How do you like them apples?

It's around here somewhere, I think.

My iPod Mini. The only Apple product I've ever owned.

It's around here somewhere, maybe.

I haven't seen it, let alone used it, in years.

It may have been in the stack of ancient electronics - desktops, laptops, Palm Pilots, Blackberries - that I had Earthworm haul away last fall. But it's more likely that it's around here somewhere.

I remember what was on it. Some of it, anyway. Mary Black. Mary Chapin Carpenter. Bruce Springsteen. Stuff to keep me going on my road trips to Syracuse, New York, when the radio off and on I90 was spotty and often right-wing talk, and the drives were long and monotonous. Back in yesteryear, when I still had my Beetle.

It's not that I have any antipathy towards Apple. It's just that Apple was never my thing.

My career was largely in the Intel-Windows world of B2B (business to business) and T2T (techie to techie) software, which was never Apple's sandbox. Apple was consumer tech, tech for designers, tech for schools. I even worked on products that ran on - hold on to your chapeau - OS/2. And before my career was largely in the Intel-Windows world, it was in the big, fat IBM mainframe world. 

Circa 1980-ish, my husband had an Apple II that, as I recall, he used to run some stat package he used in his work. What I really remember about it was that the "k" key stuck. Eventually, he junked it, and I believe that was when we got ourselves a pair of snappy Leading Edges for our very own personal computers.

Most folks I know are Apple-ists. They all have iPhones. And/or Macs. And/or iPads. And/or Apple Watches. And/or Apple TV. (Poor me, apparently, missing out on Ted Lasso.)

I'll give it to Apple for design, especially back in the day when other designs were more primitive - or at least less colorful. (Yes, I did long for a turquoise iMac at one point.) And the Apple UI back then was admittedly easier for the U's to I with. But ease of use was never my jam. For years, I resisted using early Windows to manage files, and did much of my management at the DOS level using command line language.

But mostly, when it comes to Apple, I think a) pricey; b) cult-y: not my Apple-ist friends and family, who would never wait for hours in the sleet outside the Apple Store on Boylston to get the newest i-Whatever, but plenty cult-y; and c) meh.

Despite friends and family trying to convince me to hop on the Apple wagon I have nevertheless managed to persist in resisting.

But I did enjoy that little iPod, and it absolutely saved me on those long drives from Boston to Syracuse, which I did every few months for a good long while.

So I felt a little twinge of something or other - nostalgia, maybe; wishing I was twenty years younger, definitely - when I heard that Apple is EOL-ing (that's tech talk for end-of-life-ing) the iPod.

In a statement Tuesday, the company said it would continue selling the 7th generation iPod touch "while supplies last" -- a quiet confirmation that the age of the iPod may finally be over.

The move, while bittersweet for techies of a certain age, didn't come entirely by surprise. For years, Apple has slowly culled its line of portable media machines: the last iPod with the classic click-wheel was discontinued in 2014, and the once-popular iPod nano followed-suit three years later. (Source: Boston Globe, but originally from the Washington Post)

I only used my iPod for long drives. I'm not someone who needs to have music with me/on me 24/7. I listen to music plenty of times, either on the radio (how about that?) or on my CD player (yes, truly). I haven't bothered with Spotify or any other streaming service. But music is more "nice to have some of the time" than it is "have to have all of the time." Maybe if I had a car and drove around. Maybe if I "needed" music when I'm out walking. 

So I don't miss my own personal iPod. If I did, I'd know where it is. So I won't miss out on anything now that Apple's cutting the iPod cord. Sorry/not sorry.

If anything, as someone who's long been a reverse snob (perverse snob?) when it comes to Apple, I have a slight twinging regret that I ever got an iPod to begin with. Why not just get any old MP3 player? Grrrr.....

What was interesting about the article on the iPod's demise was the suggestion that it was the iPod that actually helped Apple get out of its "death spiral."

After a string of not-quite-right leaders, prodigal CEO Steve Jobs returned to the company and shook up its computer lineup with a slew of cheap, colorful iMacs in 1998. Then came similarly cheery iBooks a year later. But it was arguably the first iPod, unveiled in October 2001, that set a revived Apple down a different path -- one that cemented its place in people's pockets, not just on their desks.

In the past, Apple had dabbled with other super-portable gadgets in the past, like some ill-fated digital cameras and the early PDA whose lasting legacy was a throwaway joke on The Simpsons. But according to Leander Kahney, author of the book "The Cult of iPod," the company's first MP3 player was different.

"It really was a marvelous gadget," he told The Post. "So easy to use and the source of so much joy and pleasure -- because of the music it contained, of course. And it was the product that totally transformed Apple, laid the groundwork for the iPhone and kick-started massive growth."

I'll give Apple that. I was never part of the iPod Cult - who even knew there was one - but it really was a marvelous little gadget. I should go and dig mine up and see if it's worth anything to Apple buffs and iPod cultists. Maybe I can make a few bucks on eBay. Buy myself a few new CDs.

Talk about Susie Snowflake

The right wingers are out there in full throat trying to compare the response from the left to the almost certainly coming of the overturn of Roe v. Wade to their reaction to Trump's loss to Biden. 

There is, of course, no comparison.

In the aftermath of the leaked draft - intemperate and frightening, indeed - and the subsequent rush on the part of the Republican party to put forth extreme laws in a number of states (not to mention Mitch McConnell, who IRL does not give a turtle's arse about abortion, threatening to propose legislation that does away with state-level abortion rights and, while he's at it, nuke the filibuster), the left has marched, chanted outside the homes of a couple of members SCOTUS, and written in chalk on the sidewalk of Susan Collins' house in Maine. (I was at the impromptu demonstration in Boston last Tuesday, which drew several thousand protestors. As I said to a much younger woman I was walking next to as we marched and chanted through the streets of downtown Boston, I was doing this over 50 years ago. Sigh.)

In sharp contrast, the reaction of the rabid right to Trump's loss, in addition to the daily drumbeat of lies about stolen votes that's doing nothing but undermining and destabilizing our fragile democracy, (in)famously stormed the Capitol, resulting in death and destruction which would surely have been a lot worse if they'd gotten their hands on Mike Pence - they had the gallows and noose at the ready - or Nancy Pelosi or AOC. 

Anyway, Susan Collins' reaction to a non-threatening message (neatly lettered, I might add)  - “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA → vote yes, clean up your mess” - was to call the Bangor police.

WHPA refers to the Women's Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights into federal law. Or would, if it stood any chance of passing. Which it doesn't. Thanks to the filibuster which foolish Democrats leave intact as some last vestige of the Senate as a measured and deliberative body. And which McConnell will jettison the minute he gets the chance.

As for cleaning up her mess, that mess is her voting for Brett Kavanaugh because he assured her that Roe v. Wade was settled law. Stare decisis, and all that good stuff. Except that, if the leaked SCOTUS doc turns out to be for real (which I'm guessing it will be, although the Alito opinion may be toned down to remove, say, the citing of a 17th century British jurist who executed witches and ruled in defense of marital rape), it will turn out that ol' Brett - not to mention his pals Gorsuch, Barrett, and Alito - lied to the Senate. As it turns out, they were just doing what they needed to do to get on the Court, and they won't be doing any stare-y-ing by any decisis. 

