a month so you can actually experience your product and you're complaining? What's wrong with you?" posted a user who works at DocuSign.

I'm mostly with the poster from DocuSign. 

Once a month sounds like too much - too disruptive of your workflow, etc. But once or twice a year? This can only yield ideas for improving service to customers, and (one can hope at least) work life for the dashers. (Until they can replace them all with robots, that is.)

As for the $400K whiner: suck it up, buttercup. Or, to quote the late and inimitable Ann Landers: kwitcherbitchin. 

Thanks for the invite, Ben Carson

On Christmas Eve, my mail included a handful of Christmas cards, and a wonderful package from none other than Ben Carson.

Ben and I, as you can imagine, are like that. (Image: fingers crossed.) 

Oh, wait. I misspoke or whatever the written word equivalent is. Ben Carson? The idiot savant of the Trump administration? Sure, he's the first person I would have called if I needed someone to separate conjoined twins, but other than that... Ben Carson???

Where'd you get my address, Ben?

Oh, I'm well aware that lists get traded, lists get sold. But I'm racking my brain trying to figure out which catalog, magazine, or charitable organization sold my name down the river to the American Cornerstone Institute.

Not that I don't agree completely with the first couple of sentences on your pledge form:

The American ideal is being destroyed. And it's up to "we the people" to save it.

And I'm absolutely on board with the notion that we need to empower millions of patriotic men and women to be the bulwark against those who are trying to topple the pillars of our society and destroy the American ideal. 

But mostly, Ben, let's just say we agree to disagree.

Now back to the question of which organization dimed me.

I know that L.L. Bean had some Trumpist in the family at one point, but I don't imagine that L.L. needs to sell its mailing lists to goofball outfits like the American Cornerstone Institute. 

What other catalogs have I ordered from recently? Artful Home? Jockey? Peruvian Connection?

Nah. I can't see Ben doing business with any of those outfits.

I subscribe to the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Nation (for my lefty brother). The thought of old Ben thinkng that any of these mags would be fertile ground for his nonprofit thang is laughable. 

Maybe it was The Economist. Maybe they're pissed that I didn't renew. (Sorry. I used to read it avidly, but then it was a year of straight to recycle, followed by an online-only subscription that I never clicked on.) Still, The Economist is hardly rabid righty. The last Republican they endorsed (i.e., cast their hypothetical vote for, since, as a Brit publication, they really don't have a say) was George W. Bush in 2000. Since then it's been Kerry, Obama, Obama, Clinton, and Biden. What would Ben want with their list???

I don't imagine the charities I donate to would yield much, either.

Because nothing says I'm worried about "BLM, the teachers unions, and the rest of the American Marxists taking over our schools" like donating to PBS, Planned Parenthood, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Union of Concerned Scientists, et a few als. And I don't think that Heifer International would be Ben's cup of tea, either.

Many years ago, I did subscribe to the online Wall Street Journal. This landed me on a number of Republican lists, and for a while there I got regular phone calls with recordings of Newt Gingrich lying about Obama and trying to scare me into giving them money. But that was when the GOP was still at least partially sane. 

Sorry/not sorry, Ben that you wasted your money - not that it's actually your money now, is it? - sending me this big old package of right wing cant. I did send back the pre-paid pledge plus donation envelope, just in case you need it for some reason. And my niece Caroline loved the lithograp you enclosed. Whoever thought that someone in my family would possess a work of "art" by the renowned John McNaughton, an "artist" specializing in hero-worship images of Trump. An "artist" who makes Thomas Kinkade look like Rembrandt.

Anyway, Ben, thanks but no thanks.

I'm not going to wish you luck. Au con-f'ing-traire. 

But I will give credit where credit is due: thanks for using the Oxford comma!

Yankee Candle: the canary in the covid coalmine

When I worked full time, I always found myself sucked in to buying whatever was being flogged by the kids' schools of my colleagues. Thus, I ended up with an awful lot of overpriced, scimpily-packaged wrapping paper (one roll = enough wrapping for one paperback); giant milk chocolate candy bars completely lacking in taste; and - ta-da - Yankee Candle candles, which, as a local, Massachusetts-own company seems to have a grip on the fundraising initiatives of our schools. (True confession: on a leaf-peeping jaunt to Western Mass a few years back, I did stop at their flagship store in South Deerfield. I don't recall buying anything.)

Yankee Candle candles are not something I would purhcase voluntarily. Some of the scents were okay - bayberry, balsam, autumn spice - but mostly I find scented candles pretty

obnoxious. I would buy the okay scents for my mother, who would have them around unlit. Mostly, I just lived in dread of the day when the sale form would go up on a colleagues door. (On the other hand, I lived for the day the Girl Scout Cookie signups came around.)

But a lot of folks love Yankee Candle candles, looking forward each year to the new scents being released. 

(Scented candles, by the way, are a multi-billion dollar market, and Yankee Candle is a market share leader.)

