Another Veterans' Day

And so another Veterans' Day rolls around.

I haven't seen anyone selling Buddy Poppies, so maybe that's a thing of the past. If I had seen anyone selling Buddy Poppies, I would have purchased one. And I'd be wearing it today.

I've written a lot about Veterans' Day across the Pink Slip years. 

This was my first Veterans' Day post. In it, as I always do in such posts, I mention my father, who was in the Navy from 1942-1946. It was while he was in the Navy, stationed at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago, that he met my Chicago-girl mother. And the rest is family history. 

But I don't only just mention my father in my Veterans' Day musings. Here's some of what I had to say way back in 2008.

Somewhere along the line we fell into the notion of the professional military - things were too complex and sophisticated to leave to draftees who were only in for two years. And yet somewhere along the same line we fell into the deployment of the 'citizen soldiers', the members of the reserves/National Guard who thought they were signing up as back-up, and instead find themselves front and center (and front and center, and front and center).

Somewhere along the line we omitted the national conversation on what's worth dying and killing for. The national conversation on who's doing the dying and killing, while the rest of us get to do the living. It's easier to avoid that conversation if your skin (and that of your kids) isn't in the game. Which is a darned shame.

Some things don't change...

Here I am on 11.11.11, pondering my own lack of veteran-hood. 

When I think of a potently bad combination, I think of me being in the military. Way, way, way too much authoritarianism, hierarchy, and chicken-shit. Not that I didn’t encounter plenty of that in the business world, but at least I didn’t have to salute and no one was going to throw me in the brig if I went AWOL.

About all I can say for my being a good fit for the armed service is that, after all those years in parochial school, I wouldn’t have been bothered by wearing a uniform. I also like to think that, if there had been a national crisis, some national purpose (think World War II), when I was young enough to serve, I might have considered signing up and doing my bit. But it didn’t happen, so I didn’t have to make any decision one way or the other. The “national crisis” during my potentially military years was the Viet Nam War, which was not exactly something that was going to get this girl volunteering to work in the steno pool at Lackland AFB.

Somethings don't change... 

Ten years ago, I devoted some time to putting my feckless Uncle Charlie on blast.

Even my feckless Uncle Charlie, who managed to weasel out of pretty much any responsibility over the course of his life, spent a bit of time in the Army during the waning days of The War. It wasn’t quite Hitler enlisting 12 year old boys and 72 year old accountants to defend Berlin, but the Army must have been fairly hard up if they felt the need to dragoon my uncle, well into his thirties by the time his uncle (Sam, that is) caught up with him.

The stories were told that by the time they got Charlie, Ft. Devens was out of uniforms and guns. Thus, Charlie and his fellow draftees drilled wearing their civilian clothing and carrying fake rifles. (Actually, Charlie was probably drilling wearing my father’s civilian clothing. When my father returned from his war, he went to look for his suits, only to be told by Charlie that moths had gotten to them. My father’s assumption was that his brother had worn them out or pawned them.)

In any case, Charlie didn’t last very long before he received a medical discharge for hearing loss.

Still, Charlie was a veteran and is, thus, entitled to his flag on the other side of the combo-grave he shares with my father,  mother and grandmother.

Somethings never change... 

And last year I wrote about a far more noble vet, Wesley Black, who  

And while I'm not a big "thank you for your service" person, we owe the veterans of all of our wars - good, bad, or indifferent - the care and support they deserve.

Wesley Black died the other day.

I had read about him last summer. 

He was a Vermont firefighter who had served two tours with the National Guard. While at war, Wesley Black was exposed to military burn pits. Which caused the colon cancer that killed him at the age of 36, leaving his wife a widow and his young son fatherless.

Wesley Black went down swinging, suing the VA for misdiagnosing his cancer a "irritable bowel syndome" until, after years of dragging their heels, finally ordering the colonoscopy that found the cancer. Stage 4. Too late to do anything about. (A few months ago, Black's suit was settled, purportedly for $3M.)