Once the Alito document was leaked, Susan Collins predictably clutched her pearls and sniffed about having been misled by Kavanaugh. 

And she clutched those metaphorical pearls yet again when she called the Bangor PD to report that public property had been defaced.

The police dutifully showed up, and called in the public works department to wash the chalk away.

Great use of taxpayers money.

Why didn't she just grab a hose and get rid of it herself. Or wait for the next rain. This is New England in May. The next rain is not that far off.

This wasn't spray paint. As any kid with a box of chalk knows: this stuff washes away. (I love seeing chalk drawings and hopscotch blocks on the sidewalk.)

But, no.

Talk about Susie Snowflake.

I'd say wake up, little Susie, but she doesn't have to. She's not up for election until 2026, and she may not run again, anyway.

In any case, it's not little Susie that needs to wake up. It's the country. The whole shebang could go down the tubes pretty darned fast. 

Right now, I'm way beyond pearl clutching. Label me out and out scared. 

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

Source of picture and info: Boston Globe

Why do I think this is a dumb idea? Why do I love it so much?

I can't remember the last time I kicked in on a Kickstarter project. Was it the American-made, black or white, basic tee-shirts? Or was it the plastic ring that looked like something out of Dick Tracy, but was tech'd up to serve as a T pass?

I know it's been a while. Most of my impulse spending has been diverted to no-win candidates in impossibly red Congressional districts. 

But the Plufl - "the dog bed for humans" - has managed to catch my eye, if not my pocketbook.

Why a Plufl? Why, according to its Kickstarter page (where it's already raised nearly $300K - as of their June 2nd update - from 800 donor/investors):

The Plufl offers an unparalleled napping environment designed to alleviate stress and anxiety.

"Unaparalleled..." Well, that sounds pretty good. And there's plenty of verbiage that makes it sound even better:

The Plufl is a premium napping bed engineered to provide the optimal napping experience. It is created to maximize comfort and foster a sense of security, delivering relief for those who have ADHD, stress, and anxiety-related issues. A nap in the Plufl will boost your mood and have you feeling refreshed.

Premium. Optimal. Maximize comfort. Sense of security. If that don't boost your mood, nothing will. 

And yet, while I can't help but see this as a cute and catchy, I also can't help seeing it as a largely dumb idea. Or at least an unnecessary one. 

As a life-long, expert and experienced napper, there are already plenty of napping environments out there. In my little condo alone, I have a bed, a couch, a love seat, and a premium optimal ergonomic stressless recliner (purchased the Sunday after the November 2016 election). I've also been known to catch a few z's sitting up in an armchair. 

Admittedly, none of them hold the "Goodbye Stress and Anxiety" promise of the Plufl. But my napping alternatives do offer a bit of a respite. A "see you later, stress and anxiety" sort of promise that, in truth, is pretty much all the Plufl can deliver. And the Plufl will set you back $399 (early bird offer) - or $499, if you wait for it to be ready for prime time next January. Meanwhile, I already own the bed, the couch...

Another issue I have with the Plufl: it's definitely not designed with the senior set (after infant and toddlers, the prime napping demographic) in mind. Because I know precious few old geezers - self included - who'd be able to gracefully get into a Plufl, or easily extricate themselves from it. 

Once I snuggled in, I'd have a hard time napping, what with worrying about how I was going to have to crawl out of the Plufl and somehow make my way over to - say - the couch and hoist myself up. Which would just remind me that I could have just napped on the couch to begin with. 

So much for "Goodbye Stress and Anxiety."

And yet I'm pretty smitten with the Plufl.

Not smitten enough to invest in its Kickstarter drive. Yet smitten enough.

It looks so inviting. So comfy. So cozy. A nap lover's paradise. A nap lover's dream.

Maybe this is nature's way of signaling that I really do need to get a dog so I have a good reason to buy a dog bed. An actual dog bed. For an actual dog.

"Fido" can curl up in their napping space; I can zone out on the bed. All very companionable. I might even invite my mythical "Fido" to jump up and join me at some point. Beats me trying to get in and out of a Plufl. 

Good vibrations?

The Red Sox are having what is, so far, a PA season. As in pretty abysmal. 

I've been in person to two games so far. (Both losses called in by a pretty dispirited team.) And that's going to be it for a while. 

I almost got a last minute ticket last week - a weekday afternoon game on a pleasant spring day - but the Red Sox are so god-awful that I decided not to throw anymore good money at these bad boys, so I stayed home. 

Good thing. The Olde Towne Team got clobbered.

I'm sure I'll be back at Fenway for another game or two, but I sure wish that they were more fun to watch. And I also wish that, when they are sucking big time, the front office would lower ticket prices or throw in a free Fenway Frank or bobblehead. (I'm sure they've got some old Mookie Betts bobbleheads somewhere, squirreled away in a cupboard gathering 1912 commemorative dust.)

It's too bad, as I very much enjoy watching baseball, especially in person.

While the Red Sox have been busy putting a truly lackluster team on the field, they've been upping their entertainment game.   

In the old days, the only music was organ music. Which I was fine with.

Then they started interspersing organ music with pop songs, often oldies, which makes sense given the demographic that most closely follows baseball. (I.e, mine.) That and pep songs like the Dropkick Murphys' Shipping Up to Boston. Oh, and, of course, Sweet Caroline midway through the 8th inning. They also played a recording of the Standells' Dirty Water (I did mention Boomer-era oldies, did I not?) whenever the Sox won. So I haven't heard that one in a while. 

For the most part, the only current, up-to-date music you heard was the choices selected by the batters when they come up to bat, which - depending on the player - tend to be salsa, country, or heavy metal. 

This season, presumably in an effort to woo younger fans to the park, the Sox have brought on DJ Kahleil Blair, who plays tune from the likes of Dua Lipa - and performers I've never heard of, like Owl City. Which means that:

At Fenway Park, there's been a very noticeable vibe shift. For more than a decade, the electric guitar riff of "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band blared before first pitch -- but the times are changing on Jersey Street...

The gravelly voice of Springsteen still makes its appearances, along with other Fenway favorites, but in between there is the sound of a new generation of Bostonians, including tracks from more contemporary musicians like "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers, "Butter" by K-pop megagroup BTS or "DÁKITI" by Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny. (Source: ESPN)

I'm fine with the new musical approach. Frankly, in the games I've been to, I didn't really notice it, but music that's more diverse and inclusive: okay by me.  And with the high percentage of Latin players in the bigs, if more Latin music makes the players happy, and if more Hispanic fans are coming out, that's great. Life ain't all Elton John and the Beachboys.

But is hipper music really going to get younger folks, who're not exactly big baseball fans, to come out to the park? 

Red Sox SVP of fan services and entertainment Sarah McKenna apparently thinks so.  

To account for the changing face of the city, the team needed to make changes, and as the music played at Fenway Park trended younger and more diverse, so too, the Red Sox hoped, would the fans at the ballpark, said McKenna.