Terri Nelson is a science illustrator from Portland, Oregon. Her inquiring mind prompted her to ask whether the fact that covid often causes people to lose their sense of smell would show up in online reviews of scented products. The scentiest of scented products she could think of: scented candles. This was in 2020.

“There are angry ladies all over Yankee Candle’s site reporting that none of the candles they just got had any smell at all,” she wrote on Twitter [in late November 2020]. “I wonder if they’re feeling a little hot and nothing has much taste for the last couple days too,” she added, a nod to other common coronavirus symptoms. (Source: Washington Post)

Nelson's notion got a lot of attention, and Kate Petrova, a researcher at Bryn Mawr College, took things a step further. She:

 ...decided to test the hypothesis by scraping roughly 20,000 reviews of the most popular scented and unscented candles on Amazon. 

“It is rare, at least in my line of work, to stumble upon an anecdotal observation that can be examined using such vast amounts of easily accessible data,” said Petrova, who stressed that this was a personal project with no relation to her research work.

It turns out that there was something to that "anecdotal observation." Over the prior year, scented candles have lost a full star from their ratings. 

Unscented candle reviews, meanwhile, don’t show the same pattern.

Fast forward a year of living dangerously, and a maths PhD candidate from Zurich named Eleanor (zornsllama on Twitter) mapped the negative, no-scent reviews to covid cases. And voila:

Neither Petrova nor Eleanor/zornsllama is making any claims about the scientific rigor of what they've come up with. And Yankee Candle claims they haven't seen anything different about covid-era reviews. Still, the correlation is interesting. Fun, even, if anything associated with covid can be termed 'fun.'

As for Yankee Candle, I wish them nothing but luck, increased market share, and profits. They may be owned by out-of-towners at this point, but they're still a Massachusetts-own company. It's just that they'll achieve their increased market share and profits without my patronage. Scented candles? No thanks. (Just wondering how school sales are going now that so many businesses are virtual. Harder to put the sign up sign up on the office door if no one's there.)

My hopes for 2022

I'm not a high hopes kind of gal. 

Not me. 

On the continuum, I fall somewhere between guaradedly optimistic and guardedly pessissmistic. If I'm being honest, the leaning is generally towards the guardedly pessismistic end of the spectrum. Still, this year I'm choosing to put a smiley face on things and go with guardedly optimistic.

Despite the gerrymandering, despite the voter suppression, despite all those state legislatures itching to overturn perfectly legitimate election results, I'm hoping for a Blue Wave election this November. The alternative is too ugly, and way too frightening, to comtemplate.

But just in case the un-contemplatable comes to pass, I hope that the January 6th Committee is able to complete their work before November, and that those responsble for last year's unspeakable assault on democracy are held to account. 

I hope that we turn the corner on covid. And if this takes the deliberately unvaxxed coming down with awful cases to bring this about, well, so be it.

I hope that we finally start waking up to the reality of climate change.

I hope to spend more time reading and less time doom-scrolling onthrough Twitter. (It is so damned hard to resist.)

Even though I'll miss them (most of them, anyway), I hope that all the folks I see every Thursday at the Resource Center at St. Francis House find a place to call home. A place with a locked door, a clean bathroom, their own "stuff" around. Where they can raid the fridge whenever they feel like it and watch whatever they want on TV. A place where they can get a good night's sleep without worrying about rats, cold, and robbery (if they sleep outside), or about chaos, germs, and robbery (if they sleep in a shelter).

I hope we have at least one snowstorm that slows things down for a bit. The type of snowstorm where I stand looking out the kitchen window while my tea brews, then snuggle up in a comfy chair, tuck myself in with an afghan my mother made me, sip my tea, and read James Joyce's unfathomably brilliant story, "The Dead." (That is, I hope this if no one experiencing homelessness ends up freezing to death or run over by a plow.)

I hope I get to go somewhere. (So far, tentative plans: Long Island in January. Maine in February. Tucson in March. Dallas in May. Dare I even wish for it: Ireland in September...)

The Red Sox play the Twins on Patriots Day, and I hope to be there. (My favorite game of the year by far.)

While I'm on the subject of the Olde Towne Team, I hope the Red Sox have a wonderful season, and that David "Big Papi" Ortiz is elected to the Hall of Fame.

Speaking of halls, my stairway and downstairs halls, and my bedroom really should be painted. After all, I already picked out the BR paint color and got a new duvet and sham set from Pottery Barn. I really hope to get this done. And soon.

That rowing machine I bought in October 2020? I hope to finally start using it. Maybe if we have that big snowstorm I'm hoping for. 

I hope to thread together a series of short stories about the life of a priest and turn it into more of a novel. (They say 'write what you know about,' and I know next to nothing about what it must be like to have a vocation to the priesthood. But I do know a lot about growing up Irish Catholic in Main South Worcester, which is where Dan Breen, my fictional priest bud, hails from.)

I hope that the world becomes a better place. Kinder, gentler, less fractious. 

I hope that all your resolutions work out - personally, I don't make any - and that all your hopes come true. 