Burn pits are just what you think they are: the spots where the soldiers burn all sorts of trash: fast food wrappers, styrofoam cups, assorted plastics. The toxic fumes permeate the encampments, and even if you weren't the guy doing the burning, you were exposed. Joe Biden believes that his son Beau's deadly glioblastoma was caused by exposure to burn pits in Iraq.

The government is finally doing something about it. Winding down the use of burn pits, and registering the names of military personnel who've been exposed. 

Which is the very least we can do.

Somewhere along the line, I know, just know, that I wrote about my maternal grandfather, Jacob Wolf, who fought in World War I. On the other side. An ethnic German living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Grandpa fought in the trenches. He came from a large family, mostly boys, and some of his brothers died during the war. So the only close relatives I have who died in combat were some maternal great uncles who fought for the wrong side. 

Happy Posthumous Veterans' Day to them anyway. And to Jake Wolf.

To my father. And even to my Uncle Charlie.

And to all the veterans out there. This day's for you. 

Buskergate!

Last Sunday was weirdly beautiful: in the mid-high 70's, sunny, balmy. That night, I slept with the AC on. In November. In New England.

During the day, I walked for a while in the Boston Public Garden. Even though the flower beds are pretty much retired for the year, the park is always gorgeous. And on Sunday, it was packed with strollers. And buskers.

There was a guy doing a nice version of Elton John's "This Is Your Song."

There was the jazz, pop, and American songbook guitarist/singer whose real job is performing in restaurants, but who started coming out to play in the Public Garden during covid, when his restaurant jobs dried up.

The bagpiper was there, as was the one-man band - a hippie-dippy character right out of the 60's who was playing "Mr. Tambourine Man" when I walked by.

I didn't see either of the Mexican singers - the caterwauler or the fellow with a more restrained voice - but I may have missed them.

There were three Chinese violinists playing - separately, not as a trio - what I believe to be an erhu. (Yes, I did have to look it up.)

Maybe there were a couple others that I'm not remembering because, admittedly, I was choosing my paths so that I didn't have to go past them all. I like to give buskers a few bucks, but if I'd given a few bucks - actually, my current rate is $5 - to all of them, my Sunday in the park would have set me back too much, and I would have run out of the fives I carry in my pocket for busker and panhandler encounters.

Anyway, I haven't done any close examination, but I believe all of the buskers there were the real deal who were actually, singing and/or playing. Sometimes the singers are accompanying a music track, but all of them (as far as I know) are actually performing.

But across the country, there's apparently an epidemic of fake buskers.  

Posing as buskers, scammers have been miming

 playing the violin to pre-recorded tracks to solicit donations from unsuspecting passersby.

Police across America are issuing warnings about a new major ‘nationwide emergency’... involving violins.

Over the last two years, reports of scammers pretending to play the violin, posing as buskers on the street, have swept across the USA.

These miming musicians will move the bow of a violin along to a pre-recorded track, which is usually stolen from another creator. (Source: ClassicFM)

I don't know if I'd characterize this as a "'national emergency'", but we really don't need any more ersatz, any more faux, any more flim-flammery than we already got going on all fronts.

Instead of simply leaving cases out, so passersby can leave money – like most buskers do – these con artists will usually have someone with them either collecting money, or play against a sign pleading for money to help with rent, bills, or other financial issues. Some falsely claim to be sick or raising money for a poorly relative. 

I'd be more forgiving if they were just playacting at performing, rather than larding on a sob story. But sob stories can work.  

I know this because I know that I have given money on occasion to someone with a good story who I'm pretty certain is full of shite. He/she doesn't really need to get back to Lawrence. Or need gas money. Or diapers for their kid. But if someone's going to go to the trouble of spinning out a tale...

When I give someone money (street people edition) I usually chat with them for a few minutes, directing them to St. Francis House or the Women's Lunch Place or just having a bit of a convo. I'm sure some of the stories are bogus, but enough of them are real. Or real enough.