"We wanted Fenway to be a more dancier place, to feel more diverse and present. Those were our two goals," McKenna said. "We want it to be more inclusive and more of a dance place. There are still people that are coming to watch a baseball game, so it's finding that balance."

Making Fenway a "more dancier place"? 

Although I'm tsk-tsking in my mind of minds, I'll overlook that grammar and laser in on making Fenway "dancier." Sure, there's the mildly amusing dance-off contest - I think the winner gets sneakers - but making Fenway "more of a dance place"? WT almighty F? As fun as it is to see concerts there - and I've seen James Taylor, Zac Brown, Billy Joel, The Boss - Fenway Park is a ballpark. 

And I'm pretty sure that when people come to Fenway, more than a few of the are actually "coming to watch a baseball game." 

But maybe I'm wrong.

Over the past couple of decades, in the modern Red Sox era, when the team has often contended and have even won four World Series
(since 2004), they've certainly had seasons when coming to Fenway became an "it" thing. A lot of the fans weren't fans. They were Pink Hats who didn't know baseball from foosball, and who may have even thought that the team colors were pink and white. 

It was annoying to have to vie for tickets with those who just wanted to see and be seen. But, fortunately, that sems to have calmed down, and it's now easy enough to get tickets. I suppose it helps that the team is terrible...

I know that while plenty of us are diehards, there are also plenty of folks who aren't rabid baseball fans who still like to come to a game occasionally. But, seriously, why pay the big bucks - and the Red Sox have one of the highest ticket prices in major league baseball (if not the highest) - if all you're doing is coming to dance?

Makes no sense to me.

That said, bring on the dancier music. I'm probably not going to get up and dance, but cool.

I'd rather have them pay a bit more attention to the team they're putting on the field. A better team is the sort of good vibration I want to vibe on. 

But, hey, K-pop and Dua Lipa. I'm down with that, too. 

 

Baby may still need a new pair of shoes

Encore Boston Harbor opened three years ago this June to great fanfare. Casino. Hotel. Resort. Swank destination. (That designation "Boston Harbor" is pretty laughable, as Encore isn't actually in Boston, but in the down-in-the-dumps working class little industrial city of Everett, Massachusetts.) I take it that Encore was chugging along pretty well at first, with lots of locals streaming in and plenty of tourists taking boats from downtown Boston over to Everett to play blackjack, eat expensive food, and soak up the tacky glitz and glamour that's generally absent from our fair city.

I haven't been.

When it first opened, my sisters and nieces and I talked about a girls-night-out trip to check it out, but we never got organized around the excursion. I also have a friend who likes to gamble (video poker), and we've talked about boating over to take a quick peek. (In fact, we talked about it just the other day.) And then there was covid.

So to date, my only experience with Encore is when it appears out of the corner of my eye, looming there when I pass nearby on the train coming from my sister's in Salem. It's always a shock to see it looming up, an oasis of posh just outside the railyards.

I'm in no hurry, but I will get there someday, with whatever's the modern-day equivalent of a roll of quarters in my hand, prepared to hang in there for as long as my virtual roll of quarters lasts.

Kimahn T. Le has been to Encore, and she wasn't playing the quarter slots. Instead, prosecutors allege, she's been doing some in-house loan sharking for losing gamblers in desperate need of a bit of cash to stay in a high stakes game. Because when you're in a high stakes game, even if you've been on a losing streak, sometimes baby needs a new pair of shoes. Or whatever.

The Quincy woman, prosecutors say, would slide up close to the losing gambler, reach into her purse, and hand over a wad of cash — or maybe some casino chips — after the gambler agreed to pay as much as 10 percent a week in interest on the loan. (Source: Boston Globe)

Ten percent a week? That's some vigorous vigorish, but probably not out of line with what the general loan sharking business commands. (I have no idea whatsoever what the going rate is. Thankfully.)

Le, 50, was arrested April 10 at the casino and now faces multiple counts of usury in Suffolk Superior Court. She pleaded not guilty to the charges and was released on personal recognizance, according to court records.

She has been banned from Encore. (Let's hear it for facial recognition software.)

The person, identified as a “cooperating source” in court records, outlined the terms of Le’s loans, prosecutors wrote.

“Kimanh Le told the CS that she would give him/her a rate of 5 percent on any loan amount under $10,000,” they wrote. “If he/she is able to repay the loan within 24 hours, otherwise, the going rate would be 10 percent per week.”

On nine occasions since July, the cooperating source allegedly conducted nine transactions with Le, totaling some $78,000, according to prosecutors. The interest rate was 10 percent but was later lowered to 5 percent and 6 percent on most of the loans, records show.

So Ms. Le was not without heart. If you paid her back within 24 hours, the interest rate was only 5 percent. And even if you didn't make it in under that wire, she generally smiled kindly on you and only charged you 5 or 6 percent anyway. Winner winner chicken dinner!

Canny strategy that. Sort of like good-cop-bad-cop all rolled into one. Look what a good person I am, only charging you 5 percent a week when I could have made it 10...

Even if I'd made it over to Encore, Ms. Le would not have been interested in me as a potential customer for her "underground financial institution." What's the point of approaching someone who caps her daily gambling limit at ten bucks? Plus she targeted fellow Asian Americans. More of the trust factor in action!

Anyway, I may pay a visit to Encore this summer at some point. Mostly I'll just be content to pick up an occasional lottery ticket. Because if I'm going to gamble, I might as well just go ahead and defy the odds and put two dollars down on a Powerball ticket. You never know. Someone's gotta win it. And if I win, chicken dinner for everyone, on me!

Spit shine!

 

A couple of weeks ago, I actually had to get quasi-dressed up - for a lecture sponsored by an organization I'm involved with. 

I quit full-time corporate nearly 20 years ago, and that ended the days when I had to put on something decent (business casual at worst) and real shoes five days a week. But I still had occasions that called for something more formal than jeans and a turtleneck pretty regularly. 

I used to see my freelance clients in person - even the ones that aren't local - more regularly. So I'd wear a pants suit or nice separates.

I used to sit on a couple of boards, and you can't go to a board meeting looking like a bum.

I used to go out to dinner more and, not that I got all that dressed up, a lot of the time it was at least black pants and a nice sweater time.

I went to more "events". And "events" do mean donning something at least somewhat up to fashion totem pole from sweats.

Then, over time, life got more casual, and the occasions that required a bit of thought about clothing dwindled a bit. 

And then there was covid, and I certainly didn't need to dress up to hang around my house. 

During this long and winding period, the shoes I wore shifted from a variety of leather or suede shoes, boots, and sandals to sneakers, which I now wear 99.99% of the time. They're comfy. I walk a lot. And I don't get dressed up much. I actually have a reasonable hefty shoe budget, which mostly gets spent on the pricey sneakers I like (Asics). And that, walking 5-6 miles a day, I wear through.

Given all this, I rarely have to polish my shoes.

But I did for that recent lecture.