Happy 2022!

O Christmas Tree, My Christmas Tree

I'm not all that wild about Christmas. It's fine, but I'm not gaga over it. I see my friends and family pretty regularly, anyway, so gathering for the holiday is no big deal. Yes, of course I'll be happy to see my family on Christmas Eve, when I host the celebration. And I do appreciate that it gives folks in the Northern Hemisphere something to focus on other than the dark. But I hate the crass commercialism, the desperate shopping, the frenetic last-minute-ness.

What I do really like about Christmas is a) the music, and b) putting up my tree.

I'm not much of a smartphone photographer, but here's this year's edition. 

Last year, I picked out my tree from a lot down in the Seaport, and had them deliver it and put it in the stand. This year, when rumors of the tree shortage started to be heard throughout the land, I ordered one from the same place, sight unseen. I figured that last year's tree was nice and fresh, and this year's would be, too. (The year before, I had gotten my tree at the sale sponsored by a local neighborhood association. It must have been cut the previous May. It was so dried out, I spent the month of December sweeping up pine needles. By Christmas Eve, that tree looked like it belonged to Charlie Brown.)

The fellow who delivered this year's tree did so on a bike. Then it took him about a nanosecond to place it in the stand - I have one of those good foot pump ones - and whatever it cost (which was plenty) was well worth it.

I love decorating my tree.

I put on my Christmas CD's - and I have dozens of them - and start hanging ornaments, most of which have meaning to me.

Here are the little plastic ornaments - the red bells, the red boot, Santa on his sleigh - that my parents hung on their first Christmas in their own place. (The prior Christmas, right after they were married, they were living with my grandparents in Chicago.) Now they were in Worcester. It was 1946. In November, their first child, my sister Margaret, died in a terrible - and entirely avoidable - childbirth incident. Today, it would be a kabillion dollar settlement with the hospital. Back then, it was get back on the bicycle. (My sister Kathleen was born 11 months after Margaret's death.) I think about that first Christmas, how sad it must have been. They thought they'd be enjoying it with a burbling infant...

Those plastic ornaments stood the test of time, though. They hung on every Christmas tree that ever went up in my house, and on my tree for the past 30 or so years, along with other, later ornaments from the family tree.

I also have a couple of ancient glass bulbs, striped, that were my Grandmother Rogers. They're at least 100 years old and I no longer hang them on the tree, but display them safely on my credenza.

Ornaments, sweet ornaments.

The ones my mother made - needlepoint, counted crosstich.  The ones commemorating long gone pets. (If you look closely, the felt white and grey cat honors my sister Kath's wonderful cat, Emily. The most dog-like cat I've ever known. And that's a good thing.) The ones I collected on my travels - Ireland, Paris, Budapest, Amsterdam, Prague. NYC, Tucson, the State of Maine. The ones that friends have given to me.

I have a number of lovely brass ornaments, gifts from my cousin Barbara, that are all Worcester-related. The Antiquarian Society. The Salisbury Mansion. The Higgins Armory. The Worcester Auditorium. And my two favorites: a three-decker and a diner. So Worcester.

There are ornaments I bought just because I liked them, including some nifty 50's and 60's beauties I found in an antique shop.

I have a wolf ornament, in honor of my mother's family name.

Beetles. Christmas sweaters. Teapots. Pigs (don't ask).  

The polar bear with my niece Molly's name on it. The snowwoman with Caroline's.

I love putting my tree up, singing along with Judy Collins, Dolly Parton, Linda Rondstat, Nat King Cole, Bing. And even Elvis Costello (with the Chieftains). Thinking about everything and everyone that goes into the making of my Christmas tree.

My tree is imperfect. There are spots with too many ornaments, others too few. Sometimes I make adjustments, sometmes I let it be.

In early December, I went on a house tour in Salem, Massachusetts. The homes were all decorated for the holidays. The trees I hated were the ones that were too designer. Boring, bland. One house had two or three perfect trees with green, blue, and purple bulbs. Yawn. 

The trees I liked were like mine. They were personal. You knew right away that the family skied, that they had a daughter who was a Madeline fan. 

I love putting my tree up, and I don't mind taking it down, either. Which I'll be doing, I'm guessing, the day after New Year's. Packing all my little friends away until next Christmas.

With that, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

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In keeping with Pink Slip tradition, I take the week between Christmas and New Year's off and will return on January 3rd.

Merry Goopness, Gwyneth Paltrow

Yesterday's virtual window shopping stroll was through the Neiman-Marcus Fantasy Gifts catalogue. Today, I thought we'd tone it down, cost-wise, but still keep it in the realm of the outré, by poking around on Gwyneth Paltrow's site, Goop.  So much to look at, so much to chortle over. But I have restrained myself to picking just one favorite from each of her Gift Guides.

