"People here want to be known for something."

When I was growing up, part of the geography lesson was learning what industry a city or state was known for. Rhode Island had jewelry. Hartford, insurance. Pittsburgh was famous for making steel, Detroit for cars. Winston-Salem made cigarettes, Tampa rolled cigars. Kansas gave us wheat, Florida grew oranges.

Worcester, Massachusetts, didn't have any one thing it was known for, but manufacturing was big. And a lot of the manufacturing done in Worcester was industrial, often producing components for other heavy-duty industries.

Wyman-Gordon produced forgings that went into aircraft engines. Norton made abrasives. My father worked at Thompson Wire, which made fine wires. He started out working in the mill, became a foreman, and was then promoted to sales. He mostly sold to companies in the Midwest, and I remember that one of his customers was Delco Spark Plugs of Flint, Michigan, the birthplace of GM.

I never knew what town was known for making firetrucks. But if you lived in Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, for the past 75 years or so, you would have said Nesquehoning. That is you would have said Nesquehoning up until April, when KME is shutting down, putting 400 folks out of work.

“Nesquehoning and KME were kind of like one and one with each other,” said Trey Koerbler, 37, who lived a few blocks from the factory, rode on the KME trucks as a volunteer firefighter and used to work at the plant, just as his uncle and grandfather once did.

“It’s a pride thing,” he said. (Source: Washington Post)

I know, I know, time and the economy march on. Companies go out of business, entire industries get disrupted and pull a disappearing act. New jobs replace the old, and that will be true for the 400 newly unemployed firetruck makers of Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania.

If you're going to be unemployed, this is a good time for it. The economy is hopping, and there are a lot of jobs out there. Okay, they may not be what you want to do. They may not be located where you want to live. And they may not pay quite you were making as an industrial worker. But still...

...something harder to measure was being lost.

That something was built by Sonny Kovatch, who came back from the Pacific and began improving on his father's garage. Over time, he grew it into a manufacturing firm that became one of the largest firetruck companies in he country. Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, LA, New York. They all bought KME trucks. And KME, as the lead company in town, supported the community in ways large and small that an outsider would never do. 

Anyway, that "something harder to measure" started to be lost a few years back, when KME - a home grown, local outfit - was bought by out of towners - a PE firm - which started doing what PE firms do best. None of which does much good for the folks who were working at a place before PE stuck their mitts in.

The inevitable happened, and KME is closing its doors.

Life will go on - even though Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, will grow poorer and drearier and less sure of itself. 

“People here want to be known for something,” said Jesse Walck, business manager for the local school district. “And now what will that be? Nothing.”

People everywhere want to be known for something. People want to have pride in place. 

Worcester has lost a lot of those manufacturing firms that were there when I was growing up, like Thompson Wire, which is long gone. Other companies have been streamlined and employ a lot fewer folks (Wyman Gordon, Norton) than they did in the heyday of Worcester as a manufauring center. But Worcester is still known for "stuff". All those colleges. Biotech. Insurance. Robert Goddard, whose genius kicked off the space age. The smiley face. The valentine. Denis Leary. 

Nesquehoning, Pennsylvania, never had as much going for it as the Heart of the Commonwealth does. And now they won't have the firetrucks. 

Another Rust Belt loss story.

Sad.

And you thought the Moonies were nutters

These days, it's so very, very difficult to absorb the news. 

Every day seems to run the gamut from the ludicrous (Rudy Giuliani appearing on The Masked Singer), to the pathetic (Don Jr.'r coke-fueled Instagram screeds), to the moronic (going nuts about Minnie Mouse's pant suit), to the stultifying (banning Maus, the graphic novel about the Holocaust), to the gallingly racist (the Black woman in Tennessee sentenced to 6 years in prison for voting as a felon - after her parole officer told her it was okay), and beyond. The pandemic/the anti-vaxxers. The Trump rallies. Voter suppression. The emerging evidence of the attempted coup. Weather craziness. Russia v. Ukraine. 

All of it terrifying. Relentlessly so.

Every day, every hour, every minute, yet another existential threat. 

So what's another story about an AR15-worshipping religo cult in Tennessee? Just another spatula-full of poison frosting on an arsenic-laced case, I guess. 

Still, it's so peculiar, so peculiarly American, so wacko, so crazy-arsed Moonie, that it's worth pausing on for just a moment or two to think about it.

The Rod of Iron Ministries, also known as The World of Peace and Unification Sanctuary, is run by Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, a conspiracy theorist who proclaims that his followers are at war with the “deep state”.

The group has a growing following among MAGA supporters and Second Amendment devotees, and has attracted Trump allies Steve Bannon and former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch to appear at a Freedom Festival [in January].

Mr Moon’s late father Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who died in 2012, headed the Unification Church cult whose followers were known as the “Moonies”. (Source: Independent/UK)

And they've bought some property in the mountains of Tennessee to set up a retreat - remote enough that they can shoot off their AR15s to their crazy little hearts' conent. They're on something of a buying spree, having also bought land near Waco - yes, that Waco - Texas. (Oh, give me land, lots of land...)

The Moon business is diversified. They don't just have their schismatic religion - an offshoot of the Unification Church, and their property holdings. Sean Moon's bro Justin - formal name: Kook-jin (how apt) - runs a gun manufacturing company. (How convenient.)

(Sean and Justin are Trumpists, who took part in the January 6, 2021 pro-Trump gathering in DC. Not clear if they actually took part in the riot in the Capitol Building.)

Guns play an important role in the Sanctuary Church's liturgy.

Sean Moon claims his inclusion of AR-15s into his church’s worship ceremonies is Biblically based, citing a passage in the Book of Revelation that speaks of Jesus using a “rod of iron” to assert his authority during the End Times. Traditional readings of the verses interpret the “rod of iron” to be a shepherd’s staff, which was a symbol of authority, particularly when in reference to Jesus. 

Under Sean Moon’s reading, the rod of iron was not a sceptre or staff, but an American-made AR-15.

No surprise, there are plenty of other nutty aspects to this "church." But, hey, most religions have some aspects that appear nutty to a non-believer. And if you want to be a nutter in your church, as long as you don't come after me and mine, have at it.  

It's the combo of right-wing politics and gun lust that bothers me. Sean Moon wants to make this "an incubator for future MAGA politicians."

Swell.

I'm not sure whether they're still there, but the traditional Moonies - who've been around these parts at least since the 1970's - used to own a very large building just up the hill from where I live. Unless you got sucked in and were a member, they were mostly harmless to those of us on the outside. Oh, there may have been a little larceny in the hearts of some of them. Long ago, my sister Kath was in operations at a big financial services firm. There was a bit of a scandal when some Moonies had infiltrated the back end of the firm and were siphoning money into Moonie accounts. 

