Tercentennial. (Happy 300th to Worcester.)

Today's a big day out in The Heart of the Commonwealth. Worcester, Massachusetts, is turning the Big 3-0-0. 

The municipality, named after Worcester, England, was first established as a town in on June 14, 1722, and later became a city on leap day, February 29, 1848. During the past three centuries, Worcester has evolved from modest but instrumental revolutionary beginnings to a diverse and modern city, the second most populous in New England, rich in innovation, history and culture. (Source: City of Worcester)

I vaguely knew how old Worcester is. But I did not know that it went from town to city status on February 29th. Which happens to be my wedding anniversary. Guess you can take the girl out of Worcester; you just can't take the Worcester out of the girl.

Anyway, turning 300 is a momentous occasion for "the second most populous [city] in New England," and I'm delighted to celebrate with it. From the afar of Boston, of course, where - despite Worcester's diversity, modernity, innovation history, and culture - I fled once I reached the age of reason.

Worcester is such a funny place. Despite its being the second largest city, not just in Massachusetts, but in New England, plenty of folks from outside of the Northeast draw a blank on it. I don't expect everyone to be a geography nerd - I could probably reel off 10 cities in Michigan, for crying out loud - but I'm guessing that most outsiders, if asked to name a city in Massachusetts other than Boston, wouldn't come up with Worcester first. If at all. Salem. New Bedford. Lowell. Springfield. I bet they'd all place ahead of poor old Worcester. 

If asked to name cities in New England, I don't imagine Worcester would be top of mind, either. Boston (of course). Providence. Hartford. Portland. 

Worcester? Never heard of it.

And yet, my native city is rich in innovation, history, and culture. Not to mention triple deckers and diners. Here, thanks mostly to Worcester Mass Firsts, are just a few of the historic, innovative, cultural thangs that Worcester is known for:

The first pressurized space suit was created in Worcester. Fitting, given Worcester's connection to the space program, which came thanks to Dr. Robert Goddard, who launched the first liquid fuel rocket in 1926, kicking off the space program. (My father was Dr. Goddard's paper boy.)

Worcester was always an industrial sort of town, so it's no surprise that the first envelope folding machine was born there. So were the monkey wrench, the steam calliope, and the modern typewriter. The cotton gin (Eli Whitney) and the modern sewing machine (Elias Howe) were invented by guys who grew up just outside of Worcester. So almost us.

A little less industrially: the first mass-produced Valentine were produced, appropriately enough, in the Heart of the Commonwealth. Regrettably, the first commercial pizza mix came from Worcester, too.

The first Bible printed in America was printed in Worcester. So was the first dictionary. The publisher, Isaiah Thomas, was also the first person to give a public reading of the Declaration of Independence. And in the first organized protest against the new U.S. Government, Daniel Shays led a march, protesting taxes, to the Worcester Courthouse. 

While on the political front (distaff edition), the first women's rights conventions were held in Worcester. And the first female cabinet member - Frances Perkins - may have been born in Boston, but she grew up in Worcester and graduated from Classical High. Perkins was Secretary of Labor under FDR, and was a driving force behind Social Security.

To your health, you can thank Worcester for the birth control pill and the first Federally-licensed AIDS test. Worcester was also the home of the first publicly-funded insane asylum. (No comment.)

The first perfect game was pitched in Worcester in 1880. The imaginatively-named team "The Worcesters" beat the imaginatively-named "The Clevelands." Also in baseball news: Ted Williams' first home run hit in New England came during an exhibition game at Holy Cross in 1939. And I'm pretty sure that my father was there to witness it.

On the cultural front, the first radio station in America to play the Beatles was WORC. And the Smiley Face was created in Worcester as a promo for State Mutual Insurance. (I had one of the originals, which had a lot of cachet when they were introduced when I was in high school.)

And wait - there's more! - the windchill factor, which makes us feel even colder than we already are, was developed at Clark University. 

Worcester, which lost much of whatever mojo it had when heavy industry left the building, is having a moment. It's got a thriving bio-tech sector, a foodie restaurant scene, and a minor league baseball team, the Woo Sox (the Red Sox AAA team), that are fun to watch. They play in the spiffy new Polar Park, which is a great place to watch a game. Among other things, the field sells Worcester food: Coney Island hot dogs, Polar sodas, Wachusett potato chips, and Table Talk pies. I went to a game a few weeks ago and was in heaven. Or would have been if the Woo Sox had won. 

Happy Worcester Tercentennial to all my homies. (You don't look at day over 299.)

FORE, you mashie-niblicks!

Other than mini-golf, I've never played golf. I don't watch golf, either. Just not my jam.

But golf was a part of my childhood and youth, something I probably wouldn't be thinking about if not for the U.S. Open, which is being held this year at The Country Club in Brookline. Or for the fact that someone has bought Francis Ouimet's childhood home - which overlooks The Country Club - and it turning it in to a golf shrine.

Ah, golf.

My father played golf. He was an excellent athlete, and like most folks who excelled at sports from a young age, he was pretty good at whatever sport he picked up. Baseball and football had been his main games growing up, and through his twenties he played "semi-pro" baseball: weekend games in which they players passed the hat and split the proceeds. I believe that he played Navy League ball during the war. 

He was also a terrific skater, and it was always a great pleasure to watch him skate around - fast, backwards - when he took us skating at Elm Park. So fluid, so graceful.

But golf was the game of his adulthood, and he played most weekends during the spring and summer.

Nothing fancy. He was in the Holy Name League that played at Hillcrest Country Club, a nothing fancy place just outside of Worcester. And he played at other clubs, with friends and business colleagues. For golf spikes, he converted Florsheim wingtips that were too beat up to wear to work. I seem to remember that the local cobbler - an old Irish geezer, who always wore on a baggy navy blue pin-striped suit, a collarless shirt, and a scally cap - screwed the spikes in. 

My father enjoyed playing, and he also liked watching golf.

He watched televised matches on Sunday. And when the PGA Tour swung through Worcester - as it did in the 1960's, with tournaments played at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Sutton - he got tickets and went.

Sometimes he got extra tickets and gave them to his kids. 

So my friend Marie and I got to go a few times when we were in our teens, and I much enjoyed roaming up and down the hills of Pleasant Valley, watching Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Billy Casper... All the big names of the era. I was an Arnold Palmer fan. 

Today, you couldn't pay me to watch golf, but back then I enjoyed it. 

When my father had golf balls with a slice in them, he gave them to us kids to play with. Two of my great childhood pleasures: Whacking one of the old golf balls with a baseball bat and seeing how far it could sail. The answer: pretty darned far. My other golf-related pleasure: using a razor blade to cut the outer coating off, unraveling the taut rubber "string" on the inside, and uncovering the tiny little rubber ball in the middle. Those little suckers could just crazily bounce, but they were so small, they were easy to lose.