Originally, I was going to wear a dress to the lecture. I have an artsy little swing dress that I wear with leggings and a pair of cool-ish (by my standards, anyway) black leather shoes. But the dress needed ironing, and I wasn't up for it. So I went with Plan B. A nice pair of subtly plaid slacks paired with a decent sweater and scarf. (I am second only to the odious Dr. Deborah Birx when it comes to my affection for the wearing o' the scarf.)

The same shoes I was planning on wearing with the artsy little swing dress, as it happens, went just fine with the subtly plaid slacks.

All I had to do was polish them a bit.

Fortunately, thanks to my father, I do know how to polish shoes.

Saturday evening, Chez Rogers, was shoe polishing time. My father polished his work shoes (Florsheim wingtips), and the kids polished their school and Sunday shoes. My father used Kiwi cream polish, us kids used Esquire Scuff Kote, a liquid that came with an applicator lid that held a prong with a small sponge on its tip. For patent leather shoes, the girls used Vaseline. In the summer, if you wanted to polish your white sneakers or, later, in my case, needed to polish your waitress shoes, you used Sani-White, the brand with the nurse on the box.

My father had all the tools you needed to polish shoes, which he kept with his tins of Kiwi in a dopp kit. He had different sorts, consistencies and weights of rags, used for different purposes: applying polish vs. buffing; and a couple of different brushes. I can still picture him, left hand pushed into a Florsheim, as if it were a puppet, vigorously going at the shoe with a brush. People will judge you, he told us, and they'll judge you by the polish on your shoes. If your shoes are scuffed, they'll think you're a bum. 

No one was ever going to judge my father to be a bum (and, in truth, no one could have, even if his shoes hadn't been shined; he was the antithesis of a bum). He'd also been in the Navy, and he knew how to top things off with a spit shine. 

I carried Al's advice and training into my adult life, and when I worked, I had a full complement of polishes, rags, and brushes, which I kept in a macrame-style tote bag. Where they all still reside.

It's been a while since I've been into that bag. Over the last few years, whatever shoe polishing I've done was with the lick-and-a-promise neutral applicator sponges that are sometimes included in hotel vanity kits. That or a roll-on bottle of black polish (Kiwi), which was also a lick-and-a-promise item. 

Anyway, I decided to give the black shoes I was going to wear a real polishing, and sorting through the polishes I had in there, looking for the tin of black, was a stroll down business fashion memory lane. 

Cordovan! Cordovan? Did I use that on my Etienne Aigner boots or pumps? Probably not. Too much brown in cordovan. For the Aigners I likely used Meltonian Burgundy Shoe Cream. I also had Meltonian Navy Shoe Cream, which I used on my Johnson and Murphy navy heels, and on the far comfier Naturalizer navy low heels and the Munro navy loafers.

Neutral Kiwi I don't remember using on shoes. I had so many different colors of polish, I never had to resort to neutral. But Neutral Kiwi serves one purpose, at which it excels: it can be used to remove Kiwi Cordovan or Kiwi Black from your

fingertips, if you're rubbing so intently that the polish comes through.

Amazingly, none of my various polishes had completely dried up. Some of them must be 40 years old. Amazing!

I also had a number of different rags in my shoeshine bag. Some were "real" shoeshine rags, others were rags sliced out of old flannel nightgowns, old soft cotton tee-shirts.

When I polished my black shoes for the lecture, I was nowhere near as meticulous as my father would have been. But I did give those shoes a bit of a spit shine. He would have been proud...

Professional Cuddler? The world is a very weird place...

I've been quasi-binging my way through Billions, and am much enjoying the series, even though, with a couple of possible exceptions (emphasis on possible), the characters are all completely despicable. Watch enough episodes, and even the glimmer-of-hope characters you thought might be kinda-sorta okay turn out to be colossally flawed. Irredeemable, even. And that's saying something coming from me, given that I'm a pretty big believer in redemption. 

Anyway, one of my favorite among the amoral/immoral brigade of characters is Mike 'Wags' Wagner, the wingman to deca-billionaire Bobby Axelrod, one of the shows two protagonists. Wags is nasty, but he's occasionally so pathetic and needy that he almost becomes endearing.

At one point, Wags is going through a particularly rough period, and the resident shrink/personnel career coach at Axe Capital, Bobby Axelrod's hedge fund, sets him up with something called a professional cuddler.

As preposterous as Billions is, I sensed right away that, even if I've never heard of it, professional cuddler has to be a real thing.

Turns out, it is. 

Professional cuddlers are service providers, and the service they provide - to the tune of $40, $80, $100, even $200 (in LA, natch) an hour - is, well, cuddling. Sort of like prostitutes, without the nasty bits.

Cuddling, huh?

Not that I've got anything against cuddling. 

I mean, I like hugs. And long hugs. Arm around the shoulder. Arms linked. Hand holding with a significant other. Head on the shoulder, head in the lap with same. Cuddling as s a pre-thing (which I seem to vaguely recall). Not to mention the kind of snuggling you do with babies, toddlers, and dogs.

Admittedly, there may not be enough cuddling in my life these days. But - and here's where my half-German, half-Irish lineage likely plays a major role - not having a whole lot of cuddling in my life is not that big a deal.

Of course, I'm not everyone.

And there is apparently demand for professional cuddlers.

They have their own platforms, like Cuddle Comfort which, for over 10 years (I'm so out of it) has been offering those in need of cuddling - cuddlers who have just broken up, cuddlers who travel a lot and need some cuddling when they're on the road, the "conscious choice" singles who still crave some physical affection - can find like-minded locals for hookups (or whatever cuddle meetings are called). "We'll find you a cuddle buddy so you can start a friendship based on cuddling without any expectations of something more." And that cuddle buddy can be an amateur or a paid professional cuddler.

Part of the Cuddle Comfort pitch: 

Cuddling plays such an important role in our well-being – it's a natural antidepressant, relieves anxiety, and strengthens our immune system. The problem is we're not getting enough of it. A major hurdle is that we typically need to be in a relationship first to be afforded the opportunity to cuddle.

Thus the need for amateur, semi-pros, and professional cuddlers comes in.

The Cuddle Sanctuary is strictly for the pros. 

Professional cuddling sessions are a Rated G experience that will soothe your spirit and quiet your mind. Sessions can include hugging, spooning, holding hands, compassionate conversation, or blissful quiet.

We take a lot of care to craft each session so it’s just right for you. You get to decide just how much touch (if any) you want in a session. We can guide you through the entire experience and provide you with lots of relaxing, nurturing options. Or if you already know what you’d like to experience, we can design the session as a team.

You can even do a session virtually, though that seems kind of beside the point. 

Cuddle Sanctuary doesn't have any pros working out of Boston, but there's a local working gal, to borrow the term, named Sam, who - working out of an office near the Shop & Shop in the Boston suburb of Woburn - cuddles with all sorts of folks:

Since starting in 2015, I 've worked with people as young as 18 and as old as 72 before. I'm open to working with people older than that as well. I've worked well with people running companies, people starting their careers, and various people different work backgrounds in between. I've worked with people of various religious or spiritual belief systems as well from Orthodox Jewish to Satanists.