But I don't believe the mass Moonie weddings - the ones where thousands of couples were wed simultaneously - were of the shotgun variety.

This Sanctuary Church is something else.

Ah, for the kinder, gentler time when we thought the Moonies were nutters. 

Out with the olds?

I'm not sure if I'd count in any statistics - I probably average only about 5 hours paid work each week - but the thing is that a lot more people over the age of 70 are still working than there used to be. 

Part of this is thanks to better health, part to economic need, part to just wanting to stay in the game.

With the little I make, I couldn't support myself. But it's still nice to have, plus I like having something to do beyond making a day's event out of going to the drugstore for a new toothbrush. Yes, volunteering does make up for some of the 'nice to have something to do' thang, but my work - freelance marketing writing about technology-based products and services - is interesting, I'm good at it, and it's gratifying to get paid (well enough) for doing something I majorly enjoy.

And I'm exceedingly grateful that I was able to get out of full-time corporate marketing work while the gittin' was good. I.e., when I was in my early 50's. When I left corporate - and for a long time after - I was still working at a more-or-less full-time clip. Only it was doing freelance work: flexible and more under my control. (Easier to fire a client than walk away from a good full-time job.) And it sure made it easier to wind things down as my desire to work all that hard began to wane. I was able to preserve some income and (more important) relationships and connections rather than go cold turkey. 

Nowadays, for all we hear about the labor shortage and the demand for workers at all ages, we also hear an awful lot about folks in the 50's and 60's getting pushed out of their work before they're ready, willing, or able to hang it up. And one of the sectors where this is most apparent is the tech industry, which is where I've spent my career.

What's just happened to a bunch of gray-hairs at IBM is a good example.

Remember Lotus?

If you were in the corporate world in the 1980's, you sure do.

Oh, there were spreadsheets before Lotus 1-2-3 (VisiCalc, MultiPlan). And here was even a very good one right after 1-2-3 (Javelin). But none of them took off the way Lotus did. 

By the mid-1980's, if your work had anything to do in any way, shape, or form with numbers, you were using Lotus 1-2-3.

And then, somewhere in the 1990's, once Microsoft Windows had become the de facto operating system and app suite for corporate, and graphical user interfaces displaced boring old green/black screen DOS-based apps, we weren't using Lotus anymore. We were using Excel. 

(Haven't thought about it in years, but over the course of my career, I had a lot of peripheral involvement in the spreadsheet wars. This included working for a company that had done a deal with Microsoft to acquire a kabillion licenses for their clunker of a spreadsheet - that would be MultiPlan - just before Lotus took off; and working for a company that tried to do some sort of deal with Javelin to integrate it with that product I was managing. I loved Javelin, which "understood" time series data. And I seem to remember interviewing for a job I didn't get at Trellix Software - whatever they did - with Dan Bricklin, who was the inventor of VisiCalc, the very first spreadsheet. Ah, it's all coming back to me. Can't remember why Trellix didn't hire me. Their loss. Oh, and one time I sat near Lotus founder Mitch Kapor on the Eastern Shuttle to NYC. He was a Sloan School drop out, but I don't think we overlapped there.)

So what's this got to do with IBM laying off a bunch of little old gray-haired/gray-beard workers?

In the mid-1990's, IBM acquired Lotus.

Fast forward a couple of decades and change, and:

Dozens of former Massachusetts employees, many of them Lotus veterans, are among more than 1,000 laid-off workers nationally who have charged IBM with forcing out older staffers over the past decade as part of a strategy to build a younger workforce. All of the employees were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s when they lost their jobs. IBM has been fighting the charges for over two years, saying they have no merit.

Taken together, the allegations — filed both in federal court and with hundreds of private arbitrators — amount to one of the largest age discrimination cases in US history. At a time of heightened attention to racial and gender issues, the ex-IBMers are spotlighting what they say is another pervasive, though often hidden, bias in corporate America. (Source: Boston Globe)

While this is not my "lived experience," there is not one scintilla - or is it an iota? - of doubt in my mind that there is rampant age bias out there in corporate land.  

The stories of the plaintiffs are sad. They were in their late 50's, their early 60's, when IBM lowered the boom on their long careers with the company, some dating back to the Lotus days. They liked their work. They were good at it. They felt blindsided and betrayed when they got pink slipped, often right after a glowing review. 

And now they're trying to get class action status for their complaint. This won't be all that eaasy. Thanks to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, "employers have been able to effectively channel many age discrimination complaints to private arbitration hearings where the proceedings and outcomes are invisible to the public."

But attorneys are trying to make the invisible visible, and make public IBM internal communications about youth-ifying their workforce - while letting 20,000 employees go (most over the age of 40).

Some IBM documents already in the public realm called on managers to focus on “healthy attrition targets” in 2016 and “early professional hires” in 2020, while moving aggressively to “correct [the] seniority mix” among employees in some business areas. The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, passed in 1967, prohibits employers from treating workers age 40 and over differently from younger staffers in hiring, promotion, and discharge.

"Correct [the] seniority mix." Hmmm. Smells like Teen Spirit to me.

The aggrieved ex-IBMers are (mostly) trying to find work. But it's hard because they are - of course! - meeting with age discrimination. 

There are plenty of things that companies could do instead of just summarily jettisoning their older employees.

Create new roles that include tasks like mentoring and internal consulting. Make some jobs for old geezers part time. Old geezers get to keep their jobs, newbies (future old geezers) get to step into better positions. Oldies who need more income than a part time job yields can spend their days off working. (Sadly, that may mean driving for Uber or bagging groceries at Trader Joe's.)

If picking up the higher health care costs associated with an aging workforce are such a turnoff, maybe the government can lower the age for Medicare eligibility to 60 and let companies opt into paying into that for their olds. 

Older workers can manage their expectations - and the expectations of potential employers - by settling for lower pay, but greater flexibility. Pitch the potential employer on the benefits of mentoring, internal consulting, etc. 

I find myself offering plenty of career advice - and suggestions for coping with the every day job crap -  to the younger folks I work with at my client companies. Sometimes I'm not even aware I'm doing it until someone thanks me for being a sounding board, helping them think things through, resolve an issue with their manager, get that promotion, find that new job. And I often end up doing plenty of free consulting, too. Sure, they're paying me for writing, but it comes with plenty of free marketing and/or organizational advice. Okay, I don't charge for this stuff, but there are companies who would find it plenty valuable and useful. And would pay for it. 

Just because you don't know how to make a Tik-Tok doesn't mean you have nothing to offer!

Anyway, I hope the ex-IBM olds prevail. 

There's just got to be a better way to manage career arcs so that they extend from 20 something to 70 something. 

If there's a labor shortage out there - for positions beyond home health care aide and Walmart shelf-stocker - let's get on creating more reasonable and just professional career paths. 