I don't usually speak with the musicians, as I don't want to interrupt them. Sometimes I'll just say something like "Sounds great" or "Thanks" while I'm tossing a bill in their guitar case or bucket. But they do take breaks, which is how I know that the one guy's usual gigs are playing in restaurants. (He's very talented.)

Anyway, I don't think any of the musicians I come across are faking it. No bogus buskers in Boston yet. At least not where I'm wandering. 

But it's a problem in plenty of places, and there's a suspicion that the fake buskers are part of an organized scam of "finger-syncers" who drive from state to state, trying to stay a step or two ahead of the law. Some of the states where police have warned about this scam: Florida, Texas, Maryland, Michigan, and Arizona. It's also occurring across the pond, in the UK. 

The instrument of choice is the violin. Electric violins are relatively inexpensive - cheaper than a cello or sax - and easier to carry around and fake than the oboe or the accordion. Plus pretend violining is less obvious than someone who is, say, lip-syncing Beyonce. After all, most of us us might not recognize the work of the actual violinist - say, Itzhak Perlman - in quite the same way we might figure out that the person "singing" isn't actually Ed Sheeran.

Real violinists are taking the scammers on, confronting them for their fakery and posting videos on TikTok. The fakers, the real ones rightfully say, are insulting to people who have studied an instrument, are taking away their ability to make a living, are making people doubt the honesty of honest buskers 

Sure, there are worse problems in the world than someone pretending to play the violin. Still, I don't blame real musicians for being pissed off. 

And I will keep an eye out in Boston.

Most of the musicians I see are regulars, and as far as I can see, aren't fake. None of them are violinists, either. Other than the Chinese men with their erhus. And I'm pretty sure they're not faking.

Anyway, now I have a jokeworm in my head, based on a very old joke.

A man is walking around the West Side of New York, back in the pre-smartphone directions-at-your-fingertips era, and spots a man carrying a violin case. "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" he asks. 

The answer from the violinist? "Practice!"

Something that the Buskergate violinists will really never have to do...

Mermaids of Montana

I've only been to Montana once, and that was 50 years ago. I remember little about it, other than that Yellowstone was spectacularly beautiful, and that on our way there, my friend Joyce and I drove past a motel called something like the Flamingo or the Desert Palms or the Ocean Breeze. Which we got a big kick out of, because a motel in Montana should be called the Geyser, or the Windy Plains, or the Bison View, or the Copper Mine. 

But now that I've had 50 years to reflect on things, my thinking has changed. 

Why the hell wouldn't folks in Montana want have a motel called the Desert Palms?

I did try to search for such a hotel/motel, and the closest I came was a Flamingo Motel in Coeur D'Alene, which is in Idaho. And I suspect there are no more flamingos in Idaho than there are in Montana. (As a homie, I would like to note that the plastic yard flamingo was invented in Massachusetts.)

But Montana has something much, much better than a Flamingo Motel. And that's the Sip N' Dip Lounge at the O'Haire Motor Inn in Great Falls, Montana, which features live mermaids who perform regularly. And mermaids of no more native to Montana than flamingos are.

Back in 1996, the O’Haire Motor Inn was struggling. [Sandra] Johnson-Thares and her mother needed an idea to turn things around, so one day that winter, they hunkered down to brainstorm in a booth at their Sip N’ Dip cocktail lounge. The underground bar already shared a glass wall with the swimming pool, they reasoned. What if inside the pool — at this point, the two might have been a couple of drinks in — they had real mermaids, tails and all? It was funny. That’s something people wouldn’t expect some 600 miles from the nearest ocean.

“The more we drank,” Johnson-Thares said, “the funnier the vision of mermaids became.” (Source: Boston Globe)

The first mermaids must have looked pretty ragtag, even if someone was wearing beer goggles. The mermaid tails were made out of green tablecloths, held together with duct tape.