Wellness  There are dozens of tantalizing items in this guide, but I'm going with the set of five pre-rolled cones for only $19. According to Goop, "to be blunt, these are the best cones on the market." To be blunt, who even knew there was such a thing as a "pre-rolled cone"? Back in the day, if you couldn't roll 'em in a Zig Zag paper, you bought a pack of unfiltered cigarettes, wiggled the tobacco out of a cig, and stuffed it with pot. 

Lovers Lots of X-rated unmentionables in here. (Okay, so I'll mention some: vibrators, undies, bras.) And some of the usual suspects: wine, flowers. I was going to go with the holistic relationship and sex coaching. Or the rose garden coaching. But in the spirit of the season, I went with the $90 red bow. You put it on our head - presumably when you have nothing much more on than the Goop bustier and garter belt - and, voila, you're the gift.

Men Heavy on the booze-, red meat-, and electronics-related. You know. Manly stuff for manly men. Well, I'm not a man, manly or otherwise. And, sadly, I don't have a man, manly or otherwise. But given that Gwyneth is getting into bitcoin, how about the Gemini crypto card that lets you earn crypto rewards instead of boring old points. You can't actually get the card quite yet. But Gwyneth invites men giftees to get on the waitlist. After all, as we're told, "the future is now." (The future is now? Is that even possible? Maybe in Goop-ville.)

Travelers Sure, there were plenty of trips on there that I'd like to take, but my eye was drawn to the lovely pink watch cap, or, as it is now known, beanie. It's only $395. And if I really felt like traveling, I'd spring for the matching crewneck sweater for $895. But then I remembered being on a flight to Paris, years ago. And reading the Air France inflight rag. An article on how to spot an American tourist. Unlike chic Parisian women, in navy, ecru, and black, Americans would be wearing pink or turquoise. Hmmm. I had on a pink sweater, and the other sweater in my luggage was turquoise. 

Forward-to-Your-SO I was ruing the fact that I don't have an SO to forward anything to, but then found that the gifts were only for forwarding to your SO if your SO were female. My favorite item in this catalog? $400 cashmere bloomers. Seriously, Gwyneth, what SO would want these? 

The Under-$100 Gift Guide Under $100? Now you're talking. I was a bit tempted by the $25 Wisdom Club that lets you know what's in the stars for you in 2022. Then I saw it was monthly. Which adds up to a lot more than Under-$100. It probably works like those ads for the car leases for the car with the red bow on it. Maybe your SO pays the first month, and you're stuck with the rest. So I'm going with the $60 Churro Fiesta-in-a-Box. Yummers.

Cooks I already have an electric kettle, which I use all the time. Thus I don't really need the Stagg EKG Electric Kettle for $169. Still, it would have been my pick from this guide if I hadn't seen the frozen coffee pods from Cometeer for only $64. Cometeer is a local "coffee tech" startup, which I blogged about a couple of months ago. And now they've made it big enough that Goop is showcasing their product. Gwyneth and I both apparently have an eye for a promising up and comer. Way to go, Cometeer.

Kids Lots of adorbs baby stuff in here. I have an adorbs baby to buy for coming up in another couple of weeks, but I was thinking more along my usual lines: books and, ah, books, and, em, books. But I do need to ask a question. Who in their right mind would pay $240 for seven pairs of baby socks, even if they are from Hermès? 

Hosts Some standard upscale host/hostess gifts in this guide, but would it ever occur to you to bring a pair of $198 men's pajamas as a gift for your host. Unless you had something in mind...The strangest gift on this list, IMHO, is of the woke variety. As in paying for Therapy Reparations Sessions for BIPOC. I mean, good cause and everything. And I guess it would work for the host(ess) who has everything. Maybe Gwyneth wanted to support this cause, but just couldn't figure out what category it belonged under. (Suggestion for Gwyneth: put it under Wellness next time.)

Ridiculous but Awesome Everything about Goop (and Gwyneth Paltrow, for that matter) is pretty much awesomely ridiculous, so I had high hopes for this gift guide. Hopes weren't dashed! In-person Air Jordan sneaker making class. Only $5K. (A thousand extra if you want to use (unspecified) exotic materials.) Because who wouldn't want to know how to DIY a pair of kicks? But in my book, the most ridiculous item is a $32K Chanel sled. (It's actually a flying saucer, but who am I to quibble with Gwyneth Paltrow.)

Shopping excursion's over, and I'm now exahusted. So much for my becoming someone's personal shopper. I'll just leave it all up to Gwyneth to curate for me.

N-M Fantasy Catalogue's thinner this year - but still plenty cray

One of my Christmas traditions is thumbing (virtually) through the Neiman-Marcus Fantasy Gifts (virtual) catalog. What's on offer is never my fantasy, mind you. Yet I'm always intrigued by what's inside.

Last year, what with covid and N-M's financial woes, I found the catalogue somewhat thin. This year's edition is even thinner. And while never too rich, never too thin may be the mantra for N-M shoppers, I don't think it's supposed to apply to the catalogue. 

Nonetheless, whatever made it in to the N-M wishbook was interesting enough to merit a comment or two.