For the record, I do think there's a time for the old folks to step aside. Take politics. Pat Leahy. Chuck Grassley. Diane Feinstein. Step aside, please. Make way for the younger brigade. Especially at the top. 

Out with the olds throughout the ranks of corporate America? NEVER!

News from Ireland. (Jaysus!)

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a deep and abiding affection for Ireland. When I first stepped toe in the country (way back in 1973), I fell in love with it in a way that I would not have expected. After all, I had all those years behind me of my grandmother saying "If Ireland were so great, we wouldn't have all had to come over here."

Nanny, of course, had never stepped any of her toes in Ireland. But her parents were immigrants, and I'm sure she was raised on plenty of 'why we had to come over here' stories. 

I'm glad that they did come over (subject to change if this country goes arse over teakettle into authoritarianism). Still, I love Ireland, and have been there many times. I have a deep appreciation for the people, the scenery, the music, the books, the craic, and - surprising to this someone who ate her grandmother's cooking - the food. 

And I always love that there's always some eccentric story or other coming out of the country.

The most recent eccentric story of the main headline variety is, of course, the Irish fishermen taking on the Russian naval fleet by protesting their war games off the Irish coast. But there was a story of the lesser headline variety that definitely caught my eye.

The story took place in Carlow Town, County Carlow, one of the many small shabby market towns that dot the Irish landscape. And what happened there is that a man went into the local post office, located in a small shop, and tried to cash a pension check. A pension check that wasn't his. 

The pension check belonged to one Peadar Doyle, and the man trying to cash the check was informed that Mr. Doyle would have to come in person to collect his cash.

Where there's a will, there's a way, so the first fellow soon returned, accompanied by another guy and Peadar Doyle. Peadar Doyle sort of.

What the two younger fellows were dragging betwen them was the propped up body of the ould one.

A woman in the shop got a tiny bit suspicious and alerted the staff. They called the emergency number, the two live ones fled the scene, and the amulance and gardaí arrived and declared Peadar dead.

Turns out one of the draggers was Declan Haughney, a nephew of the draggee. Declan was accompanied by friend Gareth Coakley. Declan lived with his uncle, and claims that he didn't realize that Peadar was dead when they headed out to the Oifig an Phoist. (That's Post Office to you, bucko.)

He has since admitted the pensioner may have died in transit as his body 'went a bit slumpy' while the trio were en route to the Post Office. (Source: Daily Mail)

Although there's no sign of foul play, the gardaí are saying that Peadar may have been dead up to three hours before he made his final journey. (Declan and Gareth have been arrested and detained for questioning.)

Declan is sticking to the story that he thought his uncle was still alive, if not kicking, when they set out. He says that his uncle had been going down hill, "under the bed...deteriorating" for the last while, but:

‘Peader was so frail and only weighed about six or seven stone so whenever he went out I would have to hold him up,’ he said. 

‘Looking back at what happened, I think he died at the bridge because his legs suddenly went limp, but myself and Gareth had no idea he passed away because this has happened a number of times before.’   

There is the question of what they were doing going out, given that Peadar was so weak and slumpy that he had to be dragged. But whatever. 

The family - Peadar was single, never married, had no children, but was close to his relatives, including many nieces and nephews - are apparently buying Declan's story, as he was one of the pallbearers for Peadar's funeral. (That's Declan with the red hair there.)

But some locals roughed him up, accusing him of being a murderer. 

I suspect Declan Haughney isn't a murderer. But he may be what the Irish (c.f., my grandmother) might call daft, an amadán, soft in the head, an eejit. Which Declan denies:

"I wasn’t trying to rob him. I’m not an eejit,” Haughney, who has lived with his uncle his entire life.

“Why would I want to rob my uncle? I’m 40 years of age yeah, I’m not a child, I’m not a young fella. I’m not an eejit to walk into Hoseys with a dead man and collect his money." (Source: Irish Central)

Talk about giving new meaning to "over my dead body."

Anyway, this strikes me as one of those quintessential Irish stories that, for all of Ireland's modernity and prosperity, continues to crop up from time to time. 

Is it any wonder I'm in love with this country?

The Selling of the President's Crap. (Not THIS President. THAT one.)

I'm sure that by now you've seen the news that Trump may be in a bit of financial trouble. All those leveraged properties. (Nearly a billion coming due.) All that declining business (especially now that he's not golfing at Mar-a-Lago on our dime every weekend, and putting the Secret Service up in overpriced hotel rooms). All those fraudulent valuations used to flim-flam banks and the IRS. (NY's AG breathing down his neck.) He may not be broke-broke, but he always lied about his worth. And that worth is worth a lot less than what he's claimed.

Thus we see him tapping the Republican Party coffers to pay for his legal bills. And the laughable specter of Mrs. Grifter-in-Chief trying to raise some pocket money by selling a hat she wore for an official state occasion. And an NFT of the hat. And selling it for - what else? - crypto. 

Trump did manage to make pretty good coin during his runs for office and time in the White House - all those MAGA hats - but what looks like a fortune to most of us is a pittance when you've got to keep the myth of supreme wealth going. 

He's still got his official physical and online stores, like the TrumpStore, which sells a few MAGA items, but mostly offers tacky apolitical overpriced Trump-branded stuff, like golf caps from one of his resorts. 

But the official wares are supplemented by a parallel economy of ersatz Trump-branded ephemera sold at roadside stands, state-fair booths, strip-mall stores, online marketplaces, and by a caravan of itinerant salespeople who follow him from rally to rally. (Source: The New Yorker)

This parallel economy includes LetsGoBrandon - which came up first when I googled. It's a site that predictably offers anti-Biden items. But, surprisingly, it also sells Let's Go Darwin merch, and some Black History themed T's (including a 1619 sweatshirt) that don't seem belittling or racist. 

I don't imagine they sell many of those, but anything for a buck, I guess.

Although LetsGoBrandon calls itself an official site - whatever that means - I'm guessing it's just a make-a-buck outfit that's grifting off the biggest grifter of them all, depriving Trump of the opportunity to bring in extra loot. 

There are plenty of those strip mall stores - more concrete block than brick and mortar - around, even in Massachusetts. I don't see anyone sporting anything to do with Trump from one month to the next, but I live in a total bubble. Among the tasteful items you can get at one of the New England for Trump stores is this crudely rendered Christmas ornament. Nothing says 'keep Christ in Christmas' like an FJB message using colors associated with the trans community. This is advertised as an LGB Snowflake Ornament. Given the colors, I first thought that the LGB stood for Lesbian, Gay, Bi - truncating the more inclusive LGBTQ acronym. But no. It's "Let's Go Brandon." 

Ho, ho, ho.