But over the years, the look improved. The costumes have gotten swanked up, and now include "sequins, scales, lace, and layering." The family cadged some seaweed from a defunct ride at Disneyland, which made the pool look more, ahem, authentic.

And the mermaid act has been good for business.

Johnson-Thares gets up to 100 mermaid-related calls a week, and there are regular performances throughout the week, and throughout the year. 

Johnson-Thares has eight mermaids and one merman on staff. Most prefer to remain anonymous, worried about so-called “merverts” — which is why a bouncer walks the mermaids to their cars at night — as well as what the employers at their day jobs would think. Recently, the United States Postal Service discovered one of its employees swam at the Sip N’ Dip and demanded she stop, calling it a violation of its standards of conduct. Other merpeople work at PetSmart, as a college admissions counselor, and — tonight’s mermaid, Marvel — as a social media consultant.

Merverts was a new one on me. As you might infer from the name, they're folks with a sexual fetish involving mythical aquatic creatures.

Let's not go there. But the Sip N' Dip lounge might be a trip. 

In the Sip N’ Dip lounge tonight, a puffer-fish chandelier and fishing nets dangled from a thatched bamboo ceiling. At the piano, Joel Corda, an opera-trained middle school teacher, crooned “Unchained Melody.” There was blue and orange neon, tiki sculptures, drinks of an unnatural turquoise color, and, as promised, a mermaid turning graceful underwater flips behind the glass.

Montana is not on the bucket list I don't have to begin with. But never say never, and if a trip to Montana presented itself, I wouldn't say 'no.' And the Sip N' Dip sounds like a hoot. (Boo to the prissy prude at the U.S. Postal Services who wouldn't allow an employ to moonlight as a mermaid.)

Fortunately, most Montanan employers seem more woke:

The lone merman — an optometrist by day — performs on Sunday as part of a brunch special because, as Johnson-Thares puts it, “it’s important that children know that men can be mermaids too.”

If I do find myself in Great Falls, the Sip N' Dip Lounge at the O'Haire Motor Inn is def on my itinerary. Maybe I'll stay at the Flamingo in Coeur D'Alene. It's only a five and change hours drive away, and things move fast out in the West, especially if you get yourself a non-mermaid tail wind.

Taking the day off. Sorta.

Today is election day, and I'm taking the day off. Sorta.

• I'll be voting. I considered doing early voting at Fenway Park. And I got my vote-by-mail ballot. But I actually enjoy the voting process, so I'll be voting in person. And I get to vote in a fun location. For anyone who watched TV in the 1980's, that fun location is the firehouse where Spenser of
  
  Spenser for Hire lived. I never saw that mighty heartthrob Robert Urich when they were filming around here, but a couple of times I had to step over the camera and lighting cables. I'll go in to vote about 10 a.m., and if the past is any predictor, there won't be any line at that time.
  
  My vote actually doesn't count for all that much in Massachusetts. It's inconceivable that anyone other than Maura Healey will be elected governor. That anyone other than Kim Driscoll will be elected lieutenant governor. That anyone other than Andrea Campbell will be elected attorney general. And if you think we just have women running for/winning statewide office, it's inconceivable that anyone other than Bill Galvin will be elected secretary of state. 
  
  My congressman, Stephen Lynch, is a throwback, old-school Irish guy from Southie, but he's reliable enough. He might as well be running unopposed. 
  
  And for state senator and state rep, for county DA and county sheriff, the candidates (D's all) ARE running unopposed.
  
  Still, I like voting. If I have any religion other than ex-Catholic, it's belief that voting matters. 
  
  
• I'll be having a nervous breakdown. Outside of the blue-bubble precincts of Massachusetts, there's a lot at stake this time around. Voting does matter. And I'm scared. (I didn't read all those books about the rise of fascism for nothing...)
  