I do my best to be queer-friendly, trans-friendly, ESL-friendly and neurodiverse-friendly by continually educating myself. I'm increasingly aware of my privilege as a white woman in America, and I have worked with people that are black, Indian, Pakistani, Palestinian, African, Mexican, Brazilian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and various other demographics. I do my best to educate myself on the cultural challenges people might be experiencing due to their demographics and to tailor sessions for their needs before meeting them.

Sam sounds pretty woke. It also sounds like she mostly works with men who are depressed and/or repressed and/or lonely. (Mostly too repressed for sex.) She does require that cuddlers keep their pants on. And, no, boxers and briefs are NOT considered pants. 

(I hope that Sam has a wingman in the next room when one of the cuddlees comes a calling.)

Sam also writes about being adjacent to sex work, talks about how they handle things (without handling-handling things) when a cuddlee gets aroused, and notes that "due to criminalization laws" she cannot recommend any particular sex worker at this point in time.

I dunno. I get why people avail themselves of the services of sex workers. And professional shoppers. And dog walkers. And cleaning people. Et al. But I do find it sad that there are folks out there who don't know anyone they can at least cadge an occasional hug from. And/or who maybe can't afford to pay for a massage. 

So, even though this seems like a profession that will be doomed once they perfect soft, squeezable robots, I guess it's good that professional cuddlers are out there so that folks can find a cuddle when they need one. But the world sure is a very weird place.

Just how weird a place? When I was googling around for an image, what appeared but the microbead boyfriend companion pillow. "cute and fun husband, companion or cuddle buddy - super soft body pillow with benefits." And at $42.64, the price is pretty much inline with the lower end of the professional cuddler fee scale. Too bad it seems to have just the one arm...

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

Speaking of cuddling...We all called her Kay, but my German grandmother called my Aunt Kathryn "Katl," a German diminutive for Kathryn. Kay was the baby of my mother's family - 24 years younger than my mother - and I always thought that Grandma, with her thick accent, was calling her "Cuddle." A few years ago, my sister Kath broke it to me that G'ma was saying "Katl." I like my version better. 

Oh, those GQ physicists!

Now, I haven't known a ton of physicists in my life, but I've known a few. And my husband, who was an economist by trade and training, was pretty much a physicist by desire. On his bucket list - alas, never fulfilled - was a trip to the Large Hadron Collider/CERN in Switzerland. Not that I have any desire to go there, but I do have a bit of Jim's residual ashes and I wouldn't mind sprinkling this bit of him on the LHC grounds.

So if I can extrapolate a bit from my experience with the handful of physicists I've known, and from my experience with my husband - who was not exactly a snappy dresser -  it's that physicists are not exactly the kind of folks who like to dress up. 

Oh, maybe in the old days. The one where he's wearing a ratty old sweater aside, in most of the pictures you see of Albert Einstein, he's wearing a suit and tie. Sure, the suit may be rumpled, the tie askew, but he's suited up. And Richard Feynman, when he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, did wear white tie to the awards ceremony. 

Still, when I think "sartorial" and "physicist" - which, admittedly, I seldom do - I'm thinking comfy clothes: worn-in flannel shirts, khakis with frayed cuffs, Einstein's ratty old sweater.

So I was a bit taken aback to see the dress code for the upcoming 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference, to be held in Bangkok this June. (For those wondering why I would have seen anything about the upcoming 13th International Particle Accelerator Conference: TY, Twitter.)

According to a recent posting on the conference site, physicists (male) should some wearing a dark colored suit with leather shoes. And socks that match their attire. Which, I guess leaves out the standard physicist dress code of Birkenstocks worn with or without white socks. (Not my husband: the other physicists I've known.) Oh, and no visible tattoos or piercings. So much for that ear you got pierced because your GF (or BF) asked you to. And if it looks like business casual that's more business than casual will be okay - as worn by the dude in the grey suit pants and white shirt - the fine print states that, for the opening ceremony, suits are required.

For women, the biggest no-no is the pants suit. Given that women are going back to work in yoga pants and nice tops, this seems plenty ridiculous. The skirt length requirement sends me right back to Catholic high school: "Skirt should be a little below the knee, and never shorter than above the knee. It should cover your thighs completely when you sit." Because no one wants an alluring female physicist doing any sort of come hither to her colleagues. And, seriously folks, admittedly it's been a few years since I've attended a business conference, but thigh reveals were seldom much of anything to worry about when I was a regular participant in them.)

Turns out, while business casual is the suggested attire for the conference, the strict dress-up rules were proposed for the opening ceremony only. And that's because member of the Thai royal family will be in attendance, and it's well known that any royal family should be able to demand/command respect from their "subjects," whether they're their subjects of not. And, I guess, they just might get the vapors if they saw a common nerdly physicist in their usual garb.

Needless to say, given the third rule of motion (for every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction), there has been pushback on the code.

Professor David K. Smith responded to the dress code by saying “We are creative academics. We go to conferences to share ideas. As long as people aren’t wearing bikinis or speedos and don’t have swastika tattoos on the side of their face, I really couldn’t care less what they look like.” (Source: ThaiPBS World)

David K. Smith is a chemist (professor at University of York in the U.K.), but chemists are physicist-adjacent. And I'm with him.

So are a lot of others, including plenty of bona fide physicists. In any case, conference organizers have responded to the feedback: 

We fully understand the concerns that were raised, which are totally valid. We ourselves have similar concerns even before they were raised. Please note that those requirements were from an early communication between us and the responsible officials, and are not yet finalized.

I like that the organizers had "similar concerns even before they were raised."  O-kay.

Anyway, it's anticipated that the final dress code guidelines will be in the business casual arena. That, I suspect, will be challenging enough for some of the attendees, but is more in keeping with how normal people dress and how normal people dress when they're attending business conferences. 

As for having to dress up because you're in the presence of "the royals", well, don't get me started...

Why am I not surprised?

I don't have an Alexa. 

Not that it couldn't happen through my TV. After all, I use the voice option on the remote all the time. Oh, I know my regular channels by heart - 832 HGTV, 851 NESN (Red Sox), 901 MSNBC. But I'm now making my way through the 72 episodes of Billions, and when I want to catch an hour or two of this amazingly idiotic but completely fascinating and compelling series about a corrupt, evil, narcissistic hedgie and his opposite number: a corrupt, evil, narcissistic US Attorney/NY AG, I just pick up my remote, press the microphone and bark Billions. 

And not that Google doesn't have very search I've ever made squirreled away in some massive database. So they know not only what symptoms I've googled at 3 a.m., they also know that I've wondered, also at 3 a.m., what Gabby Hayes' first name was (George). Talk about BIG DATA.

And not that Amazon doesn't have a record at every last thing I've ordered, from the cheapest of the cheap (a laundry pen; sorry, but I felt the need for some reason and they didn't have them at the hardware store), to the priciest item I ever bought there (which I believe is the Breville toaster oven that just replaced the old KitchenAid that would no longer toast; day-um, should I have sprung for the one that does air frying, too???).