Fast forward, and I spent many weekends at a golf course in Western Mass, a club that my husband's aunt and uncle (who were like my in-laws) owned (partially) and managed (fully). It had been a tobacco farm, which somewhere along the line, they decided to convert into a golf course. It was in a quite pretty setting, and it was great fun walking around - making sure to stick to the fringes to avoid getting hit by a ball - or, better yet, tootling around the course in a golfcart of pickup truck with Uncle Bill. 

Neither Jim nor I played. Nor did Uncle Bill, Aunt Carrie, or Cousin Steve and his family. They just ran the place.

So much for my life in golf.

But golf is all over the news this week, as hosting the U.S. Open is a very big deal, and the eyes of the golf world - at least the eyes of those not fully distracted by the new Saudi golf league that's challenging the PGA for golfing primacy. And is paying big name golfers hundreds of millions of dollars to join. (Rumor is that Tiger Woods turned down an offer worth nearly a billion dollars. As if I needed another reason to dislike golf and/or the Saudis.)

The Country Club, where the Open is being held is one of the oldest golf clubs in the U.S. And one of the most exclusive. It's estimated that it costs $500K just to join. That's if they let you in. Tom Brady was initially turned down; former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and his wife were blackballed. 

For a long time a Brahmin-only club - Jews, Italians, Irish set up their own clubs - over time, slowly and not all that surely, The Country Club opened up to Catholics, Jews, and African Americans. The place remain ultra exclusive. And plenty hush-hush.

But it was a local kid, Francis from the 'hood, who was responsible for putting The Country Club on the map - and for creating the groundswell of interest in golf that turned it from an upper class only sport to one that became more universal. Or at least more open to the middle class.

Although he lived just outside The Country Club's grounds, Francis DeSales Ouimet is not someone who would ever have been welcome as a member. He was a working class Catholic kid with a French Canadian immigrant father, and an Irish immigrant mother. 

But he was allowed to caddy at The Country Club. And it was there that he taught himself to golf. He taught himself pretty well. He had a lot of success as an amateur - he never turned pro - and in 1913, when Ouimet was just 20, he won the U.S. Open at The Country Club, improbably: 

.

...beating the two leading players at the time, Great Britain’s Harry Vardon and Ted Ray. The story is told in Mark Frost’s book, “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” and in a Disney film by the same name.

...With 10-year-old caddie Eddie Lowery by his side — Ouimet’s usual caddie, Eddie’s older brother Jack, had been nabbed by the local truancy officer — Ouimet recorded a victory that changed the course of golf.(Source: Boston Globe)

Gotta love the idea of a 10 year old caddie who got to be famous because his brother was caught playing hooky. As an aside: Lowery, the son of Irish immigrants, stayed in and around golf for his life.

The Lowery-caddied Ouimet win changed the course of golf enough to get Tom Hynes, a local (very successful) commercial real estate guy to buy Ouimet's childhood home.

“I was not a history buff and I was not a golf buff, but I had an understanding of how that house was important and how to get it back into circulation and into the

game of golf,” said Hynes, who also lives on Clyde Street. “It was actually pretty simple: Buy it, and then go figure it out.”

It's not a particularly imposing house. And Brookline is full of imposing houses. But it's small-h historic, and Tom Hynes wanted to preserve it. The house is being spruced up, and Hynes even has period furniture ready to plunk in place. The interior is pretty much done. The vinyl siding with eventually (post-Open) be replaced with Ouimet-period clapboard. 

In the course of the restoration, a couple of ancient putters - early 1900's vintage - were found in the attic. They may even have belonged to Ouimet.

The restored house is going to be gifted to The Country Club. If they look the gift house in the mouth, Hynes will have two houses on Clyde Street. 

Anyway, here's what Ouimet accomplished with his win over Vardon and Ray:

“Up until that, it was a rich man’s game, and if you look at some of the press clippings from their time, it was worldwide front-page news that this kid beat the best in the world,” said Hynes. “The common man and woman figured, ‘Hey, I can play golf — if he can, I can — it’s not just an elite game anymore.’ That’s probably the most important single win in the history of golf in the United States.”

By the way, I don't think Ouimet ever joined The Country Club, where as a Catholic, he probably wouldn't have been allowed in. He was a member of Charles River (one of the local Irish clubs) and Woodland (where two of my older cousins caddied; maybe they even caddied for Ouimet. Ouimet died in 1967. Charlie would have been caddying from the mid 1940's through the early 1950's; Rob from the late 1950's through the early 1960's. 

My father was an Irish Catholic kid from Worcester, Massachusetts. He was a year old when Ouimet won the Open. But he knew all about Francis Ouimet. An may even have been inspired by him.

Fore, you mashie niblicks!

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

Mashie-niblick? An old time golf club, equivalent of a 7-iron. My father used to mention them quite often. I think he just got a kick out of the name. 

Con artists

Remember Anna Delvey? (Nee: Anna Sorokin.) She's the con artist who, parading around as a German heiress, managed to defraud banks, hotels, and anyone unfortunate to make her acquaintance. To the tune of over a quarter-of-million dollars. She spent a couple of years in prison for her troubles, and once she was released, she was taken into ICE custody. She's still being held, pending deportation back to Germany. (If they'll take her. Her family is originally from Russia.) 

Earlier this year, Inventing Anna, a somewhat fictionalized accounting of her scam was out on Netflix. 

Anna was always on the fringe of the art world - the centerpiece of her scam was establishing some sort of 21st century salon (presided over by herself, of course) - but since then, with more time on her hands while in detention, she's gotten more into her own art. Putting the art in con artist, as it were. 

This spring, Delvey's work was part of a group showing, followed by a solo show. One goal the show(s) was to raise money to "Free Anna" (the first show's title) from ICE custody. 

“I would consider her style kind of a crossover between fashion sketches and satirical comics,” said Chris Martine, a representative for Delvey as the cofounder of Founders Art Club, which he describes as an an advisory body and group of influential collectors. “She has an intriguing style, but the more important thing is really the intangibles that she brings to the table, which is that people are just fascinated by her. (Source: Art News)

Those intangibles are, I assume, the cachet of being a convicted con artist, and having a Netflix series devoted to her scam. 

Martine was anticipating a reasonably hot market for Delvey's work, hoping that her original

is

pieces would go for around $10K. Eye of the beholder, I guess. ("Limited edition" prints can be had for $250.)

Founders Art Club reps only two "artists." Delvey's one.

...the other [is] also a well-known art world scammer: Alfredo Martinez. Martinez was jailed for 21 months starting in 2002 for the sale of Jean-Michel Basquiat forgeries he made and sold to prominent collectors for more than $100,000.

Martinez was an integral part of the “Free Anna Delvey” group show as he introduced Martine to Delvey, curated the show, and most importantly, was the artist that adapted sketches Delvey had made in prison to large-format pieces, as Delvey had been denied larger paper.