It's the "caravan of itinerant salespeople who follow him from rally to rally" that caught the eye of The New Yorker, which recently did a spread on them. (I can only imagine what the intersection is between Trump hucksters and New Yorker readers.)

Trump has a marketer’s instinct for catchphrases and in-jokes; the merchandising apparatus that’s sprung up around him is nimble enough that the meme of the moment—“Let’s Go, Brandon,” for example—can make its way onto shirts within days. The red maga hat, although still ubiquitous, is no longer the best-seller; several venders told me that, these days, anti-Biden merch is more popular than pro-Trump options. Shoppers like the “Jesus Is My King, Trump Is My President” shirts, but they also don’t mind a little vulgarity. I asked an elderly sovereign citizen in a salmon-colored sweater what his most popular items were. “Today, it’s ‘Fuck Biden,’ ” he said. “Sometimes it’s ‘Screw Biden,’ sometimes it’s ‘Biden Sucks and So Do You for Voting for Him,’ sometimes it’s ‘Fuck Biden, Fuck Harris, and Fuck You for Voting for Them.’ ” Then he corrected me: he didn’t sell his flags—he traded them, which meant, he believed, that he was not subject to commerce regulations. “Most people trade cash,” he admitted. “But I’ve been offered spare tires. I’ve been offered towing chains.”

Good to see that Trump crap venders have adopted his skim-where-you-can attitude toward regulation.

Last year was a tough one for Trump stuff venders. After the election year highs, there was the low of covid and the lack of rallies. The hope is that 2022 will bring Trump out more. 

Not all the rally merchandisers are true believers. But, as one businessman who follows the Trump industry, "we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity because of Donald Trump—conservative merchandise is just booming."

One of the merchants in the recent Arizona rally was just looking to make enough scratch to get back to Oklahoma and hire a lawyer. (He's got a felony B&E hanging over him.) "I don't mind him, I think, but it's financial for me," he told the reporter. 

But others are all in - even those who admit that the ACA has helped them out, etc. 

And they're all loving the possibility of Trump 2024 to keep the Trump merch gravy train going. 

As the fellow said, it's a "once in a generation" thang. I don't see the Trump rally and merch magic transferring to Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton, Nikki Haley, or Greg Abbott. 

As for Trump, I'm sure while he revels in whatever adulation comes his way at the rallies, it galls him that he isn't getting a piece of all this rogue merchandise with his name on it. (Why do I keep coming back to the line from The Godfather about 'wetting my beak.')

Oh, he can still sell pre-rally lunch meetings ($100K per couple) and round tables ($50K per couple) to his more well-heeled supporters (who aren't exactly his prime rally attendees). While that money doesn't go directly into his pocket, I'm sure he'll find a way to siphon a bit out of his PAC and into his wallet.

Meanwhile, whether they're Trumpists or capitalists, the merchants of Trump might as well enjoy it while they can. This crazy phenomenon can't last much longer, can it????

G.O.A.T. sees his shadow. Career now officially over.

There was a little flurry of non-blizzard excitement over the weekend when word seeped out that Tom Brady was hanging up his cleats and retiring after 22 seasons in the NFL, 20 of them with the local franchise, the New England Patriots.

I grew up watching a lot of football. 

Baseball was the sport I always loved best - thanks, Dad! - but I also enjoyed football, and can follow it intelligently. (Thanks, Dad!) I regularly went to Holy Cross games, and every fall Sunday, would watch "our" team: the New York (Football) Giants. They were the local team for New England back in the days before the AFL and the advent of the Patriots. Giants games were televised weekly, and that's who we rooted for. Even after the Patriots were founded, in 1960, they - and the American Football League - were consisdered something of a joke. The players were all NFL rejects, and, in the Boston area, Patriots games were televised on weak-signal, non-network channel 6 out of New Bedford. They didn't even have a home field. They played at Fenway Park. At Harvard Stadium. At BC. 

When the Giants' game was over, we'd put on the Patriots, but the reception was terrible: all snowy fuzz. And the caliber of the football was pretty fuzzy, too.

By the time I was in college, I pretty much lost all interest in football. Going to a women's college didn't help on that front, but I also found football to be overall militaristic, violent, and right wing. (Some things haven't changed. I still say that watching football is like eating veal. If I thought about it for a moment, I'd never do it.)

So I stopped watching. For decades.

I stuck with baseball, occasionally watched hockey, and, once I met my husband, saw a lot of basketball.

And then the Patriots got good. So Jim and I started paying more attention to them. 

Bandwagoners, sure. But watching all those Super Bowl seasons was certainly something. That first Super Bowl win after Tom Brady stepped in for an ailing Drew Beldsoe. Another couple of wins during the oughts.

If the Patriots weren't in the Super Bowl, we didn't pay all that much attention. During one Super Bowl, we switched over during halftime to a special about the 2004 Red Sox comeback against the Yankees. We kept that on, and never got back to the Super Bowl.

There were a couple of thrillers in the years after Jim died. The last second win against the Seahawks. The insane comeback against the Falcons in 2017. (Down 28-3 at one point!) Even the meh win against the Rams in 2019. (A Super Bowl win's a Super Bowl win.)

I even walked over to watch a couple of duckboat parades. (Parade route isn't even a 2 miniute walk away.)

I never bought any Patriots gear, so I wasn't exactly all in. But the Patriots were fun to watch and easy to root for.

And what those teams had in common was the brilliance of Tom Brady.

In terms of his public persona, I find him banal, boring, what we used to call a drip. IRL, with the people he knows, he may be terrific. But for those on the outside, he's pretty much a cypher, his personality rigid and closely guarded. Can't blame him. The price of celebrity is that everyone wants a piece of you, and who can you trust?

It didn't help that he seemed to be a Trump supporter of sorts. 

So, I never wanted to be Tom's BFF. 

But on the field, Tom Brady was undoubtedly brilliant. 

No one gets to be a professional athlete without some measure of mental toughness, but Brady was off the charts. Talk about ice water in his veins.

I loved watching him play. For the Patriots.

When he took his talents to Tampa Bay, I would have been just as happy if every pass he threw was a pick-six, and if he fell completely on his ass. 

But he didn't. In his first season with the Bucs, he won his seventh Super Bowl.

The Patriots? I had pretty much stopped watching. They just weren't all that worth it any more.

I turned on the ending of the playoff game that turned out to be Tom Brady's last. 

The Bucs were trailing the Rams, but, as I texted my friend Joyce down in Dallas, who was watching with her husband, I wouldn't count Brady out. 

And damned if he didn't mount a comeback that was almost as exciting as that come from way behind win against the Falcons in the SB in 2017.

They lost, but it was almost something. 

Immediately after this loss, the speculation began about whether Brady would retire or hang on for another chance to go out with a Super Bowl win. In his post game comments, Brady pretty much hinted that retirement was on the table, but nothing was decided yet.