If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it

First up, the Mughal Heart Diamond. 

Beyoncé warned men (quite regressively, I must say) that if they like it, they shoulda put a ring on it. But it was Marilyn Monroe who led the way, telling us oh so many years ago that diamonds are a girl's best friend. Especially if someone's going to shell out $6.1 million for a 30.86 carat "internally flawless" rock that has been "coveted by royalty and notable American and European families for more than a century." Talk about put a ring on it. 

And you don't just get the diamond for that kind of money, either. You get renaming rights. Out with Mughal, in with Elon Musk wannabe. The gem is mounted in a ring setting but a) wouldn't it be a little too heavy to wear unless you're keeping our hand in an arm sling? and b) would you wear a $6.1M ring out without a couple of bodyguards?

I think I'll just take the trip to Portugal if that's okay

Plummeting in price from the heights of the soon-to-be-renamed-Mughal diamond is a set of personalized dinnerware that comes with a trip to Portugal. Or the trip comes with the dinnerware. I'm not sure which. Anyway, 

...the pièce de resistance of the trip is the exclusive fine porcelain dinnerware set for 12 designed by you, customized with monograms, a family crest, or a motif of your choosing—it’s the perfect way to keep the memories of your European adventure alive with every dinner party.

Portugal is definitely on my bucket list, but I'm really not interested in personalized dinnerware. I have a perfectly serviceable set of Dansk Bistro, remarkably unchipped after 40 years in use, that I got at the Dansk outlet in Kittery, Maine. And I still love it. 

Who needs monograms? Who has a family crest? Other than those bogus ones they sell all over Ireland. And would you want to eat off of that? Not to mention that hosting a "dinner party" for twelve would give me a nervous breakdown, unless said "dinner party" involved pizza or takeout Chinese. 

But the trip to Portugal? I'm there. Or I will be someday, and for a lot less than $80K.

What's wrong with checking the book out of the library?

I guess that even luxurians don't want to overspend on their kiddos, so for the low, low price of $35K you can:

Ignite your child’s imagination with the Little People, BIG DREAMS™ London Adventure. The perfect gift for avid readers and dreamers alike, this exciting trip will have you and your little one working closely with an illustrator and author to cowrite your own inspirational story and turn it into a book.

Is it just me, or does this have spoiled brat written all over it?

Let's not turn that little one into a narcissist or anything. So how about this: give the kid a pad of paper and some crayons and have them illustrate a book on their own. If you want to help your child co-write their "own inspirational story" - or, better yet, non-inspirational story -  go for it. Just don't put too many words in their mouth, which is what the co-writing author in London will be doing. 

This gift does come with a library of the Little People BIG DREAMS books, so your kid can read up on Elton John, Amanda Gordon, Frida Kahlo, Charles Darwin, Jane Goodall and a whole host of children who made good as adults. David Bowie. Coco Chanel. Jesse Owens. RuPaul. And even a child who's made good without yet becoming an adult. That would be Greta Thunberg. 

Of course, you could buy these books at your local indie for a lot less than $35K. And - get this - you could probably even check them out of your local library. 

So it doesn't come with "25 beautifully printed and hardbound copies of your special edition." But there's always Kinko and a stapler for the DIY masterpiece your little darling can work on instead. 

Charleston! Charleston!

I've never heard of Bronson Van Wyck, but I guess if you want to throw a splosh party in NYC, he's your man. And for $395K he'll throw a raging Roaring Twenties Party for you at the Apollo Theater. 

During this unique experience, the legendary Harlem landmark will open its doors specially for you and 19 guests. Start the night by seeing your name in lights on the marquee, then get ready to be transported back to the decade of decadence and dance the night away on the famed Apollo stage.

Unfortunately, I don't know 19 people who would be willing to put on a Gatsby-inspired costume - even if the par-tay throws in "flapper-esque costume accessories to complete your and your guests' ensemble." Not to mention "1920s-style hair and makeup" for everyone. I can just imagine how a feather boa and a sequinned headband would look with my standard dress up regalia: black pants and a nice top. And I really don't want my hair cut in a short bob. 

And there'd also be the nagging overhang over the entire event. As in what came after the Roaring Twenties? 

Guests all do get an autographed copy of van Wyck's book that, admittedly, comes with an excellent title "Born to Party, Forced to Work." (Sadly, my memoir would be better titled "Born to Work, Forced to Party.")

Schuss!

I'm sure there are plenty of skiers out there who would savor the opportunity to hit the slopes with Lindsay Vonn in Jackson Hole. But would it be worth $235K? Even if it comes with three nights in a suite at a swanky boutique hotel - complete with concierge. Not to mention designer skiwear (from N-M) for you and your buds, and a pair of Lindsey Vonn YNIQ ski goggles. Lift tickets also included.

There's something about this that's just a bit off...

Consider the quandary that someone who likes to drive big might have. He - and a I'm pretty sure I mean he here - wants to roam the earth in a behemoth, a beast. The kind of vehicle that screams 'get the f out of my way.' That's fueled as much on testosterone as it is on fossil fuel. That gets 10 m.p.g.