“While Alfredo was in prison, he was making art and was selling, too,” said Martine. A work Martinez made while in prison, Prison Drawing (Gun), from 2004, is currently held in the Museum of Modern Art’s collection. “So obviously he was the perfect match to help Anna launch this.”

Okay. Oh, me of little faith did check to make sure that Alfredo's drawing is, in fact, in MOMA's collection. (Not on exhibit, mind you.) 

But, wait. There's more. There's always more. 

Julia Morrison, a fellow artiste - and a writer - has emerged, claiming that she helped fund the "Free Anna" show to the tune of $8K that hasn't been paid back. 

“I still have $8,000 on my credit card,” Morrison told the Post. “I can’t afford to just throw $8,000 worth of Anna Delvey’s expenses on my card. I wasn’t doing it to be a good friend to her. I did it for the show, knowing that I’d be paid back. At least that’s what Alfredo promised.” (Source: Art News)

Martinez says that Morrison will be repaid at some point.

And we do know that there's honor among art thieves, don't we?

Julia Morrison is "known", of quasi-known, or known with a very small k known for a not so close DM encounter with Armie Hammer:

Morrison first came to media attention when she released screenshots of her text messages with actor Armie Hammer, where he described his sexual fantasies. Morrison later made NFTs of those screenshots.

I don't know how much - if anything - Morrison made from those NFT's. NFT's are getting to be so yesterday. 

"A moment in time, like Jackson Pollock drips paint on a canvas," Morrison exults. "Own a part of internet history, and the first NFT minted within the #MeToo Movement." (Source: White Hot Magazine)

You got your thieving con artists. And your artists who are cons. And legit NFT artists who are all in on the legit, sucker-born-everyday con that is the NFT art world.

Oh, what a world we live in.

A farewell to clam strips

Well, after nearly a century of offering hungering wayfarers a mediocre dining experience, the last Howard Johnson's restaurant - the Lake George, NY location - has closed.

The once-beloved roadside chain was born on the South Shore, where founder Howard D. Johnson opened an ice cream shop in Quincy [Massachusetts] more than 90 years ago. In the decades after World War II, HoJo’s transformed into an American empire that operated nearly 1,000 locations with orange roofs by the 1960s and 1970s. It made appearances in “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Mad Men.”

But the success of HoJo’s was later eclipsed by McDonald’s and other fast-food chains. Marriott bought the hotel arm of Howard Johnson’s in 1985, while the restaurant franchises soldiered on. By 2015, only three locations — in Lake Placid,N.Y.; Bangor, Maine; and Lake George — remained. One by one, they have closed. (Source: Boston Globe)

While I'm every bit as nostalgic for a lost past as any other old geezer, I can't say that I'm sorry.

I may have eaten there more often - the memories may have been flushed from the Big Data storage that is my mind - but I do have two recollections of eating at a HoJo's.

In 1963, my Aunt Kay was getting married. My Uncle Bob was schedule to get married the week after. My family was heading out to Chicago for a two-fer.

My mother flew there with the two little kids; the Big Three drove out with my father. 

After a brutally hot day spent in our unairconditioned car, largely on the NY State Thruway, we spent the night at a HoJo's hotel/restaurant combo in - if my 60 year recall is correct - Ashtabula, Ohio. (Alternate possibility: Erie, PA. We stopped in one town on the way out, the other on the way back. My money's on Ashtabula on the way out, Erie on the way back, as my father would wanted to get more of the trip behind him on Day One.)

I don't remember where we ate dinner, but we had breakfast in the HoJo restaurant. I had a cheese Danish and orange juice.

My dining out experience was limited. So was my hotel/motel experience. Both were as near to non-existent as is possible. 

Both the hotel - the squinchy little mini-wrapped bar of Ivory Soap; the AC; the pool - and the restaurant - cheese Danish! - both seemed incredibly posh and exotic to me. 

It turned out to be quite a trip for fine dining.

On Day Two, my father just wanted to blast through the final 400 miles to Chicago. So, other than for an occasional bio break at a highway filling station, we didn't stop at all. Lunch was a giant bag of circus peanuts and some Pepsis - neither of which my mother would have allowed. What a treat! 

A day or so before Kay's wedding, my mother took me and my sister Kath to lunch in downtown Chicago at the Kungsholm Restaurant. We all got dressed up - white gloves and all - and took the El in town. 

I had fruit cup with sherbet, served in an iced aluminum ice cream dish, and Danish potted beef. 

Even I, not in the least an epicure, could tell that, next to the Kungsholm, that HoJo's in Ashtabula had been nothing much to write a postcard home about. Still, that cheese Danish...

The trip to Chicago was memorable for many other reasons, most notable that, although Kay's wedding did happen, Bob's was mysteriously called off. (He did end up marrying Susie a couple of years later.) 

My second time eating in a HoJo's, which also coincided with a motel stay, was in the mid-1970's. 

My boyfriend and I were on a winter camping trip in the Catoctin Mountains, and after a couple of days in a mountain cabin where the indoor temperature barely made it above 40, we decamped to Chambersburg, PA, for an overnight respite at HoJo's. 

Never have a bed, hot shower, and indoor toilet been more warm and comfy. Never have a hot dog on a buttered bun and a hot fudge sundae tasted better.

And those are the two recalls I have of eating at a Howard Johnson's.

But I do know that their restaurants were famous for two things: ice cream and clam strips.

I never had their clam strips. 

What a travesty!

As any true clam-eater knows, whole belly clams are the only fried clam worth eating. Succulent, flavorful, a bit briny. I haven't had a clam roll yet this season, but as I type this, my mouth is watering and, in my mind, I'm at Sullivan's on Castle Island in South Boston, ordering a clam roll. 

Clam strips: chewy, bland. Okay if you like fried rubber bands, I guess. Made from slicing up a quahog, a giant, rubbery clam that, once out of its shell, could nearly bounce. 

It's amazing to me that a New Englander - which the eponymous Howard Johnson was - came up with the idea of a clam strip, but apparently they were a lot more palatable to the average American taste than the whole belly clam. Apparently, to the average American, that belly was a bit to close to an actual creature for comfort. 

Not that the demise of the last HoJo's restaurant means the demise of clam strips. They're still available. But personally, I'm choosing to believe that the world has seen the last of the clam strip. 

Meanwhile, HoJo's hotels, now owned by Wyndham, soldier on. 

Wonder if the one in Ashtabula is still around?

I love this story (Ho Hey)

There's a Walgreens near Downtown Crossing in Boston that I walk by all the time. 

I seldom go in.