Last weekend, a couple of reporters scooped the story that Brady was retiring.

Not so fast, official Brady-dom said. Any announcement would come from TB12 himself.

Which it did yesterday, when, in anticipation of Groundhog Day, Tom Brady came out, saw his shadow, and Insta'd to a waiting world that he would no longer be playing football. 

The announcement was not without controversy.

Brady heaped thanks and praise on pretty much everyone he's ever come in contact with in his life. Except for anyone and anything to do with the New England Patriots and Brady-worshipping Patriots' fandom. 

The slight didn't go unnoticed.

Half of New England was pissed that they were snubbed, and thought it was deliberate. After all, Brady is a control freak whose every public (Insta, Twitter) utterance is completely measured. 

The other half of New England went all crybaby with hurt feelings. How could Our Tom do this to us????

After Brady's announcement went out, Patriots' owner Bob Kraft issued a gushing Valentine to Tom Brady. Brady responded with what samed to be a half-hearted "Thank you Patriots Nation."

Thanks, but no thanks.

When Tom left the Pats in 2020, he did give the Patriots organization and their fans an effusive good-bye. But not to mention the Pats in his farewell does seem odd. Also a bit weird from a marketing perspective. A big part of the market for his clothing and fitness products has got to be the hero-worshippers who are still wearing their number 12 jerseys around. Why do anything to piss them off or hurt their tender little feelings.

Some fans are speculating that Brady will sign a one day deal with the Patriots and come back to Gillette in the fall for a big, weepy sendoff.

I don't know about that.

Maybe Tom will put his marketing cap back on and decide that such a move would be good for business. I'm sure he'll come back at some point when his number is retired and when's he's named to the Patriots' Hall of Fame. But I'm guessing he's moving on.

I don't hate Tom Brady. I don't love Tom Brady.

But anyone who says that this guy wasn't the greatest
quarterback to strap on a jock and head out to the field of battle has rocks in their head. IMHO, anyway.

So, long G.O.A.T. 

I won't exactly miss you. But, even though I'm not much of a fan, those Super Bowls sure were fun. Thanks for those memories, Tommy. 

T.C.O.T.R. R.O.T.T.E.N.

Book banning has been making the headlines of late.

"Maus" in Tennessee. "The Bluest Eye" in Missouri. Harry Potter. "Handmaid's Tale." Anything to do with sexuality (especially queer-related). 

While there are some lefties who've wanted to do away with "To Kill a Mockingbird" because it features a white savior -  news you can use: sometimes the savior is white - the efforts to remove books that are objectionable for whatever reason are largely coming from the vociferous, venomous right. 

"Maus" contains profanity, and there's a naked (cartoon) woman depicted. Can't have that. Never mind that "Maus" is a brilliant recounting of the Holocaust, told in ways that are compelling even to non-readers.

"The Bluest Eye" deals with incest and rape. Can't have a high school student find that on the library shelves. (It goes without saying that author Toni Morrison is Black. And her brilliant novel, "Beloved" is unbeloved in plenty of places because it contains sex and violence. It goes without saying: can't have that.)

Harry Potter? All that hocus-pocus, magic spells, witchcraft. Heresy, I tell you!

And who needs to even ask about "Handmaid"? 

Truly, I can see why parents might want to shield young kids (pre-high school) from content that's too explicitly sexual or violent. But if they think that their kids haven't heard the f-bomb, or been exposed to some online raunch, by the time they're in eighth grade, well, the world's got some news for them.

And high schoolers? 

Why should anything that's not pornographic, meretriciously violent, or flagrantly racist, be banned for high school age readers. 

But, no. When you're fighting a cultural war, it's take no prisoners time. 

So kids can't read about anything terrible that's happened to Black folks (or even about small everyday slights). Might make white kids feel bad. They can't read about what growing up gay is like. Might turn a kid queer or - worse - trans. 

The answer: take the offending books off the shelves and slot in - what? Let them read "Silas Marner"? Or better yet, just spend the time that should be devoted to book larnin' cruising the Internet for celebrity gossip, conspiracy theories, and porn.

Some kids aren't taking the waves of book banning lightly. 

A Kutztown (PA) middle schooler created a Teen Banned Book Club to discuss and celebrate challenged stories, discussing both classic novels and current hot topics.

A group of 9 youth, ranging in grades 7 to 11 mostly from the Kutztown area, attended the club’s first meeting held at Firefly Bookstore in Kutztown on Jan. 12.

Joslyn Diffenbaugh, a 14-year-old Kutztown 8th grader, created this club after reading about public outcry to ban books in schools nationwide and locally based on topics of race, gender identity and sexuality.

“I wanted to make sure teens have access to books that they can personally relate to or have interest in and not to let groups in our community dictate what we can and cannot read,” said Joslyn. (Source: The Reading Eagle)

Joslyn formed her club (with the help of her mother) when the local school board started putting the brakes on books that dealt with LGBTQ+ themes.

The club meets are a local indie bookstore. Firefly Bookstore associate Jordan Busits is working with Joslyn to provide support of her efforts.

“We plan to focus on the topics that got each book we will be reading ‘banned,’ both older and more recent books, how they relate to the story and the past and present of our country’s social issues, which we hope will help our members further develop critical thinking skills in regards to how fiction can both be a reflection of the reality of the time it was written as well as how it can affect reality,” said Jordan.

Kudos to Joslyn, to her mom Lisa, and to Firefly's Jordan. Well done!

And kudos to all the kids who've joined the Teen Banned Book Club. 

What an excellent idea.

Of course, while we know that kids are going to be drawn to the forbidden fruit of a banned book, the kids who are participating in the book club are likely the usual suspects: bright kids, readers, nerds, kids from families that have books in the house, families that welcome inquiry and discussion. Kids whose parents are not likely to be showing up at a school board meetings screaming about CRT and masks.

Who's probably not joining the club are the kids who might not read anything if they weren't forced into it. Maybe "Maus" would be the only way they'd learn about the Holocaust. Maybe "The Bluest Eye" might make them think for a minute about what a Black person might experience that's different from their frame of reference.

I grew up a voracious reader. (No choice if you grew up in my family. Reading was second in importance only to religion. And for the Rogers kids, it was reading the stuck with us, not religion.)

Most of what I was reading was pap.

But by the time I was in junior high, I'd spun through the junior high books section, and had had it with books like "Double Date" and "Cherry Ames, Student Nurse." I wanted adult fare, so started reading the more sophisticated books that would now be called YA. "The Diary of Anne Frank." "To Kill a Mockingbird." And I started reading books that were more grown up, too. The monthly books that showed up at home from the Book of the Month Club and the Library Guild. "Marjorie Morningstar." "Mila 18." 