And that's your quandary. You want the beast. But you're also environmentally aware. 

Neiman-Marcus is offering a $285K answer. 

Make every drive a journey to remember with the one-of-a-kind BARRETT-JACKSON HUMMER EV Edition 1, the world’s first fully electric super truck. Presented by Barrett-Jackson, The World’s Greatest Collector Car Auctions®, this exclusive edition is the ultimate gift for drivers with an eye on the future.

No word on the mileage, but this Hummer does have a custom interior curated by an automotive expert. And a bespoke steering wheel - whatever that means. 

I dunno. Something about an EV Hummer just strikes me as being just a bit off.

And that's that for this year's skimpy little old N-M Fantasy Gifts. Skimpy or not, as always, it's plenty cray-cray. And definitely not for the light of pocketbook. 

Enjoy your window shopping!

Thank you, Judge Colleen McMahon

Pharmaceutical companies are a decidedly mixed bag of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good is that they, of course, produce drugs that make us healthier and sometimes even save our lives. So thank you, Pfizer, Moderna, et al. for coming up with the covid vaccines.

The ugly is the price gouging, the chokehold they have on Congress that gets in the way of things like negotiated Medicare drug costs, and a reasonable price for drugs like insulin. (Americans pay about eight times as much for insulin as Canadians do.) The drug company defense is always that they need to invest a lot of money in R&D. Which is true. Except how does it happen that drug costs are so much higher in The States than any other comparable country? And then there's the fact the drugmakers spend a ton more - I've heard more than an order of magnitude - on marketing than they do on R&D. So there's that.

Then there's the bad, which is the behavior exhibited by Purdue Pharma, and its owners the Sackler family, over the years when they were knowingly and deliberately getting people hooked on OxyContin. (This was spectacularly chronicled by journalist Patrick Radden Keefe in his book Empire of Pain. And which I wrote less spectacularly about in a post last June.) 

And now we can circle back to the good:

A federal judge rejected OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy settlement of thousands of lawsuits over the opioid epidemic Thursday because of a provision that would protect members of the Sackler family from facing litigationof their own.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in New York found that federal bankruptcy law does not give the bankruptcy judge who had accepted the plan the authority to grant that kind of release for people who are not declaring bankruptcy themselves. (Source: Boston Globe)

Thank you, Judge McMahon. You ruled good!

To many, the settlement was plenty rich, worth $10B, of which $4.5B was to be ponied up by the Sacklers. But then you run the numbers, and find that, with 500,000 Oxy-related deaths in the U.S. to date, it works out to about $20K per capita. Not that all those deaths can be blamed on the Sacklers. But still. $20K?

Plus the settlement protected the Sacklers and their fortunes from being touched by law suits, of which there are over 800 pending. (I'm not the only one who's happy this settlement has been tossed. Imagine what a smile there'd be on your face if you were one of the hundreds going after them.)  

The Sackler family, for all its philanthropy (med schools, museums), has been plenty shady. 

In a hearing, McMahon focused in on how Sackler family members transferred $10.4 billion from the privately held Stamford, Connecticut-based company over the decade before the bankruptcy. McMahon wanted to know whether the money was moved in part to ensure a role for the Sacklers in bankruptcy negotiations.

But that wasn't the basis for McMahon's ruling, which asked the question "whether the bankruptcy law even allows for the kind of deal the company and its creditors struck if there are objections to it." Which there were. 

In any event, the ruling has been welcomed by plenty of folks, including a string of state AG's.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who was among a handful of state officials seeking to have the deal undone, called the ruling “a seismic victory for justice and accountability.” Tong said the ruling will “re-open the deeply flawed Purdue bankruptcy and force the Sackler family to confront the pain and devastation they have caused.”

Needless to say, the ruling will be appealed, and will probably make it up to the Supreme Court. 

Who knows how this edition will rule. I haven't looked to see what the Federalist Society, the puppeteers for the current SCOTUS majority, have had to say about cases like this, but this Court is certainly difficult to trust.

Anyway, for now the Sacklers are sweating. To them this ruling no doubt looks bad and ugly. But me, I see it as a good thing. A very good thing.

Thank you, Judge Colleen McMahon. 

In the midst of plenty, school teachers have to resort to this

A week or so ago, something rolled by me on Twitter that I found quite disturbing. And heartbreaking. The tweet held a link to a video of some teachers in South Dakota, on their hands and knees on a mat in the middle of an ice rink, trying to grab as much cash as they could - stuffing it into their shirts, etc. -  to buy equipment and supplies for their classrooms.

The event was held during an intermission at a Sioux Falls, SD Stampede hockey game. The cash was provided by local lender CU Mortgage Direct.

When the competition began, the teachers — all wearing hockey helmets — crawled into the pile of cash, frantically stuffing the bills into their shirts as an arena of spectators hollered and cheered until every dollar was snatched up. (Source: WaPo)

I'm sure this was a well-intentioned, and I'm sure that the teachers were happy to get the money. But I found it completely mortifying and degradingto the teaching profession in general, and to these teachers in particular.