Mostly I try to go to my wonderful local indie drugstore, but when I need something that Gary Drug doesn't carry, I'm a CVS kind of gal. CVS is a New England company; Walgreens is from somewhere else, and is a relative newcomer in these parts. Plus the Walgreen's went in where "my" Borders used to be. Sure, it may seem kind of stupid to mourn the loss of a chain bookstore, but this Borders was really wonderful. It had a terrific selection and great sales. Not that I hold a grudge, but I rarely make it to the inside of this Walgreens. There's an exception or two when I can't find something at a) Gary; b) multiple CVS's; or c) a grocery or rando convenience store. One such exception occurred in the early stages of the COVID shutdown, when toilet paper was in short supply.

My sister had told me that she was down to her last couple of rolls. I had a few to spare, but decided to go foraging. After stopping at a half dozen stores, and coming up empty, I was able to secure an eight-pack of some brand I never heard of. 

Crisis averted!

(Meanwhile, Trish had been able to find some on her own. Then the shortage eased up. That no-name eight-pack from Walgreens is my reserve supply.)

What this Walgreens does have to commend it is a bookcase "free library" where people can pick up and leave books. And, in decent weather, an old piano out front where anyone walking by can sit down and play. And anybody else walking by can stand there and listen. Sometimes I stand there and listen. 

I wasn't walking by last week when Sam Spencer sat down to play, but if I had been, I likely would have stopped and listened to his performance of "Ophelia", a song by The Lumineers.

I'm not the world's foremost Lumineers fan, but I have a CD of theirs kicking around her somewhere. (Okay. I know exactly where that somewhere is: in the old china cabinet I keep my CD's in, sorted in alphabetic order within category (male artist, female artist, group, Celtic, Christmas...)).

Anyway, I consider myself a casual Lumineers fan. Because, ho hey, who doesn't love "Ho Hey", sweetheart?

While Sam Spencer was playing someone who'd been standing there listening, leaned in and turned Spencer's solo performance into a duet.

“I looked over at him and said to myself, ‘This guy kind

of looks like one of the guys from The Lumineers,’” said Spencer, 27.

Turns out, that’s exactly who it was. In a remarkable twist of fate, the band’s co-founder, Jeremiah Fraites, was exploring Boston on his day off from touring when he overheard Spencer on the piano, playing a song he knew quite well.

He listened to the sound as it wafted through the streets, and then surprised the unsuspecting player.

“It was so mind-blowing,” said Spencer, who has visited the piano and practiced the song on it on more than one occasion. “I was immediately star-struck and I was embarrassed that I didn’t play the song better.” (Source: Boston Globe)

According to Fraites, Spencer's rendition was just fine: "awesome...perfect."

As it happened, Fraites' walking companion was Nicholas Sutton Bell, who does videos for The Lumineers. He recorded the encounter and Fraites posted it on Instagram. It was Bell who also informed Spencer that the song he was playing was Fraites'. 

“You’ve got to be [expletive] [expletive] me,” Spencer said in the video.

Apparently, things like this do happen. I've read about buskers who were doing a cover when they were joined by the originator. As happened in London a few years ago, when a kid singing "Handbags and Gladrags" for change in Picadilly Circus was joined by Rod Stewart. That must have been a hoot.

But it doesn't occur all that often, and the fact that it did in front of a Walgreens in Downtown Crossing. Well, I just love this story.

In addition to making Spencer Insta famous, Fraites comped him for the group's June 3rd show. 

Ho Hey!

Buffalo gal

I've been to a few of our National Parks, and they're all amazingly beautiful. They're also amazingly wild. And that makes them a little bit scary. 

When I was doing my National Parks thing with my college roommate (and great and good friend) Joyce 50 years ago - there were all sorts of warning signs all over the place about being cautious. Very cautious. These ranged from a speed limit of 5 m.p.h. - that was in Sequoia or Yosemite - to signs alerting campers not to sleep in the clothing you cooked in (bears) to bison and moose crossing signs. 

The two scariest things that happened on my long ago cross country camping trip was that 5 m.p.h. speed limit - talk about a steep and curving road - and a couple of close encounters with wild animals.

It may have been in Grand Teton that we visited the campsite next to ours to hang out with some fellow campers. (I believe a joint or two was involved.) When we got back to our campsite, there were a pair of black bear cubs sitting there in the well of our tent. We figured mama bear wasn't far away, but didn't want to wait to find out. We scrambled over to our car - a Karmann Ghia - and spent a sleepless night trying to sleep sitting up in the front seat. Even after the bear family had decamped, we didn't feel all that comfortable getting back into our sleeping bags. At dawn, we packed up and moved on.

Later on in our trip, in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia - midweek, October - we were pretty much the only campers around. A park ranger came over to our campsite to warn us about bears, making sure that all our food was secure, that we wouldn't wear our cooking clothing to bed, that we wouldn't slather on any hand cream (another bear attractant), etc. 

Check. Check. Check.

We snuggled down into our sleeping bags, "safe" in our little two-person backpack tent. Just as we were drifting off, we heard sniffing. Loud sniffing. Around the tent. 

Joyce and I reached out and grabbed each other's hand. 

Bear.

It had to be. 

Bear.

Neither one of us said a word. We both went motionless. Breathless.

There may be atheists in foxholes, but I can assure you there aren't many/any in flimsy two-person backpack tents when a bear is sniffing around.

And then, a cloud passed on, and the full moon lit up our surrounds. And we could see that what was sniffing around our tent wasn't a bear. It was a skunk. Which may have been worse. Fortunately, the polecat moved on. 

Anyway, I do know up close and personal that you need to be careful when you find yourself in a National Park. And I can only imagine that, given our litigious society, the warning signs are a lot more present than they were back in 1972. 

Still, people ignore those signs.

A few years ago, it was the knucklehead who was looking for a place to swim in Yellowstone. Unfortunately, he jumped into an acidic hot spring. Not only did he boil himself to death, the acid bath caused his body to dissolve.

The young woman who decided to get up close and personal with a Yellowstone bison was more fortunate. While the initial reports said the woman had died, turns out she was just gored. She was tossed in the air, and she was punctured. She was ambulanced to a hospital in Idaho. But she survived. 

Here's what went down:

The bison was walking near a boardwalk at Black Sand Basin, just north of Old Faithful, when the woman approached it on Monday, according to a park statement. She got within 10 feet (3 meters) before the animal gored her and tossed her 10 feet into the air...

Park officials say it's the first reported bison goring this year. The park statement said bison are unpredictable, have injured more people in Yellowstone than any other animal and can run three times faster than humans.

Park regulations require visitors to remain more than 25 yards (23 meters) away from bison. (Source: NPR)

What an idiot this buffalo gal was. 

And, yes, I know that the gorer was a bison, not a buffalo. But, let's face it, Americans pretty much use the words interchangeably, and the buffalo/bisons don't really care. Plus, there's no song about "Bison Gals" - not that I know of, anyway.

Whether she's a Buffalo Gal or a Bison Gal, that goree is sure one lucky idiot indeed.  

Hope this brings a tiny bit of comfort. (God help us.)