I don't know where it came from, but I was enthralled with a dystopic, post-nuclear novel called "The Hills Were Liars." I think it had a Catholic theme. But it was a grown up book. And I was a kid reading it.

By high school, of course, my reading was fully adult. 

I even read "Lolita," for godssake. 

I'm sure if there'd been a book condemned by the Catholic Church, it would have been verboten in our house. There was something called The Index, that the Church did away with in the mid 1960's, but I don't recall it coming up at all. Or feeling aggrieved that there was something I couldn't read out there. (You want aggrieved, find the seventh grade, 1961 me whose parents let her read "Mockingbird", but wouldn't let her go see the movie "West Side Story.")

When I was in high school, there was a bit of a forbidden fruit moment. When I was a freshman, Sister Josephine decided that no one should be reading "The Catcher in the Rye." She wouldn't actually utter the title. Instead, she mangled the acronym. "T.C.O.T.R.," she hissed at us. "R.O.T.T.E.N."

This, of course, set off a mad scramble to get ahold of "Catcher." Those of us with upper class sisters were in luck. The juniors were reading it. Those with no older sister to mooch a copy off of bee-lined down to Eprhaim's Bookstore in downtown Worcester to pick up a copy. 

I don't recall what the big deal was with "Catcher," but I, of course, fell in love with J.D. Salinger, gobbling up "Franny and Zooey," and "Bananafish." I haven't read Salinger in decades, so I have no idea whether he's stood the test of personal time. But I'm pretty sure that Sister Josephine's fatwa on "Catcher" got me interested in him.

And, while I fear that a lot of kids just plain won't read, I'm hoping that there are a lot more than just the Kutztown kids who are pushing back on this crazy desire to prevent kids from reading books that can and should be important to them.

Frankly, it scares the hell out of me.

What's next, the Proud Boys milling around a pile of banned books with a can of gasoline and a Bic lighter? 

And we know, of course, what history tells us happens next.

As German poet Heinrich Heine presciently wrote in the 1800's: "Wherever they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings." Heine was born into an assimilated family of German Jews. He converted to Protestantism. Which, of course, wouldn't have saved him from the ovens. 

Scary.

Snowbound!

All week long, the news was consumed with speculation about the upcoming storm. It could blow out to sea. It could be historic. It could be meh.

By mid-week, it looked like blow out to sea was off the table, but they still weren't certain about historic vs. meh.

But just in case...

Don't forget the bread! Don't forget the milk!

I had plenty of everything, but for whatever reason I began craving chicken parmesan, something I seldom eat and never make. But I really craved it. Sure, I could have just gone to the sub shop on Charles Street and gotten a chicken parm sub. But I decided that it would be a good thing to make on a snow day. So on Thursday, I did a little grocery run to pick what I needed - parsley and mozzarella - to make my chicken parm dream come true. The store wasn't particularly busy, but when I put on the evening news, they were leading with scenes from local grocery stores where people were loading up.

I swear that even people who weren't alive in 1978 go pre-blizzard shopping as if the stores were going to be closed for days after the storm. Which they were during and after the Blizzard of 1978. You were stuck with what you had on hand. And when the stores first opened up, they were rationing the bread and milk. (At the banks - this was pre-ATM - they were limiting your withdrawal to $50.) Maybe genetic memory really is a thing. The people around here certainly go completely crazy when there's a storm coming.

I always like observing what's in people's carts. 

Hey, old empty nester couple my age: do you really think you're going to need two gallons of milk. 

And soda seems like a biggy, too. There was one guy they showed on the news whose cart was crammed with Pepsi, and perched on top: a six-pack of root beer and a mega frozen turkey. Okay.

The other theme on the news is always the run on the hardware stores for shovels and snowblowers. Now, you may not have a snowblower. And I suppose that last year's shovel may have broken. And you could of course be new in town. But who that's lived in New England for a year doesn't already have a shovel? So why are there so many people in the "gotta get a shovel" category? Sheesh. I live in a condo building, and I even have my own personal ice chopper. 

Anyway, while people are complaining of grocery shortages country-wide - and there have been NO empty shelves around here as far as I can tell, and I'm in and out of Roche Brothers, and make irregular stops at Whole Food, Trader Joe's, and Star Market, and I haven't seen any barren shelves since the early stages of the pandemic - there really are hardware stores that, by the end of last week, were out of shovels, snowblowers, and ice melt. (Ice melt I fully understand. My building went through about 50 pounds during an earlier January storm, and we've easily gone through that much this time around. Fortunately, we have enough to get us through this storm and its aftermath.)

By Friday, the forecast was definitely leaning in the direction of lot o' snow. And by Friday, I decided that I not only craved chicken parm, I craved eggplant parm. So I made a quick stop at the grocery store for an eggplant. There were major lines, but not at self checkout. Phew!

When I woke up on Saturday, it was snowing lightly and there wasn't that much of an accumulation. But I put on the local news, which was 100% dedicated to THE STORM, and started watching weather porn.

The scenes could have been filmed years ago and just taken out and re-run for the latest storm. But news is news, and it'd better not be fake! Here's what's happening in Sandwich on the Cape! Here we are watching ice-covered waterfront homes in Scituate! Here we are finding out whether at least one house on Plum Island will float out to sea! (For all the watching I did, I still don't know what happened to the house in Truro that was propped up at the edge of the sandpile it was built on. Did it make it through? The owner, we were told, was planning on moving it after the storm. Might have been more prudent to move it before the storm.)

All day long, as the storm picked up energy, the big question was would we break the one-day snow accumulation record. Which I think we did in Boston, as we ended up with 24.5" of snow. I'm just not sure what record we broke. Record for January 29th? Record for January? Record for winter?

Whatever it was, it was A LOT.

When I wasn't riveted to the screen, I'd look out at the storm, and it was quite beautiful. A couple of times, I walked out to the front door and looked over at the Public Garden. I missed my opportunity to be on TV. At one point, when I was weather watching, I saw that the Channel 4 weather van/truck/monster vehicle was making its way down my street. Sure enough, they went right by my front door, and I could have been out there waving. But I wasn't.

And other than those brief looks out the front door, I didn't go out at all. As I could see on the news, there were a lot of folks - with lots of kids and dogs - cavorting around on the Boston Common. I suppose I could have joined them, but the wind was whipping, the temperature plummeting, and snow coming down at a clip of more than 2" an hour. So I stayed in and watched out. Got two loads of laundry done. Did a bit of reading. Took a nap-een. Texted with friends elsewhere who wanted to know how things were going. 

Being snowbound is fun!

After dark, I made my chicken/eggplant parm. Quite messy but yummy. And something of a PITA to make both for the same dish. Next time of craving, it'll be either-or. I had leftovers for dinner last night, and will do it again tonight. The rest is going to be bagged up and put in the freezer, where I'll be pleased to find it at some point. 