  
• I'll be picking out new glasses. Nothing like a little shopping to get your mind off of things like a nervous breakdown, so I'll be going to Warby Parker to get myself a new pair of glasses. I'll be accompanied by my personal shopper, my niece Caroline, who will find something more interesting and stylin' than I'd pick out on my own. I know this because the past sometimes is a pretty good predictor, and Caroline has helped me out in the past. Before or after, we'll have a very nice lunch on Newbury Street.
  
  
• I will resist putting on MSNBC for as long as I can. I'll follow along on Twitter, and at some point after the polls close in the East, I'll turn on the TV. But I'll have to turn it off every time Steve Kornacki, MSNBC's ace young poll watcher/analyzer comes on. Talk about something giving me a nervous breakdown. I like Steve Kornacki, but he's a bit too manic-jumpy for me when my nerves are already so frayed. 
  
  
• I'll be hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. The best, of course, is that the Democrats hold the House and increase their headcount in the Senate by a vote or two, stripping Manchin and Sinema of all of their unearned power. (Or course, they can always threaten to leave the party if they don't think they're getting their way...Ugh...) 
  
  The best is that at least some decent governors are elected - MI, PA, AZ, WI - as opposed to Trump-sucking election deniers. It would be on beyond best if TX manages to come to its collective senses and get rid of Abbott, if FL manages to derail DeSantis' presidential lusting. 
  
  The worst, of course, is that there's a Red Tsunami, and the Trump-worshipping, election-results-denying, Putin lackeying, Second Amendment lunatics run the table. God help us.
  
  And even if the best scenario plays out, I fear that the Trump-worshipping, election-results denying, Putin lackeying, Second Amendment lunatics will take to the streets. And if the past is a predictor here, Trump will be goading them on, and they'll be armed and dangerous.

Talk about cry the beloved country...

Something's pink. In the BBQ. Who you gonna call?

Over the years, I've lodged plenty of complaints in restaurants.

The steak is overcooked. The fish is undercooked. The order is wrong. The soup is cold. 

One time, we told the waiter that the wine smelled like formaldehyde. He told us that's what it was supposed to smell like. Thanks but no thanks. (This was at the late and lamented Romagnoli's Table, which closed more than 30 years ago. Boy, did I ever love their tortellini with nutmeg sauce.)

When making a complaint, I am unfailingly polite and understanding. Having done my time waitressing or otherwise working in food service, I am 100% aware that, while sometimes the server f's an order up, if there's something wrong, it's almost always the fault of the kitchen, not the server.

From I my experience, I can say that sometimes, the complaint that a diner made was totally out of left field.

As a Big Boy waitress, I once served a rather hefty woman a piece of our famous strawberry pie. (Just googled: apparently Big Boy

Strawberry Pie actually was a real thing. I will make one next summer.) Anyway, my customer ate every crumb, right down to the plate, and then told me - with a straight face - that it was awful and she wanted another piece to replace it. (Reader: she did not get her wish.)

But most of the diner complaints I fielded during my brilliant career as a waitron were justified.

My favorite occurred at Durgin-Park.

One of the lunch specials back in my day was the Poor Man's Roast Beef, a thin slice of rump roast, au jus, served with a veg (I can't remember the full, long list of options we had to recite, but stewed tomatoes was on it), a slice of cornbread, and a cup of tea or coffee. Ninety-nine cents!

Anyway, I went to pick an order up for two Poor Man's, which had been ordered by two young women out having lunch together. One of the plates held a nice rare looking slice o' meat. The other held a grisly, gray assemblage of four pieced together stray slab-ettes. 

I told the chef I couldn't bring the grisly gray out to the table, as the two women were eating together.

He insisted that I make an attempt, and assured me that, when they refused to take it, I could come back to the kitchen and get an edible replacement.

A minute later, I was returning to the kitchen, plate in hand, when I was stopped by Durgin's owner, a giant, raging, nasty madman. 

"Where are you going with that?" he barked at me.

I replied that the customer had refused it and wanted another piece instead.

"There's nothing wrong with that meat," he grabbed the plate out of my hand. "Where are they?"