But I've always been wary about having an Alexa in my home, spying on me.

Not that Alexa is exactly spying on folks. Not yet, anyway. (Not that we know of. But "she" does perk up "her" ears when "she" hears your trigger or wake word. Which for most people is probably Alexa.)

But Alexa is paying attention to what you're asking about or requesting - "Who won the 1934 World Series?" "When did Natalie Wood die?" "Play 'Amarillo by Morning.'" "Order a bottle of Oribe shampoo for gray hair" - and then:

A report released last week contends that Amazon uses voice data from its Echo devices to serve targeted ads on its own platforms and the web. The report, produced by researchers affiliated with the University of Washington, UC Davis, UC Irvine, and Northeastern University, said the ways Amazon does this is inconsistent with its privacy policies. (Source: The Verge)

And Amazon, in its infinite generosity, is sharing the data with dozens of advertising partners.

That data is then used to “infer user interests” and “serve targeted ads on-platform (Echo devices) as well as off-platform (web).” It also concludes that this type of data is in hot demand, leading to “30X higher ad bids from advertisers.”

Why am I not surprised?

And, indeed, why should this be any different than their use of data on items I've searched Amazon on to target me, not to mention how is this different than all the ads that get algorithm'd my way based on non-Amazon purchases. 

I actually find some of the targeted ads ludicrous. Really and truly, am I apt to order Bombas socks a couple of hours after I order - wait for it - Bombas socks?

Anyway, Amazon has a point when they say that using Alexa requests to target ads ain't all that different than using a keyed in Amazon purchase to target ads, or make suggestions (people who ordered this book also ordered). 

And Amazon is pushing back on the report, suggesting that the research is flawed. 

Still, there's something about being targeted based on what you're saying to Alexa. And that something is creepy.

You can use privacy controls to turn this fabulous Alexa feature off. I'll have to remember that if I break both of my wrists and can no longer type my queries in. 

Somedays, I just want my privacy back. 

Let Hertz put you in the defendant's seat?

Well before O.J. Simpson did some pretty fancy broken-field running through airport terminals to pick up the keys to his Hertz ("the superstar in rent-a-car"), Hertz ads famously promised to put folks who wanted and needed a car in the driver's seat. 

Somewhere along the way, they started putting drivers in the defendant's seat by erroneously claiming that a car had been stolen. When it hadn't been.

The false arrests were triggered in a number of different ways.

Some folks returned their cars after hours, and slipped the keys into an unmanned slot, only to find that the car had never been checked in. Instead, it was reported stolen.

Other folks extended their rental agreements, but their credit card info didn't keep up with the extended transaction.

Still others unwittingly rented a car that had been reported stolen by Hertz, which never bothered to rescind the stolen vehicle report once they found that the car was found.

Of course, some folks legitimately stole a Hertz rental. (Should that be illegitimately?) Presumably, the bad thieves aren't joining the good non-thieves in their lawsuit, where the plaintiffs are looking for more than half-a-billion dollars. 

Hertz customers have said they were arrested and jailed because the company accused them of stealing cars that they had paid to rent and, in some cases, had returned long before their arrest.

More than 230 plaintiffs are suing the company for false arrest and, in some cases, prosecution. The lawyers for this group say they know more cases are out there, with warrants for the arrest of people who rented from Hertz years ago continuing to surface today. (Source: USA Today)

Hertz, needless to say, is not rolling over and playing  dead. They're claiming that most of the vehicles in question for overdue, and that the renters had stopped communicating with the company. They say that the company "cares deeply about [their] customers." (Yawn and/or eye-roll.) And they state that the number of customers swept up in the grand theft auto dragnet is an infinitesimally small percentage of their overall customer base. (True dat.)

This is, of course, little comfort to those innocents who've been slapped in cuffs and hauled off to the hoosegow.

Meanwhile, Hertz's new CEO has quasi admitted that at least some of the customers involved in the suit have been done wrong. Stephen Scherr, in some recent media appearances said:

"It’s not acceptable to Hertz to have any customer — a single customer — sort of caught up in some of what’s happened"... 

Scherr told multiple news outlets, including CNBC's Squawk Box, that the company "will do right where our customers have been negatively affected," and that "we have changed our policies to avoid the possibility of this happening."

Scherr may have been a bit too candid for the comfort of Hertz communications and PR execs. They've turned down a USA Today request for interview time to ask about the comments Scherr recently made. 

In addition to its lawsuit troubles, Hertz may have the Feds breathing down their corporate neck. Some members of Congress have asked the FTC and/or the White House to take a look at what's going on with Hertz.

I only rent a car a couple of times a year. Sometimes with Hertz, sometimes with the we-try-harder folks at Avis. I've never been falsely arrested by either, but it does seem kind of strange that it's Hertz customers who are getting arrested, not Avis drivers. Which suggests that either Avis doesn't care when cars and drivers pull disappearing acts - which is unlikely - or that they have better policies and  procedures in place. 

Given the old time O.J. ads, it seems as if Hertz doesn't mind getting involved with the sketchy side of life. Of course, Hertz' latest poster boy - Tom Brady - may be a weird-ball, but he's not particularly sketchy. What's TB12 doing for Hertz? Why, he's lending his name and dimpled chin to plump for Hertz' fleet of electric Teslas.

But now that I think of it, Brady's not all that squeaky clean. There was that deflategate scandal. And doesn't the execrable Elon Musk have a little something to do with Tesla? 

Hmmmm. Maybe all this exposure to sketchy sorts, dating back to those galloping OJ ads, has turned Hertz into the suspicious types who think that all their customers are trying to rip them off.

Maybe Hertz just needs to try harder. 

Car free, carefree

I was out getting my steps in the other day, and was wending my way around the 'hood when I happened on some pretty intense towing action. There were at least a half dozen tow trucks, picking up (picking off) cars - mostly pricey SUV's: this is, after all Beacon Hill - that hadn't been moved for street sweeping.

From the looks of things, they'd already cleared this block on Mt. Vernon, and were tackling Brimmer Street, where I once lived.

Caveat, parker!

Once again, I was reminded just how great it is to be car free.

I last owned a car in 2007, and remain firm in my belief that unless you absolutely need a car (say, to commute to those far suburban reaches that aren't on public transpo) and/or unless you have (hah!) or can afford a parking place (a couple of months ago, someone offered $750K for a garage space a block from where I live), you're out of your mind to keep a car in downtown Boston. And I bet this holds for pretty much any downtown urban area.

It's not as if I don't enjoy driving. I do.

It's just that my adult life has been spent in Boston where, unless you need a car, you don't need a car.

When I commuted to the burbs, I kept a car. 

In the mid-1980's, my company moved from Cambridge to Lexington. Boo! So I bought an ancient, rust bucket Honda Civic from a colleague who was moving to NYC, where he wouldn't need a car. I may have paid $2,000 bucks for it. Maybe $1,000. 

At first, I didn't pay for a parking place, but toughed it out, roaming around for upwards of an hour when I got home in the evening to find a space. Then maneuvering my way into it - no small feat getting into a tight space, especially when you drive a standard. But I did learn how to parallel park.