Sunday was cold but lovely. 

I got most of my steps inside. (There's an empty unit upstairs, and the door's open. It's a floorthrough, so excellent for pacing. I've told the folks who live downstairs from it to let me know if my pacing is annoying, but so far they're fine.) But by mid-afternoon I wanted out.

Plenty cold, with a plenty brisk wind, but sunny, blue skies, and quite a nice mid-winter's day.

And how gloriously beautiful that snow is when it's pristine! In a few days, it'll be shrunken down, grey with street dirt and slush, full of yellow doggy pee stains. But for now. Just gorgeous. 

I walked around the Public Garden, and a bit along Charles Street, but no matter how well-shoveled, those bricks on Charles Street are slippery. I have no desire to break a hip, so I headed back in. I was happy to get out and un-snowbound. (Between pacing indoors and gingerly walking outdoors, I was able to get 6 miles worth of steps in.) 

The picture is a shot of where I live - I'm in that taller building - taken from the Public Garden.

Lucky girl, me!

Fun while it lasted, but I hope this is the last of the mega storms for a while. Snowbound, even for a day, should be a once-a-year kinda sorta thing. 

Huzzah for Commander Farrell!

When you live in a place that's chocked-full of history, you don't tend to notice all that history surrounding you. At least not it you're me.

Every few days, I walk by the monument that memorializes Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment, which was made up of African-Americans, and their Civil War heroism. (Their deeds were the basis for the movie Glory.) Do I ever really notice it? Not really. At least not often.

Every few weeks, I walk by Paul Revere's House and the Old North Church of one-if-by-land-two-if-by-sea fame. Do I ever really notice them? Not really. At least not often.

Every few months, I walk along the waterfront overlooking Charlestown Navy Yard, where the U.S.S. Constitutions is anchored. Old Ironsides, a warship, was commissioned in 1797, and took part in the War of 1812 and the Barbary Wars, and is the oldest still-operating ship (although not as a warship) in the U.S. Navy. Do I ever really notice it? Not really. At least not often.

And every year, on the Fouorth of July, there's a turnaround, when the Constitution makes its way - nudged by tugs - into Boston Harbor. Every year, I plan on walking down to the waterfront to catch a bit of the journey. Do I ever? Well, no.

But I did notice an article in the Boston Globe the other day on the new commander. Billie Farrell is the first woman to command the ship. 

She's an Annapolis grad who just prior had been the Executive Officer of a guided missile cruiser.  The USS Vicksburg isn't a brand-new ship. It's been around for 30 years. But I suspect it's a tech marvel when compared to the Constitution, which is mostly a living museum - and, if you're in Boston, well worth the tour. In keeping with the living museum theme, the sailors all sport ye olde garb, with the snappiest of garb reserved for the Commander.

Although they do get to fire the two working cannons off each day - gunpowder only, not cannonball - for those stationed on the Constitution, it's not all cosplay. They also attend the funerals for Navy veterans in the area. And, in addition to learning how to keep an over 200 year old ship ship-shape, they have to keep up with current Navy whatevers. (By the way, over the course of its long lifetime, about 90% of the original materials of the Constitution have been replaced. But somehow, it's not a fake replica in the way that the Mayflower in Plymouth, Mass. is not.)

I don't know whether you get plucked from wherever to get this post, or whether you put in for it, but congratulations to Commander Farrell. And welcome to Boston! (She's married to a local - also a Naval Academy grad - and one of her dogs is named Fenway. So although she's from Kentucky, her kids are half-Massachusetts. So she's practically a native. But welcome, nonetheless.)

On one of my walks, I may not just not notice Old Ironsides. Maybe I'll actually cross the bridge into Charlestown and take a tour. Looking forward to getting piped aboard!

And let's hear it for Mark Cuban!

You read the horror stories all the time, the most common are the ones about the diabetics who rationed their unaffordable insulin and died in the process. While this doesn't happen all that often, it does occur. And I've read that one out of four diabetics does resort to insulin-rationing which, if it doesn't kill you, does exacerbate the cascade of health problems that diabetics suffer from. And the high cost of insulin seems particularly galling, given that its discoverers "sold" the patent for $1 way back in the 1920's so that it could be widely used by those in need. 

While insulin is the one horror show medication that we hear the most about, with some cancer drugs being a close second, there are all kind of drug affordability trap doors that Americans fall through, even those who are well-insured. 

I'm fortunate in that the only prescription drug I take is a low-dose statin, which costs me about five bucks a month. But my brother who, like me is on Medicare with excellent supplemental insurance, falls into the "donut hole" of coverage and, one month a year, ends up paying $800 for one of his prescriptions. It's ghastly, but he can afford it. A lot of people can't absorb that type of hit.

Well, here comes Mark Cuban to the rescue.

Billionaire investor Mark Cuban launched an online pharmacy Thursday that offers more than 100 generic drugs at an affordable price with a goal of being “radically transparent” in its price negotiations with drug companies.

The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs Company (MCCPDC) is a registered pharmaceutical wholesaler and purchases drugs directly from manufacturers,

bypassing middlemen to lower the price of more than 100 medications, it said in a statement.

For example, the leukemia drug imatinib is priced at $47 a month on MCCPDC compared to the $9,657 retail price.

The online pharmacy’s prices for generics factor in a 15% margin on top of actual manufacturer prices and a $3 pharmacist fee, the statement said.

The markup on generics average “at least” 100%, the MCCPDC said, while the Wall Street Journal reports in some cases it exceeds 1,000%. (Source: Forbes)

The company will also build its own manufacturing facility.  

Cuban - an entrepreneur who is one of the sharks on Shark Tank, and who also owns the Dallas Mavericks - got involved in response to a cold call (well, cold email) he got from Alex Oshmyansky (himself no slouch: among other things, he's a physician). Part of their motivation was the bad behavior of "Pharma Bro" Martin Shrkeli, who acquired a drug company and promptly jumped the price of the lifesaving drug they produced from $13.50 to $750 per pill. (Shrkeli is in prison for unrelated securities fraud.)

MCCPDC is mostly the brain child of Oshmyansky, but: 

[Cuban] said he decided to put his name on the company to “show capitalism can be compassionate and to send the message I am all in.” It’s not clear how much he had invested in the company.

Whatever he's all in for, Cuban's name on the door is clearly helping the new company gain attention and traction.

MCCPDC won't be all things to all patients - at least for now. Among other things, they offer generic replacements for some Type 2 diabetes pills, but nothing for insulin-dependent Type 1 diabetics who get their insulin via injection or pump. They also don't have a generic for the drug my brother is getting gouged for.

But it's a start.