I walked him into the dining room and pointed the culprit out, then stood there rolling my eyes as he went into full crazy mode, screaming at the poor woman and kicking the pair out of his restaurant. (As if they were waiting for him to kick them out; they had immediately begun gathering their things to leave.) 

While the two women were getting up from the table, he turned to me and snarled, "And make sure they pay for the cornbread." (Reader, I did not charge them for the cornbread. I may have handed the guy manning the register a dime.)

Anyway, my bottom line is that sometimes complaints are justified; sometimes they're not.

Although the restaurant might have handled it better, I'm on the side of Clyde Cooper's Barbecue in Raleigh, NC. 

The other day, a customer ordered a takeout barbecue plate, only to have her return it, complaining that the meat was pink, undercooked. Or so she thought. Turns out slow-low-temp-smoked BBQ can be done and pink at the same time.

I am reminded of a recent cooking experience of my own.

The last couple of times I've made meatloaf, it's been pink.

The first time it happened, I couldn't quite figure it out. 

It was done - I even used the meat thermometer to check - but it was pink.

Turns out that onions can cause the pink. Since I've always made meatloaf with onions, it's either that I'm using a different kind of onion, or I just never noticed that my meatloaf is pink.

I do know that my mother's meatloaf was never pink. The only difference in our recipes is that I use breadcrumbs, while she used a roller-pinned sleeve of Saltines.

Back at Clyde Cooper's, the restaurant folks told the customer that the BBQ was okay, and the customer left.

[Owner Debbie] Holt said a few minutes later a Raleigh Police officer came to the restaurant, talked to the customer outside and then entered Clyde Cooper’s, asking about the pork.

“The cop looked so confused,” [Debbie's daughter] Ashley Holt said. “He seemed baffled by someone calling the cops over this.” (Source: Raleigh News & Observer)

Ya think?

The Raleigh-Wake Emergency Communications Center confirmed that an officer was dispatched to the Clyde Cooper’s address at 327 S. Wilmington St., on Tuesday, but declined to comment on the nature of the call. Holt said she explained the pork’s color was from the smoke. She said the officer went back outside, talked to the customer, and then left. Tuesday night, Holt said she saw a new one-star Google review for Clyde Cooper’s, complaining of undercooked pork and claiming to have called the police on the restaurant.

The News & Observer was able to get a hold of the customer, who told them that she'd been eating barbecue all her life, and it had never been pink. And now this. So she wasn't having any, and when she saw the pinkness, she went back to Clyde Cooper's.

The diner asked for either a refund or something else from the menu, but was refused both she said. That’s when she called 911. “If you’re telling me you don’t do refunds or exchanges, there’s a problem,” the diner said. “It was the issue, the way the situation was handled. You have to do either a refund or an exchange. If you’re not going to do either, that’s the issue. That’s the reason I called the cops.” 

I mean, in what universe does pink BBQ rise to the level of making a 911 call? Shouldn't everyone know that 911 is for life and death situations. Or, at minimum, a suspected crime.

But, no, the pink barbecue was just too glaring, too galling.

After the 911 call had been placed - but before Barney Fife showed up (sorry, this was in North Carolina) - Clyde Cooper's did offer the pissed off diner a piece of fried chicken. Which she took, but which just pissed her off further, as she felt she should have been offered two pieces of chicken (that's what's on the small chicken plate, which is what the 911 diner felt would have been comparable to her order).

Maybe, since the diner hadn't accepted Clyde Cooper's perfectly plausible explanation, the restaurant should have just taken her order back and offered something dollarwise-comparable.

Still, calling the cops?

Now, if the woman at Durgin-Park had called 911 after the restaurant's owner had gone ballistic on her, I could have seen it.

But me? It would take me more than that to dial 911. 

Truly, the only 911-worthy event I ever witnessed in a restaurant was a knife-fight between two cooks in the open kitchen at the long gone Jack & Marion's delicatessen in Brookline. But there was no 911 then, and I believe the incident was bloodless, and was resolved by the manager without calling in Brookline's finest.