The only casket I ever went shopping for was my mother's. I had company: my siblings.

We went to the showroom at the funeral parlor - O'Connor Brothers - in Worcester that our family has always gone out of - at least since my grandfather died in 1924. 

My mother had always been quite clear about not wanting to have an elaborate casket. Truly, she would have been happy with the Boot Hill Special, a plain pine box fit for Doc Holliday, a knocked together coffin made out of particle board. 

We weren't going to go that far, but we all knew that, if we went overboard, my mother would have risen up and started shaking her fist at us. 

There were a number of caskets to choose from. The one that stood out was Kelly green, with a giant shamrock on the satin on the inside of the lid. There were also a number of decorative choices for "bumpers" to put on the corners of a plain casket to dress it up. They came in different themes: golf, lighthouses.

We went with a nice metal casket with something of an Art Deco design that reminded us of Chicago - my mother's home town - in the 1930's. 

My husband was cremated, so no casket. Most of Jim's ashes were buried in the cremation equivalent of the Boot Hill Special. A small amount sit on my fireplace mantel, held in a miniature urn made out of Connemara marble.

Shopping for my mother's caskets and shopping online for that mini marble urn were both very sad occasions. But I cannot even begin to wrap my brain around how terrible it must be for parents to choose the casket for a dead child. Unfathomable under any circumstances. Even more unfathomable when your little one was murdered in a school massacre. A school massacre like Uvalde. 

SoulShine Industries is a custom casket-maker located in Texas. Their mission: 

The purpose is to let your loved one's life shine through our designs. What we do is far more than just painting caskets. Let our artwork tell their story!

In response to the Uvalde murders, SoulShine's owner, Trey Ganem, was approached by the Texas Funeral Directors Association to make custom caskets, telling the stories of the Uvalde children. Ganem agreed to do so. Eighteen of the kiddos, and one of the teachers, chose to work with Ganem's company. 

The caskets were purchased through a company in Georgia that worked for 20 hours straight to produce them, Ganem says. They arrived in Texas by early Friday; Ganem says he finished all 19 caskets over the holiday weekend, working nearly three days straight -- and running on about six hours of sleep.

Ganem says he met with family members of the victims to curate customized designs and themes for each casket, ranging from softball to TikTok to Spider-Man. Marisol Gonzalez of SOLart Designs and Justin Watts of The Graphix House helped with graphics and decals for each casket, Ganem says. (Source: CNN)

The cost for each casket was between $3.4K to $3.8K, and Ganem's company has shouldered most of those costs. (He acknowledges that he has received some donations.)

Ganem is no stranger to mass killing events. He made caskets for some of the victims of the Sutherland Springs (TX) church shootout, and of the Las Vegas concert murder spree. He's also made caskets for some celebs, most notably singer Percy Sledge. The company ships caskets to all 50 states.

I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult it was for Ganem to meet with the family members of the slaughtered innocents. But I'm guessing that, amidst all the pain, having a casket that represented something about their children gave the families some tiny, trace element of comfort and maybe even joy. 

Their little guy who loved Spiderman. The little girl who loved purple, pink, and rainbow unicorns. 

Sure, this gesture will likely result in increased business for SoulShine, but it doesn't sound like this benefit was anywhere in the thought process for Trey Ganem. He just wanted to help.

There's not a lot of positive to say about Uvalde - or any of the other school massacres that communities around the country have endured over the years. But it is heartening that this company stepped in to help these families at the worst moment of their lives. 

Uvalde...

God - if there is one - help us.

Conjure this!

Even though there's a local-ish connection, I have no recall of the movie The Conjuring whatsoever. It came out in 2013, when I had better things to do, mostly things involving my husband's cancer recurrence. We were doing some conjuring of our own over at Mass General, which may be why this film passed me by entirely.

And since I've never even heard of the movie, I hadn't realized that I had a degree of separation connection with farmhouse that inspired the movie, which is located in Burrillville, Rhode Island.

My college roommate was from Burrillville, a small town in northern Rhode Island that I doubt I would have heard of if I hadn't met Joyce. Her husband, Tom, is from Burrillville, too. Both of them fled the town, which didn't have much going for it, other than a major state hospital. Zambarano Hospital had been a TB sanatorium which segued into a psychiatric institution once TB became less of a thing. Joyce's mother and Tom's mother were both nurses at Zambarano. Tom's father may have worked there as well. Joyce had worked there some summers in high school and college.

Not much else there. Today, Burrillville is mostly a bedroom community for Providence, which is about 30 miles away. (For all I know, it's a bedroom community for Worcester as well, since it's about the same distance as it is from Providence.)

While we were in college, I visited Burrillville many times. It made Worcester look like a hopping metropolis, that's for sure. Both Joyce and I were plenty happy to be in school in Boston.

Joyce and Tom ended up in Dallas, and I'll be visiting them in a couple of weeks. 

Even though I'd never heard of The Conjuring, I can pretty much guarantee that it will be on our convo agenda. 

The Conjuring, and, hence, Burrillville, have been in the news because the haunted Conjuring house (nearly 300 years old) has just sold for $1.525 million, a nifty little amount above the asking price of $1.2M. Apparently, when it comes to paranormal, you need to pay a premium.

The movie was based (loosely) on a book by Andrea Perron, whose family moved into the house in 1971, when she was a girl. From the get go, the family experienced creepy, paranormal events. 

The clocks in house all stop at 3:07 AM. The Perrons' dog mysteriously dies. Andrea's mother wakes up covered in bruises. She and her sister are attacked by a "malevolent spirit."

Mrs. Perron calls in a pair of demonologists, Ed and Lorraine Warren, who quickly find some mighty dark forces. 

...research reveals that the house once belonged to an accused witch named Bathsheba Sherman (a relative of Mary Towne Eastey [one of the hanged Salem witches]), who sacrificed her week-old baby to the devil and killed herself in 1863 at 3:07 in the morning after cursing all who take her land. They find reports of numerous murders and suicides through the years in the houses that were built on the property. (Source: Wikipedia)

Well, okay now. 

In 2019, the house was purchased by Cory and Jennifer Heinzen, "paranormal investigators from Maine", who ran it as a haunted house business. But they found themselves overwhelmed by so many people wanting to experience haunted housery and decided to sell, with hopes that the new owner would continue their business. A bidding war ensued. 

Although she was not the highest bidder - someone supposedly offered $2M - Jacqueline Nuñez, who is from Boston, triumphed. 

“This purchase is personal for me,” Nuñez said in an interview with the Globe. “It’s not a real estate development. It’s around my own beliefs.”

...Nuñez has pledged to continue the paranormal business that the Heinzens started in the farmhouse at 1677 Round Top Road. Guests will be able to continue the nightly paranormal investigations, day tours will resume, and there will be livestreamed events. The Heinzens will remain involved, she said. (Source: Boston Globe)

The house comes with a catch: 

...one of the conditions that the Heinzens set was that the new owner not live in the house year-round, “because the energy is so powerful,” Nuñez told the Globe later. “They put it in there as protection for the buyer.”