We hear plenty about the not-so-great billionaires out there. Big buckers like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and their space race. Etc. (I won't be including Trump here, as I'm guessing he's a not-so-billionaire.) Nice to see Mark Cuban getting involved in something that will help a lot of people.

It's a shame though, isn't it, that we can't find a way to make drugs as affordable as they are in other countries, isn't it?

Make way for the cargo blimp.

I'm not sure what they were doing in Worcester, but every once in a while, during my childhood, a blimp would drift serenely through our skies, and we would stand in our back yard watching it drift serenely by. (In March 2014, I blogged about my fond blimpian memories.) 

Something there is about a blimp (or dirigible or zeppelin or airship - I recognize that there are technical distinctions, but for my purpose, a blimp is a blimp is a blimp) that just brings a smile to my face. (Unless, of course, it's the Hindenburg.)

So I was delighted to come across an article - even if it's nearly a year old (the news was apparently moving at a serene blimpian drift) - about a French company, Flying Whales, which intends to make airships to transport cargo to remote outposts: towns, logging operations... Cheaper and more environmentally friendly than wiping out forests to build roads. And the airships themselves are cheaper and more environmentally friendly to build and operate. They can also be used to bring goods to the site of natural disasters if the roads aren't acccessible. 

Flying Whales has said its vehicle would be the largest aircraft in the world — at 200 meters long and 50 meters high. The rigid balloon ships would be able to lift 60 tons.(Source: CBC)

60 tons may not sound like, well, a ton. But:

That's about three times the maximum carrying capacity of a Hercules plane, a cargo plane used by the Canadian military.

These planes are used by Canadian governments to fly goods into their remote locations, like the brilliantly named Yukon fly-in community of Old Crow.  

Because there are a number of out-of-the-way places with strange sounding names in Canada, at least one provincial government (Quebec) made an investment in Flying Whales. Among other elements, the deal required all Flying Whale airships that will be used in the Americas to be built in the Quebec.  At any rate, Quebec tried to get a deal going. 

Alas, the Canadian federal government overruled the Quebec deal, citing concerns about Chinese involvement. That matter has apparently been cleared out - the company bought out the Chinese investors - so it looks like things may be able to proceed. Eventually.

Flying Whales has yet to build a working prototype - things are still in the design phase - and the company doesn't anticipate that it would begin any production in Canada until 2025, with the goal of having some airships in use by 2026.

Canada is a patient country. 

They've been talking about deploying cargo airships for nearly a decade. And Quebec has been poking around the airship industry for nearly as long.

This isn’t the first time a company has tried to build airships in the province. In 2015, LTA Aerostructures, a Montreal-based company with American and Canadian backers, announced plans to build a $60 million production facility in Mirabel to build airships capable of transporting up to 70 million tonnes of cargo. However, the plant was never built and the company’s website is no longer active. (Source: Skies Magazine)

Other cargo airship initiatives have similarly failed to get off the ground. It's apparently easier to build a do-nothing dirigible like the Goodyear Blimp that's used for advertising over football games, than it is to develop  a get-to-work cargo airship.  

Yet I remain hopeful that at some point, there'll be a cargo blimp lugging things up to Old Crow in the Yukon. And we'll get the news from the North that it's delivering the goods.

Until then, I'll have to be content with an occasional local sighting. Which, guaranteed, will never cease to stir my heart and put a smile on my face.

Is the title Duke of Earl taken?

Okay, I lapped up The Crown. And Spencer. 

I confess to occasionally clicking through to read an always-disappointing story on Meghan and Harry, or Will and Kate. Sometimes even something about Charles and Camilla.

I think Queen Elizabeth is a trooper. 

And I did enjoy hobnobbing with the titled/entitled denizens - are they even royal or what? - of Downton Abbey. 

But mostly I'm not all that big on the royal family. 

I'm pretty sure that, if I lived in the UK, I'd be on the side of those interested in getting rid of The Royals. Oh, not in an off-with-their-heads, tumbrels to the guillotine kind of way. But just drastically paring down the outsized (and colossally costly, in more ways than one) role they play there. 

I wouldn't do this until QE2 passes. 

But once she's gone on to be with the Queen Mum, Prince Philip, Princess Margaret - and all those corgis - in the big Balmoral in the Sky - I'd be cutting their allowances and hang on only to the bits that can be directly tied to tourist revenue. And maybe seeing about clawing back at least some of the billions of dollars worth of property those wankers "own." 

Eventually, I believe the British monarchy will be eased off the throne it currently occupies. Surveys show the majority of Brits still narrowly support having the royals in charge of whatever they're in charge of. But the polling, when broken down by age cohorts, shows a trend that's not favorable to the royals. 

Unfortunately for the royal family, Prince Andrew has been in the news, which isn't helping out here any. For all Christmas cards they put out of Will, Kate and their cutie-pie kiddos, or of Kate celebrating her 40th, Prince Andrew's the one making most of the headline news. And even though his royal wings have been clipped - no more appearances at ribbon cuttings, no more patronages, no more HRH style, no more swaggering around with a chest full of military medals - he's the poster child for all that is useless and feckless about the royal family. All topped off with the odor of immorality, and a whiff of the illegal.

Still, Prince Andrew remains a Prince. And he's still the Duke of York.

But now, there's a bit of movement to let the locals weigh in on whether their place gets to be used as part of a royal title. And the first voice heard from is an MP who'd like a bit of a convo about Andrew's association with York:

Labour MP Rachael Maskell (York Central) called for a debate into how aristocratic titles which "take their name from a geographical location" are assigned, having previously said that Andrew's title as Duke of York is "untenable". (Source: Bloomberg)

Since the Tories are (somehow) still in charge, it's unclear whether this will be debated in Parliament. House of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg - and how's that for a posh name? - has stated (or did he sniff?) that "territorial designations" are up to the sovreign. 

I'm with MP Maskell.

Sure, there are more important fish to fry, or eels to poach, or whatever the Brits might say, but who'd want their city associated with one of Jeffrey Epstein's BFFs? Who wants Andrew, this fatuous clown, as their Duke as things play out with respect to the sordid allegations being made against him? 

Gene Chandler, who wrote and sang the early sixties hit "Duke of Earl," is still alive and kicking at the age of 84. Maybe he'd be willing to lend Andrew his title. I mean, being the Duke of Earl is kind of like being the Prince of Duke, or the Earl of King. Pretty much as silly as the entire notion of royalty in this day and age is to begin with. Andrew would wear the title well. 

My guess is that the Queen's purse will snap open to make some big buck - mega-pound - settlement before the current legal matter facing Andrew gets to court. Before that purse snaps shut, maybe she can send a bit of cash Gene Chandler's way.

Just an idea...

Duke, Duke, Duke, Duke of Earl...