Plastic? Fantastic - NOT!

Those of us of a certain age will remember the scene in The Graduate when recent college grad Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin Hoffman) is given career advice by one of his parents' friends. The friend hustles Benjamin away from the noisy cocktail party crowd and whispers one word in his ear: "Plastics."

The Graduate was a 1967 movie, and the plastics industry, which had begun growing after World War II - all those plastic toys we grew up with - was really starting to take off. Plastics, by the late 60's, were coming of age, but the best/worst was yet to come. Plastic soda bottles weren't around until the 1970's. And water available in plastic bottles? No such thing for another decade or two. And all the plastic packaging, the electronics, the over-consumption. Who could have imagined it all?

So entering the plastics industry in 1967 would have been a smart move. (Probably a smarter move than eloping with Elaine. Just sayin'.)

But all the plastic we use and abuse? Anything but smart for the planet. Even if we try to be environmentally conscious, reduce our use of plastics, increase our recycling efforts.

Not that it's all for naught. Just mostly for naught. 

I try to be a bit more careful about using plastics.

Blessed with good local tap - thank you, Quabbin Reservoir - I rarely buy bottled water. I drink chilled tap, and when I'm out walking in hot weather, I carry chilled tap with me in a metal water bottle. Sure, I'm occasionally out, about, and thirsty, and I'll hit the CVS fridge case for some Poland Spring. But mostly I'm pretty good here.

I get almonds, pecans, and sunflower seeds from the bulk set up at the grocery store, and I've stopped getting mine in the handy plastic containers just sitting there. Now, I pour the amount I want into a paper bag and transfer it to a glass jar when I get home.

But there's no paper option for olives, so I have to use the plastic container.

I do know that I don't need to buy pre-chopped pineapple, but I do. So there's no choice but plastic. But why do blueberries and strawberries have to come packed in so much plastic? At the farmers' market, they still use the recyclable green whatever-it-is (sort of like the feel paper mache). But in the grocery store, it's in plastic. Oh, sure, I should be more worried about the fact that, if I'm not getting my strawberries and blueberries at the farmers' market, they're probably coming shipped in from afar. So there's that eco worry. Still, all that plastic?

And all that plastic? I am quite virtuously recycling it. I collect everything I possibly can - papers, bottles, plastics - in the blue recycle bin that is hidden away in a big wicker basket with a lid. And once a week I bag it up in a big clear recycle bag and leave it at the curb at 6 a.m.  - I set my alarm - on trash day. Sometime between 6:01 a.m. and 7:30 or so, I hear the truck chugging down the street. I turn over for a few more zzz's, confident that I've done my bit. 

Which, as it turns out, is a big so what.

Of the 51 million tons of plastic waste US households generated in 2021, just 2.4 million tons — or 5 percent — was recycled, new research shows. (Source: Boston Globe)

And that's not the fault of the virtuous home recyclers like me, who are actually more than 5 percent of consumers. (Surprisingly - at least to me - virtuous Massachusetts has a very low rate of plastic bottle recycling.)

Turns out, plastic recycling is something of a myth. 

Plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, is notoriously difficult to recycle. A major reason: Though they can be broken down into broad categories, there are thousands of varieties of the material, each with its own chemical makeup. Most cannot be recycled together, so to be processed, they must be meticulously sorted...

[And] no plastic product meets a common industry-backed standard for recyclability, though many bear the well-known “chasing arrows” symbol.  

As a result, most of the plastics we virtuously try to recycle never make it through the process. So:

...plastics have never achieved even a double digit recycling rate in the country, while recycling rates for other materials, like glass, metal, and paper, are much higher.

Well, good new of glass, metal, and paper. But bad, bad, very bad, bad news when it comes to plastics.

Plastic production and disposal account for 3.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions...“If plastics were a country, they would be the fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world,” said Lisa Ramsden, senior plastics campaigner for Greenpeace USA.