But Nuñez - who is a pretty smart cookie: Northwestern undergrad, Northeastern law degree - isn't scared in the least. 

“I’m a deeply spiritual person. It’s a very important part of me,” Nuñez said. “I believe we are conscious beings having a human experience, and that our consciousness continues on, we are here to learn things in lifetime and help our species evolve morally and culturally. ... This house is an opportunity to connect with people who’ve moved on and died, that’s the interactivity here and the engagement with the people who have passed.” (Source: Boston.com)

I'm not a deeply spiritual person in the least. But I'm not discounting this paranormal stuff at all. I'm quite sure that a lot of what goes for paranormal is either explainable by science, or is just a crock o' hooey. But I'm open to the possibility of there being mysterious things, beyond our ken and beyond the current bounds of science, that actually happen to people. They're creepy. And weird. Haunted house creepy, haunted house weird. But real.

For the rest of the year, Nuñez intends to learn the business and the ins and outs of the house and to re-introduce day tours. She wants to have a “really fun” Halloween event, and intends to start doing ghost investigations over shorter time periods. In 2023, she wants to expand the business and find a way for people to engage with the paranormal activity in the home.

Joyce and Tom are planning on coming up to these parts at some point in the next year or so. I'm putting a visit to The Conjuring House on their agenda, and I'm going with!

"The heart wants what the heart wants."

Honestly and truly. I am really trying to deaccession, not acquire. Honesty. Truly.

I'm 72. I. Do. Not. Need. More. Stuff. 

But sometimes I backslide.

For Easter, which I hosted for the first time, I bought a lovely serving bowl and platter. I wanted something springy. Something festive, but without bunnies or any other Eastery whatever on them. White and blue with a lemon pattern. On sale at Macy's. Big sale. Marked down from $50 each to $18 each.

How could I resist?

I didn't.

And I've already gotten my money's worth out of them, thank you. Mostly because they're sitting on my counter, out there in plain view every day. They're out in plain view because finding a place for them will require me to completely reorganize my cabinets. 

I've also gotten my six bucks worth of use out of the mini-bowl - white with lemons - that I got at Home Goods a few weeks ago. My daily quartered orange fits quite nicely in it. Citrus on citrus.

But I'm afraid that it's more than just serving pieces with lemons on them that's causing me to backslide.

There's a set of six aluminum tumblers from the Vermont Country Store that arrived the other day.

I need these like I need another hole in my head.

Nevertheless, I wanted them. And now I have them.

I've wanted them for ages. More than 60 years worth of ages.

Our family friend Joan had these in her house.

Joan lived across the street from my grandmother, where my family lived in a flat until I was six-and-a-half and we moved around the corner.

My mother stayed friends with Joan.

Joan was a widow. I vaguely remember her husband, Danny. I have an impressionistic picture of him in the street in front of their house. I think my father was talking with him. Had Danny just gotten back from the Korean War? In my memory, he died of polio, but I don't know if that's true.

Joan and Danny had two little boys, one a year older than my brother Tom, one a year younger. Brian and Johnny.

Joan was a flamboyant, chain-smoking redhead with gorgeous big blue eyes, but she and my mother - the antithesis of a chain-smoking redhead - were good friends. 

I was in and out of Joan's house all the time. 

When we were still living in my grandmother's house, my mother had my brother Rick. A premie, he arrived a month early, just before my sixth birthday. He came home from the hospital on my birthday, but my mother had better things to do with her time than bake me a birthday cake. Joan made cupcakes and sent them over. Yellow cake, each frosted in a different, lurid color. She was far more liberal with the food coloring than my mother ever would have been. I can still remember how good it felt to bite into one of those cupcake. Even though they weren't chocolate, they were delish. 

What a day! Getting a new baby brother and a crazy-color cupcake. Did I ever thank Joan? Of course not. 

Although I still have an olfactory memory of her house, I can't quite describe what it was. Lots of smoke in it. Maybe Joan's perfume, too? I loved that smell, and it's one of the few homes in my memory that had a distinct odor. The other great one: My grandmother Rogers front hall (furniture polish), and her back hall (boiled potatoes and sour milk). 

Anyway, I loved the smell of Joan's house. And I loved the fact that, when she gave us water to drink, it was in a jewel-toned aluminum tumbler. 

Nothing tasted better on a blazing hot summer day than ice-cold water from a jewel-toned aluminum tumbler, served in Joan's kitchen.

I loved those tumblers, and I loved Joan, too.

She had a car - my mother didn't drive - and every once in a while in the summer, we'd all jump in her car and drive up Route 9 to some lake or another and go for a dip, and - if we were lucky - have an ice cream cone. 

Joan drove that rackety old two-toned (dark green top, mint green bottom) like a maniac. This was before seat belts. Wheeeee. One time, we almost hit a cow. (Long story.)

In retrospect, Joan did a lot of things like a maniac. She was a manic talker and, as time went on (even into my adulthood), she frequently showed up on my mother's doorstep when she was having some sort of crisis. Joan had remarried - a very nice guy from the neighborhood named Pudgie - but she struggled with mental health. Back then, we didn't have the awareness of or language for mental illness. At least not in my neighborhood. But we knew that Joan was nutty. Sometimes overwhelmingly so.

Sometimes my mother would grumble a bit that, as time went on, Joan only dropped by to see her when Joan was in crisis. I'm sure Joan felt that she could lean on my mother's shoulder - my mother was a few years older than Joan, a strong, unflappable, steady presence - when she needed a shoulder to lean on. 

The last time I saw Joan was at my mother's wake in 2001. Joan herself died in 2011. (I didn't remember. I just looked it up.) Pudgie had died a couple of years after my mother. 

Joan hadn't lived across from my grandmother's house in years. After she married Pudgie, they moved into his house a couple of blocks away. But she and my mother remained friends.

Over the years, I rarely saw Joan. My mother would let me know how Joan and Pudgie were doing. Again, Joan pretty much only wanted to see my mother when she was in some sort of crisis.

For me, Joan is forever associated with those aluminum tumblers. 

And I have wanted them for decades.

A while back, I bought a couple at a flea market, but they were pretty beaten up, the colors dulled. I never used them.

I kept seeing the set of six in the Vermont Country Store catalog. And I kept passing them by. What do I need with six aluminum tumblers? Nothing!

And yet. 

As Emily Dickinson told us, "The heart wants what the heart wants." And this heart has wanted a set of aluminum tumblers for more than 60 years.

I will start drinking my ice cold water out of the light blue one. I can use the turquoise one as a vase in the kitchen. At Christmas, maybe I'll take the red, green, and gold tumblers and put holly in them. 

And whenever I use one, I will think of Joan.