With my Civic, I was towed once - not a pleasant experience - and ticketed three times, twice for the same infraction. I had parked near the Hampshire House (Cheers Bar) in what had, up until the moment I parked there, been a resident parking place. But the Hampshire House had wangled it for themselves, and I didn't notice the notice. I got one ticket at 9 p.m., the other at 6:30 a.m. On my birthday.

Then there was shoveling out after snow storms. Don't get me going on that one. 

The Civic was a mess. The body was rusty and something was always going wrong, as happens with old crappy cars. Towards its end of life, the driver side door was permanently latched, and I had to crawl in over the shift. Very pleasant, especially when wearing a skirted suit.

After a stint commuting to Lexington, I took a job even further afield, in Lowell.

There, my little Civic gave out, literally coughing up its life when I pulled into the car dealership, where I'd purchased a Mercury Tracer. I got $200 for the trade-in.

I loved the Tracer, which was a sweet little car. Plus it was new, and worth protecting in a way the Civic just plain wasn't. So I started paying for overnight parking in the Boston Common Garage. An absolute bargain. I think it was only $90 a month then, for out-by-10 a.m. - in-after-4 p.m. parking. Unlimited parking on weekends, holidays, and snow days. Quite a deal.

Within a couple of weeks after leaving Wang for another Cambridge job I could get to on the Red Line, I sold the Tracer by placing an ad in the Want Advertiser, a newsprint booklet that was Craigslist before there was Craigslist.

Car free!

I was thrilled.

Fast forward and my Cambridge company, lease up, decided to upstakes and move to Burlington, right near the Burlington Mall. A swell location if you like the jungle noises at the Rainforest Cafe.

I bought a shiny blue New Beetle, and, yes, I kept a daisy in the vase.

And went back to paying for parking in the Common Garage.

A few years later, I left corporate for freelance work, but kept the car (for some daffy reason). It was paid for. I used it to get to my sister's in Salem, my other sister on the Cape. But I could no longer justify paying for parking, given I now would need fulltime parking for occasional use.

For a while, I used a parking place out back of my building, owned by a friend who wasn't using it. Ultra convenient. Until a family of rats held a picnic on my engine block. Imagine my shock when I went to top off the windshield wiper fluid and found chicken bones, fruitcake, pineapple chunks, and rat scat.

So I took to the streets, scrounging for spaces, shoveling out, parking in the Garage overnight as a last resort.

There were some months when the only time I "drove" my car was when I needed to move it for the street sweepers. I'd hop in the car at 6 a.m. and, along with a convoy of other parkers, follow the street sweepers around, claiming a space - good for two weeks - once they'd swept it. Good for two weeks, that is, if some moving company or utility crew didn't post signs claiming it for a while. So I had to check regularly.

I kept weighing the advantages of getting rid of the car (many) vs. the disadvantage (few). Then I broke my shoulder and could no longer drive a standard. So I called Goodwill (not Kars-4-Kids) and had them take it away. It made me a bit sad. It was a PITA to own a car, but I really did love that Beetle.

Since then, I've been car free. 

I used to be a heavy Zipcar user, but, while I'm still a member I mostly Uber when I "need" a car. Rarely, I have to rent a car. Rarely.

For years after I was car free, by the way, I'd be walking around the neighborhood on a summer weekend, gazing wistfully at all the free parking spaces that appeared when the locals took off for their summer homes. Where were those empty spaces when I needed one?

Seeing all those towed cars the other day reminded me of just how great it is to NOT have a car.

Car free, carefree.

The stressful workplace: it's killing us

When I worked at Wang Labs during the late 1980's, the company was spiraling downward. In what was a stressful environment to begin with - overly bureaucratic, insanely hierarchical, incredibly cheap (when you traveled on business, you had to do so on your own time and you had to take the cheapest flight, even if it involved multiple stops and flying you 1,000 miles out of your way) - the lack of clear direction, the cost cutting measures, the habitual layoffs layered more stress onto an already dire situation.

To cut costs, they unscrewed one-third of the overhead lights. I guess that move had an upside: it was harder to see how dirty and rundown the place was. They also cut back on cleaning, which meant that they no longer emptied your wastepaper basket daily. Which might of been okay if it hadn't also meant not emptying the oversized, unlidded trash containers they had on each floor near the coffee machine. So each floor had a colossal garbage pail, overflowing with coffee grounds and lunch refuse like banana peels. Because none of us wanted garbage to accumulate in our cubicles, we emptied ours out in the communal bin.

And don't get me going on the bathrooms. We used to joke about contracting typhus. A (male) colleague reported that he'd gone into a men's room stall and found a row of dried boogers above the toilet paper dispenser. No surprise. When you neglect the physical environment, people treat it badly and make things worse. Broken windows theory writ large. One time, I found a desiccated tea bag, shriveled up in a corridor. Another time, while walking between floors, I had to step around a giant loogie that someone had hawked in the stairwell.

But even worse than the physical decay was the continuous fear of being pink-slipped. 

Before one massive scale and particularly gruesome lay-off - they had announced in October that the lay-off would be conducted and done with by December 1st, and, of course, they waited until December 1st to put it in motion - a guy on my floor dropped dead in his cubicle of a heart attack. He was about my age - late thirties/early forties - and had a couple of small kids. Financial speaking, his family was probably better off, given he likely had life insurance and the Wang severance packages were not all that great.

Wang was by no means the only stressful environment I've worked in. I've worked under undeniably incompetent and often malevolent senior management. I've reported to narcissistic aholes. I've had toxic colleagues, and toxic folks reporting to me. (It happens.) 

I've written about it plenty of times, going back to Pink Slip's early days. (All Worked Up, December 2006). In fact, Pink Slip started out mostly being about lay-offs and generally lousy working conditions. 

All jobs, I've come to believe, can be stressful. (Hell, pretty much everything in life can be stressful.) Working in a factory. Waitressing. Customer complaint taker. Every one of the jobs I've held has had their moments. But what made those moments and jobs survivable was knowing that it wasn't going to be forever. A crappy summer job? You can make it until September. A crappy professional job? The two most beautiful words in the English language are "I" and "quit." First runners up: "head" and "hunter."

Finding a new job is a common response to being in a terrible, terribly stressful job situation. You leave thinking and hoping that the next place you land will somehow be better. More functional than dysfunctional. Which, as we all know, is not always (seldom?) the case. The solution, it seems, is that there's no solution.

And we do need a solution, one Stanford B School professor says. He claims that stressful work environments - not just rat-race blue collar jobs like the Amazon warehouse and delivery positions have employees peeing in bottles since there's no time for a break - are killing people:

Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford School of Business, argues that work is exacting an even greater price than we realize. More than 100,000 Americans die each year from adverse workplace conditions, he says. And many more become sick. (Source: Boston Globe)

We're not talking OSHA type deaths and illnesses - the kind of accidental deaths that happen to lumberjacks and chicken pluckers. 