Plenty of people think that teaching is a cushy job. All that time off. Those easy-peasy hours. 

But such people have apparently never known any teachers, other than the ones they gazed upon as students, IRL. The teachers I know all work incredibly hard. They spend their summers creating and refining their lesson plans. They spend their last few days of vacation preparing their classrooms. They spend their evenings correcting assignments and devising new ones. They spend time emailing with students and parents. (Let's not even get into all the time they have to spend adjusting to virtual and hybrid learning.)

And they spend money out of their own pockets for equipment and supplies to make their classrooms a richer and more interesting environment, and to make sure that the kids who can't afford even basic school supplies have what they need. Some teachers even spend their own money on food, clothing, and hygiene items for their students.

Believe me, I'm well aware that there are plenty of lousy teachers. Cynical burnouts, incompetents, those who chose teaching because it was the path of the least resistance. But most teachers choose their profession because they love children and want to help them learn. And they do this even though their profession is often maligned, their work often thankless. 

In some communities, teachers are paid fairly well.

Even so, why should they have to spend their own money on anything other than extra items like seasonal decorations to grace their walls? Necessary equipment and supplies, for classroom or for students, should be paid for by the school. Period. 

South Dakota isn't a place where teachers make much money. 

South Dakota teachers are among the lowest paid in the country. According to a recent report by the National Education Association, South Dakota teachers in the 2019-20 fiscal year earned an average annual salary of about $49,000, behind only Mississippi. In terms of per-student spending, the state ranked 38th, having spent about $10,800 per student in the fall term of that year, according to the report.

The cost of living in South Dakota is a lot lower than it is in Boston or LA, and someone has to be last - or second to last, as Mississippi generally owns last place in most measures of education, health, and general welfare. But making $49K and having to equip your own classroom...

Sigh.

The blowback to the Dash for Cash event was immediate. Millions of people viewed the video, and a lot of them found the spectacle of teachers on their hands and knees as shameful as I did. "Dehumanizing," it was called. "Dystopian." The hockey team that sponsored the event has apologized.

The scramble reminded me of something straight out of Hunger Games, but there's a more current reference:

Some compared the spectacle to the popular Netflix series “Squid Game,” in which the show’s characters compete in deadly games to win a giant piggy bank full of cash.

The teachers, for their part, were happy to have the dough, happy for a break from paying out of pocket. And some of them are probably wondering what all the fuss is about. Just some coastal elites getting all cranked up about something that lets them look down on the rubes. MYOB, you snobs. 

But there's something truly disgraceful that, in the midst of plenty, school teachers have to resort to this to get what they need.

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There's an non-profit called Donors Choice that helps teachers fund projects to help their students. I just donated to help buy books for the middle school in the neighborhood I grew up in. I went to parochial school, but am happy to help support "the pubs."  

Tummy tuck vs. brain surgery? Which should be the priority? Hmmmm...

The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), the union which represents the nursing staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital, is asking the Department of Public Health to take a closer look at the surgeries that Brigham has been scheduling now that there's a state order in force to reduce electtive surgeries to alleviate some of the covid pressure on hospitals.

Because, despite our high vaccination rate - as of today, we rank fifth among states (and the only four ahead of us are fellow New Englanders: VT, RI, ME, CT -  we still have a lot of people being hospitalized due to covid.

Not surprising, most of those in dire enough shape to be hospitalized are non-vaxxers. And they're selfishly and idiotically hogging beds that could be used for people who need them for something other than covid. 

And with the state requiring a reduction in elective surgery, it means that the procedures that do get scheduled mean bumping someone else further back in the queue. 

Here's what the MNA told the state:

The union wrote that nonessential surgeries such as tummy tucks were continuing unabated as patients who need urgent surgery for broken bones and brain injuries were sometimes waiting for operating rooms.

“We don’t see any action by the hospital at all to try to curb elective surgeries,” said Trish Powers, an operating room nurse who chairs the union bargaining committee at the Brigham.

“We feel extremely overwhelmed, not just the nurses, but physicians, technicians — everybody is so overwhelmed,” she said. “We’re understaffed and have way too many patients.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Tummy tucks, eh?  

Hard to think of any other surgery that's more elective, unless it's a facelift, nosejob, or that weird thing women were having done a few years back where they removed their little toe so that they could fit more comfortably in their pointy-toed Manolo Blahniks.

Okay, so they're not actually postponing emergency brain surgery in favor of procedures like tummy tucks. 

Still, elective surgeries aren't all vanity projects. A knee or hip replacement counts as elective surgery. Shouldn't something that helps someone become more mobile and reduces their pain take precedence over someone who wants their jelly roll reduced? Come on, lady, just put on a pair of Spanx. 

And not all elective surgeries are nice to haves, either. 

They include surgeries for patients with cancer and other serious conditions.