Thank you, Joan, from the bottom of my heart. 

Last pay phone in NYC

I read the other day that the last public payphone in New York City has been decommissioned.

It's the final chapter in a saga that's been unfolding since 2015, when the city started uprooting phone booths and replacing them with LinkNYC kiosks, which offer free public Wi-Fi, charging ports, 911 buttons and screens with maps and other services (they also generate revenue for the city).

LinkNYC tweeted that they will be replaced with a digital kiosk, "boosting accessibility and connectivity across the city." The company says it's deployed thousands of Links across the city, and has facilitated more than 3 billion Wi-Fi sessions with more than 10 million subscribers. (Source: NPR)

Three billion Wi-Fi sessions? How many good old-fashioned phone calls did those Wi-Fi sessions replace?

Anyway, that last phone booth will spend its golden years in the Museum of the City of New York, where kiddos will no doubt ask their parents whether it's a toilet. Or whatever. (Come to think of it, sometimes those phonebooths were used as toilets. No wonder that, over time, they switched to payphones that just had a half-height, three-sided enclosure around them. Sort of a cubicle-is-to-office version of a phonebooth.)

The demise of the payphone reminds me of a little family story. Before we decided we all had enough crazy junk, we used to do a Yankee Swap on Christmas Eve. One year, my brother-in-law's swap contribution was a rotary dial Bakelite phone. My niece Molly - then quite young - saw the letters on the dial and quite sweetly asked whether that was how people used to text.

I believe there are a few payphones still on the streets of Boston. I think there are a couple on Washington Street, and maybe one by the fire station on Cambridge. 

But there's really no need. Most people - 97% of the US population was the figure I saw for 2021 - have some sort of cellphone. Most of those cellphones are smart. I'm sure that by now even my husband, a complete and utter cell phone resister who's been gone for over 8 years now, would have caved in and gotten one by now. Correction: I would have forced him to get one by now. 

I suspect that the remaining 3% of the population that's cell phone-less are shut-ins or hermits. 

So there's really no need for payphones.

But there used to be.

Ah, payphones.

Everyone used to make sure they carried a few dimes with them so they could make a call. You called for a cab when there were none to hail. You called your parents if you were stranded and needed them to pick you up. Or to let them know that you'd arrived back at school. (Sneaky kids called their parents collect and quickly hung up. That way you could signal to your folks that you were okay without incurring the charge for a collect, long-distance call.) You called the restaurant if you were running late for a reservation. New fathers called family from the waiting room to let them know the new baby had safely arrived. You called a friend to ask them why they weren't at the meeting place. You called information to ask for an address. Or, if the tethered phone book was still there in the booth, and still usable, you looked it up for yourself. 

A person was "dimed" when someone called the cops on them. 

And you dropped a dime, even when the cost to use a payphone grew to a quarter. (No one every "quartered" a criminal to report their criming.)

Occasionally, you would give someone the number of a payphone and have them call you there are an appointed time. This technique was used by those who didn't have a phone, and by those who met regularly enough at the same place that they knew the payphone number.

Sometimes, when you were walking by a payphone, it would be ringing. Sometimes, you even picked it up. 

But that was then and this is now.

Matthew Fraser, commissioner of the Office of Technology and Innovation, described the removal of the last pay phone as bittersweet, noting the "prominent place they've held in the city's physical landscape for decades" but acknowledging that it's time for change.

"Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile and from the automobile to the airplane, the digital evolution has progressed from pay phones to high-speed Wi-Fi kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communications needs," he said in a statement shared with NPR.

Not that we transitioned from the automobile to the airplane. More like we transitioned from the train to the airplane. And from the taxicab to the Uber. But I get it. Technology, like life, goes on. (Ob‐La‐Di, Ob‐La‐Da...)

But I do have an important question:

If there are no more payphones, and no more phone booths, just where is Clark Kent going to strip out of his suit and turn into Superman?

Train up a child...

The week before the murderous spree at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Daniel Defense - makers of the assault rifle used for the killings - posted an ad on Twitter showing a toddler holding a rifle. The caption was a verse from the Bible: Train up a child in the way he should go, and he will not depart from it. 

The caption was accompanied by the praying hands emoji. 🙏(Praying white hands, naturally.)

Religion (Christian variant) and gun ownership are often in close proximity to each other. Praying white hand in glove, as it were. American gun rights supporters frequently spout off about having access to all sorts of weaponry as a "God-given right." As if...

A number of the more extreme gun advocates, including several members of Congress, eagerly post Christmas cards that depict each member of their family cradling a gun. This jolly-holly picture was tweeted out last December by Thomas Massie, R-KY with the greeting: 

Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo.

Just spitballing here, but I'm guessing Massie is a big proponent of keeping Christ in Christmas.

Not surprisingly, some of the blame-game players on the right are pointing to lack of prayer in the schools, and the general decline in religious observance, as the reason for the increase in mass killing events where weapons of mass destruction are deployed. 

So there's nothing unusual about Daniel Defense promoting what to me is an ungodly combo of God and guns. 

The company’s social media ads often blend Bible verses with images of their guns. In an Easter-themed post on 17 April of this year, the caption “He is Risen!” ran underneath an image of a cross, atop a rifle, lying on an open Bible.(Source: The Guardian)

Just good marketing? Maybe. I'm sure they know their audience. Bad - as in evil - marketing? Yep.

The Uvalde attack is also not the first time that Daniel Defense weapons have been involved in a mass shooting. Guns manufactured by the company were in the arsenal of the gunman who killed 58 people and injured more than 500 in Las Vegas in 2017. 

Post-Uvalde, Daniel Defense did offer "thoughts and prayers." They apparently didn't get the word from the NRA and/or Republican Messaging HQ that "thoughts and prayers" is so yesterday. The new thing is "horrified and heartbroken."

There are really no words. Nineteen little ones, two teachers, mowed down by a deeply disturbed 18 year old who, on his 18th birthday, was able to legally purchase two assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition. 

Unimaginable horror, but not so unimaginable that we've already forgotten the last unimaginable horror (TOPS grocery store in Buffalo). Not so unimaginable that we're not already anticipating the next unimaginable horror. (No doubt coming soon to a school, grocery store, church, theater, shopping mall near you.)

There are really no words, to convey the horror of all these dead children, the grief of their families.

Still, it's probably worth a few words to say that a few common sense gun laws might help. A ban on selling magazines with more than 10 bullets in them. Red flag laws. More in-depth background checks for gun purchase. Training, licensing, insurance. Upping the age at which someone can purchase an assault rifle. Maybe even banning assault rifles. (A girl can hope, can't she?)

The other day, someone on Twitter commented that, when they went to adopt a rescue mutt, they had to fill out a ten-page application form and have a home visit for an evaluation of their fitness to rescue a pupper. Yet Salvador Ramos could just waltz in and buy assault rifles.