It’s a much broader phenomenon ― encompassing office workers, as well as traditionally high-stress jobs like nurses and first responders. Pfeffer estimates that “workplace management” was, as of 2018, the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.

“I think we are on an unsustainable path. I think we were on an unsustainable path pre-pandemic. The pandemic’s made everything worse, and something’s got to give,” he says.

Pfeffer says it's time to stop blaming the workers for not being able to cope with stress in any way other than quitting or dropping dead. Time to start making employers accountable for the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad working conditions in their companies. 

That sort of blame is absolutely backwards. The onus should be on employers.

What's causing all this death and destruction?  

People are working longer hours. They're under pressure to become more and more productive. (C.f., peeing in a bottle so they can work more.) The expectation that, in return for some flexibility - working from home, taking an hour off here and there to take the kid to the dentist - employers expect employees to be always on. Three a.m. e-mail? Where ARE you???

“The economic toll, in terms of lost productivity, lost good years of life, lost days, increased medical expenses,” Pfeffer says, “is on an unsustainable path, and it needs to be stopped. And therefore you need some combination of legislation, regulation, and litigation.”

...According to Pfeffer, the answer is to make employers take better care of the people who work for them.

He says that there are lots of reliable, tested, scientific measurements that could gauge employee wellbeing. And he makes a provocative argument: We should hold companies responsible “for the mental and physical health and the wellbeing of their employees. As you would do for the environment.”

“And if you make them ill, we’re going to fine you... If you dump a bunch of crap into the water, we’re going to hold you responsible for that damage. Same parallel. We should treat human sustainability exactly the same way as we treat environmental sustainability,” he says. 

...If, as a culture, we agree that the cost of workplace stress has gotten too high, Pfeffer believes that action will have to come from both citizens and government leaders.

“If you wait for companies to do this on their own,” he says, “good luck.” 

 Good luck is right. 

I know that Wang Labs was a long time ago, but they wouldn't even clean up a loogie in the stairwell or wipe the dried boogers off the wall.

Hope things have improved, but I have my doubts that companies, for all their lip service about employee wellbeing, will do all that much about it.

Hope I'm wrong...

Shopping around

This is apparently long ago news. So long ago, in fact, that when the story came out, I was just a broth of a girl. A sweet young thing of sixty. So long ago, that Twitter was just really finding its audience (i.e., everyone) and finally taking off. So long ago, that Donald Trump wasn't yet a raging fascistic power monger hell bent on destroying our democracy. Back then, he was nothing more than an annoying huckster, a wanker with a fake reality show ("The Apprentice") who was able to satisfy his narcissistic supply by insulting, demeaning, and firing people who really didn't work for him. Ah, those were the days. 

Anyway, the long ago non-news from the Year of Our Lord 2010 is that Barbra Streisand has a shopping mall in the basement of the main house on the grounds of her Malibu estate.

The mall isn't exactly a suburban mall anchored by a Macy's and/or a Crate & Barrel. It's a "collection of turn-of-the-last-century-style shops [that] beckons 'customers' to step inside," the shops laid out on a "cobblestone-paved, antique-lantern-lit 'street.'"

There's a Sweet Shop, where guests coming to Chez

Streisand/Brolin for a movie screening can load up (for free) on popcorn and theater snacks. She has a Gift Shoppe - genius! - where she keeps new items like soap dishes and candlesticks that she can use when she needs a hostess gift. The Gift Shoppe even comes with its own wrapping table.

This reminds me of an old friend of my cousin's who, in her retirement, worked part time for years at Williams-Sonoma, where she took advantage of the sales and employee discounts to purchase all sorts of Williams-Sonoma wares like pizzelle makers, panini grills, and soda machines. The sorts of thing that people don't buy for themselves, but are happy enough to receive as gifts. 

I was at this woman's house once and we went down to her basement to check it out. It was not a Streisand-esque old timey-town shopping district. It was just a basement. A basement packed, floor to ceiling, with Williams-Sonoma boxes. This was years ago, and the stockpile might be depleted by now, but when I was there is was loaded to the gills.

My cousin and her daughters-in-law were gifted with many of the stockpiled items over the years.

(Seriously, you may not need a pizzelle maker, but who doesn't want one?)

Streisand's personal shopping mall is, of course, something else entirely. 

Like everything on her estate, the shops grew out of years of careful research. On a trip to the legendary decorative-arts museum Winterthur in Delaware, she was fascinated by a series of early-19th-century shops created by curators to display their collections. "Seeing Winterthur's indoor street, I thought how ingenious that was," she remembers. "Instead of just storing my things in the basement, I can make a street of shops and display them." (Source: Harpers Bazaar) 

Winterthur? I don't think it exists any longer, but I used to love getting the Winterthur catalog. In fact, that's where my Christmas tree topper came from. I also have some lovely, pale pink glass beads my mother got from there. Very pretty. I almost wore them the other day. 

...While most of the stores offer stock that comes and goes, the Antique Clothes Shop is truly a museum. Paneled in lavender-painted boiserie, it displays some of the star's most famous costumes, including her "People"-number gown from the Broadway production of Funny Girl, made of green chiffon over pink silk, with little beaded balls on the sleeves. 

Between the Winterthur lookalikes and the clothing museum, it's official: I wouldn't mind an invite to Streisand's mansion. Sounds like a place that's plenty fun to shop around in.

Not that I'm all that much of a shopper. Oh, I still buy things. But I'm not the shopper I used to be. 

Here I'm probably kidding myself. In the last couple of weeks I got some new napkins and a couple of Martha Stewart lemon-design serving pieces. I pretty much had to, given that I was hosting Easter dinner for the first time and really needed something springy and fresh. And the Martha Steward platter and bowl were marked down from $50 to $17.99, so they were practically free. Still, this and a few other recent purchases aside, these days I'm more into de-accessioning. You get to the point in your life when you really don't need anything.

As for clothing shopping, 99.99% of the time I'm wearing casual - and I do mean casual, not business casual - and if I'm buying something it's mostly (but, admittedly, not always) to replace something that's no longer wearable.

Anyway, there's more to Streisand's estate than the shopping plaza. 

A veritable village, it includes the rustic mill house, which boasts a 14-foot-high, 4,000-pound water wheel; Grandma's house, a cozy cottage filled with quilts; and the main house, a rambling yet elegant white mansion. But the heart of the property is the barn, a giant U-shaped clapboard structure flanked by a stone silo. A two-tiered central great room inside leads to a show-house-like collection of period rooms: the Federal lounge, the Greene & Greene library, the Stickley office, the art-nouveau bathroom, the napping room, and, yes, that street of shops.

A Stickley office? With a Stickley rocking chair that Babs sometimes sits and rocks in? 

Yep, I officially want an invite. 

I won't really be shopping around. Just window shopping. Maybe sit in the Stickley rocker and do a bit of rocking.

Streisand's spread is, of course, a tad bit on the cra side. And the water wheel is definitely goofy. But it all seems harmless enough. She's earned her money, and she grew up pretty poor, so if she wants to indulge in her fancies, oh, why not.  

And that Gift Shoppe. What can I say that I haven't said already. Genius!