Hospital officials have countered that they're complying with the order, which "applies to surgeries that require patients to stay overnight in the hospital, not outpatient procedures that allow patients to go home the same day." 

Most tummy tucks are day surgery, letting the hospitals off the hook. 

Still, the optics are pretty bad when someone can't get their knee replaced but someone who wants a tummy tuck can get the deed done.

And although nothing I read indicated that the MNA was actually accusing Brigham of doing tummy tucks - that might well be an extrapolation by the Boston Globe - I believe the nurses when they say that elective surgeries are chugging right along at a faster rate than it should be.

The hospital has every reason to rev up elective surgeries: they're a big source of revenue. And it's a big source of money for the doctors who perform them. 

Would it be any surprise if the Brigham were complying with the letter of the law - reducing elective surgeries that require overnight stays - while actually encouraging more still- lucrative day surgeries? Like tummy tucks?

The nurses also argue that, because of the incresaed volume in covid patients, those with elective procedures who require an overnight stay may end up waiting on a gurney in a corridor waiting for a room to free up. (Trust me, you do not want this to happen to you or a loved one.)

The DPH is reviewing the MNA complaint.

As I said, I tend to trust the nurses here. 

We'll see how this plays out. 

Well, they do say you eat a peck of dirt before you die

I suspect that Multi Level Marketing (MLM) schemes have been around forever.  I'll even bet that back in the day, Ugga was going cave to cave to sign up Ogga and Glogga to push pebbles from their local stream. And that Ogga and Glogga fanned out to the caves of Klugga, Glugga, Ugga, and Trogga to get them onboard to sell more pebbles, sign up more Neanderthals, and earn swell things like a sabre-tooth tiger necklace or a musk ox cape. 

MLM's? Likely as old as dirt.

And in the case of Black Oxygen Organics, the product itself was dirt.

And it wasn't dirt cheap.

 ...four-and-a-half ounces of it, sealed in a sleek black plastic baggie and sold for $110 plus shipping. Visitors to the Black Oxygen Organics website, recently taken offline, were greeted with a pair of white hands cradling cups of dirt like an offering. “A gift from the Ground,” it reads. “Drink it. Wear it. Bathe in it.” (Source: NBC News)

And don't just drink, wear, and bathe in it for the sake of drinking, wearing, and bathing in it.  BOO, which is what the product was called, was a miracle cure-all. Happy, all-cured users:

...posted miraculous testimonials of cured diseases, weight loss, clearer skin, whiter teeth, regrown hair, reclaimed energy, expelled worms and even changes in eye color (from brown to blue)...

There were: 

 ...claims [of] many benefits and uses, including improved brain function and heart health, and ridding the body of so-called toxins that include heavy metals, pesticides and parasites.

(Does it also rid the ear of heavy metal earworms from AC/DC and Black Sabbath?) 

Anyway, it goes without saying that, with all the misinformation floating around there, anti-vaxxers and covid-skeptics glommed right on. After all, if BOO could turn your brown eyes blue, what might it do for you during a pandemic?

It also goes without saying that the BOO MLM takeoff was propelled by the Internet: Facebook groups devoted to the wonders of BOO, TikTok testimonials, Instas of folks slathering on the black stuff.

All these social media BOO-ers were upping the ante on what BOO is good for. Cure for autism? Come on down! Cancer: begone! Alzheimer's: fuggedaboutit! And it's most current breakthrough: BOO "protects against and treats Covid-19." And can detox more than heavy metals. If you're a vaccine-regretter who feels you were conned into getting the jab, you can use BOO to detox that Moderna and Pfeizer right out of your system.

Who needs Dr. Fauci and his experts/schmexperts when there are TikTok testimonials from those in the know? Who know the pandemic is a hoax, that vaccines are killers, that the number of deaths recorded is fake news. 

More people were buying BOO, and more people were selling BOO. In September, the company reported that over the past six months, monthly sales had increased from $200K to $4M. (This mirrored the timing on when social media BOOsters started in earnest.)

But success came at a price. Canadian and U.S. health regulators have cracked down on BOO in recent months, initiating recalls and product holds at the border, respectively. And just as an online army of fans powered BOO’s success, an oppositional force of online skeptics threatened to shut it down.

And then, the inevitable happened and a few weeks ago "the company announced in an email it was closing up shop for good." 

Leaving its sellers, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid scheme, eating dirt. Rather than hitting the paydirt of making tens of thousands of dollars in your first month alone, they were out the money they'd fronted for product, and weren't able to deliver the goods to the folks they'd swept in as customers and/or resellers.

No surprise here - other than to those who got swept in:

More than 99 percent of MLM sellers lose money, according to the Consumer Awareness Institute, an industry watchdog group. 

I do have a tiny bit of sympathy for those who lost a lot of money on BOO, but how is it that people in this day and age aren't aware of how MLM's work? Surely, most of the easily duped would have been duped already.

Just guess it's true that you're going eat a peck of dirt before you die.