High powered assault rifles. They're designed for war, they're designed to kill humans. Why on earth does a civilian need one? The only answer I've seen offered was from Senator Bill Cassidy, who suggested that they were needed to kill feral hogs. (This is the same solon who recently said that the maternal death rate in his state, Louisiana, would be no higher than the rates experienced anyplace else if they removed the statistics on Black mothers.)

Anyway, a few new laws, while they won't prevent all future massacres - there are more than 400 million guns in civilian hands in this country, including 20 million assault rifles - may stop some of the carnage. (Which, of course, we'll never be able to prove to the satisfaction of those who oppose any limitations on gun ownership.)

I really don't expect much of anything to happen with respect to new gun laws. Those who oppose any gun restrictions, however mild, tend to vote single-issue. For those who favor some restrictions, new laws seem like "nice to haves." Just one of many wants. Not enough to get someone to actually vote for a Democrat. 

We're likely to see plenty of performative "action." Harden the schools. Calls for arming of teachers. (What a swell idea that is.) More armed police officers in schools. And the one I'm waiting for: arm all local LEOs with assault rifles so they're on equal footing with the bad guys. 

The first time I went to Europe in 1973, I went to a couple of places where there'd been civil unrest.

If my memory is accurate, we saw soldiers/police officers in Greece roaming the streets carrying assault rifles. (A right wing junta was ruling Greece at that time.) In Italy, in the train stations, there were soldiers with machine guns. (This was during the "Years of Lead," when there was plentiful right- and left-wing political terrorism.)

It was scary, seeing men thus armed. Even if they were the "good guys" protecting us.

Will we see it here? I wouldn't be surprised.

It's all so terrible.

I heard that one little girl survived by painting herself with her dead friend's blood and playing dead. Amazing intelligence, presence of mind, and bravery on the part of this little one. But do we really want our little ones to have to display such intelligence, presence of mind, and bravery in order to get out of their school day alive.

And what about the children trained up to accept that guns are the norm, that they can and should - make that must - be everywhere?

Is this the best that American Exceptionalism has to offer?

A little walk through Memorial Day posts past

Today is Memorial Day. Start of summer, etc. Maybe/maybe not think about those who've served. I've had plenty to say about Memorial Day over the years, and here's snippet from each of those posts. 

Decoration Day (2007)

Today I will think of those who were not as lucky as Jake Wolf [my grandfather; saw combat on the other side in WWI] and Al Rogers [my father, four years in the Navy during WWII; never saw combat], those who did not make it home to build their lives.

Six Degrees of Separation from the Military (2008)

How much easier it is to "live" with a war that doesn't have any direct impact on you or anyone you know, or even know of, except remotely.

Just something to think about on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2009

I've always loved Memorial Day, one of those pleasant but low-craziness holidays that we just don't get enough of.

Memorial Day 2010

After we had finished planting, we strolled around the graveyard, which is small (it’s a parish, not a diocesan, cemetery) and, in our case, quite family oriented. We walked by the graves of lots of friends and relatives – close cousins we knew, distance relations we knew of, the family who lived in my grandmother’s decker – and noted how many of the graves were – this being Decoration Day – decorated with flags, put out by the American Legion or the VFW, in holders that indicate the war that someone served in.

Memorial Day 2011

This year, Memorial Day has special resonance, in that we observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which begat Decoration Day, which begat the latter day Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2012: "It's Not About the Barbecue" (2012)

There are so many things that are bad for a country’s soul, and I’ve got to believe that having an all-volunteer military has got to be one of them – too much opportunity for sunshine patriots and chicken hawks to call the shots knowing they have no skin/no kin in the game.

Memorial Day 2013

It promises to be a brilliant spring day here in Boston, but as I write this it’s cold, dreary, drizzling – not atypical spring weather in these parts, and actually pretty fitting, when you think of it.

Sure, war is sometimes conducted on delightfully balmy days. But as often as not, those in battle are coping with terrible physical conditions.

It’s frostbitten feet at Valley Forge. It’s contending with the heat at the Battle of the Wilderness.  Muck in the trenches of Château-Thierry. Rappelling up the cliff at Pointe du Hoc during a pelting rainstorm. The cold and ice at Choisin Reservoir. Monsoon season in Vietnam. Sandstorms in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Memorial Day 2014

This Memorial Day, I’m mostly thinking about the two dear ones I have lost since last Memorial Day: my husband Jim and my golden (50 years!) friend Marie.

Neither was a veteran.

Jim spent what would have been his soldiering years working as a chemist for a series of government agencies, including the CIA, in order to get draft deferments. (Hard to think of anyone less suited to the soldier’s life than my singular and peculiar husband. I always told him he would have been Section-Eighted out in the time it took his drill sergeant to yell “ten-hut”, or whatever it is that drill sergeants yell.) Like my father, Marie’s served in World War II, Bob as a Marine MP in the South Pacific (a precursor to his job as a Worcester cop).

Up the Republic! (2015) 

This year, while I will keep up the tradition of thinking about veterans in general, and my dead loved ones in particular, my shout out this Memorial Day goes to The Republic of Ireland, which last Friday became the first country to approve gay marriage by popular vote. And that popular vote wasn’t close at all: 62.1% voted a resounding YES!

Memorial Day 2016 

Tough to think of all those lives – mostly young men – lost to war. And I guess it doesn’t much matter whether it was a good war or a not so good war. (“My war’s better than your war!”) And it doesn’t much matter, either, whether you were a gung-ho patriot or a reluctant recruit, grousing all the way. At the end of the day, you didn’t get to live the full life you would have had if not for that good or not so good war. Sigh…

Broken Record and Then Some (2017) 

Back in Boston, the flags are up on the Common,

commemorating all of those from Massachusetts who
died in the service of our country, from the Revolutionary War on. A stirring sight, for sure. But I like this shot because it shows the carousel. Life goes on!

Memorial Day 2018

On this Memorial Day, here’s hoping that no one as crazy and amped up as the Robert Duvall character in Apocalypse Now amps us into yet another war.

Memorial Day 2019

...unlike 45% of Americans, at least I know that today is a holiday to commemorate our war dead. I don’t actually find that figure all that shocking. There are so many things that Americans are ignorant about, awareness of the purpose of Memorial Day is the least of it.

Memorial Day 2020

This year, there's another kind of war on. Maybe next year, we'll have flags for the coronavirus deaths.

Memorial Day 2021 

I don't know that the words of the Roman poet Horace are necessarily always true. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. (It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.) There are plenty of bad causes that soldiers have died for. But the Civil War - so bloody, so ghastly - was, for the Union soldiers, a righteous one. The cynical may discount the role it played, but ending slavery was a noble purpose. And if we're still fighting that war today - and regrettably we are - then shame on us.

Lots to think about on this Memorial Day. There always is.

To quote the blogger: Lots to think about on this Memorial Day. There always is.