...Contributions to the climate crisis are just one major problem with plastic production and disposal, the report says. The material also contributes to ecosystem degradation, lets off endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals, and harms vital coral reef ecosystems. 

Ugh, ugh, ugh, a thousand times ugh.

And getting even uglier: plastic production is up, and expected to keep going up, especially as the petrochemical industry looks for new ways to use their wares if demand for gasoline goes down and if we switch to more sustainable sources of power.

Swell.

The same year that The Graduate came out, Jefferson Airplane released their song, "Plastic Fantastic Lover." 

Perhaps Benjamin and Elaine heard it played when they were tootling around in his cool little Alfa Romeo.

As for a career in plastics? Fantastic? NOT!

Hats off to Vanilla Beane!

I'm not much of a hat wearer.

When I'm out walking, I almost always have a ballcap on to shade my eyes. (Blue eyed downside: light sensitivity.) And in winter, if, baby, it's cold outside, I've got a warm knit cap scrunched down around my ears. But a hat hat? It's been a while.

Still, whether it's the chapeaux worn by British and Irish wedding goers, or the church-lady hats that a lot of Black church ladies wear to their services, I really enjoy seeing pictures of women wearing hats.

Since I don't go to church, or British or Irish weddings - except in one instance, when I went to a wedding in Ireland but didn't step it up and get a hat, I don't have much of a need for advanced millinery.

But since I do like hats, I was interested in reading the Washington Post obituary of Mrs. Vanilla Beane, a DC hat-maker who lived one hell of a life before passing away on October 23rd at the age of 103. Up until her 100th year, she was working six days a week. Let me repeat that. Up until her 100th year, she was working six days a week.

What a life she led!

Vanilla Powell grew up in North Carolina, in a family of modest means. Her father was a carpenter, her mother a seamstress who also made money doing laundry. (For White people, it almost goes without saying.) Vanilla was the second from last in a family with nine kids, so maybe they were running out of standard, vanilla names when Vanilla came along. But somehow she was named Vanilla.

Like the other kids in her family, she picked tobacco and cotton to supplement the family's income. And went to church on Sunday, where the church ladies were wearing fancy hats. 

Vanilla graduated from high school, and, for a young Black women in North Carolina during the Depression, that must have been quite an accomplishment. She then moved to Washington DC, where she met and married Willie Beane, providing her with a to-die-for name: Vanilla Beane. 

In Washington, Mrs. Beane worked as an elevator operator in a downtown building with a hat store called Washington Millinery Supply. She was enamored by the intricate hats and the craft of making them, so she bought some supplies and began making them herself. (Source: Washington Post)

Elevator operator was, of course, one of the few jobs open back then to "colored women." When I was a kid, the nice department stores in downtown Worcester had elevator operators, all smartly dressed Black women who wore white gloves. They pressed the button for the floor you requested, and opened and closed the elevator grate. Each car had a little fold down seat in it, where the operator could sit if she wasn't operating the elevator. I was quite fascinated by these little seats for some reason. I'd look at them and think what a wonderful job elevator operator must be.

Eventually she showed her hats to the store’s owner, Richard Dietrick Sr. “She had very much talent, but she didn’t have the design know-how in those days,” Dietrick recalled later. “She picked it up very quickly.”

Mrs. Beane eventually began working for him, and when he moved his shop to Gaithersburg, Md., she bought his supplies and, in 1979, opened her own store. She was a shrewd businesswoman, convincing Ethel Sanders, the owner of Lovely Lady Boutique in Bethesda, Md., to move her store near Bené Millinery.

And what a business Vanilla Beane built for herself.

Mrs. Beane’s hats, which she had designed and fabricated at the Bené Millinery and Bridal Supplies shop on Third Street NW, were featured on postage stamps and in collections at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Every hat was one-of-a-kind.

“Nobody wants to walk into a church and see someone else wearing their hat,” she once said.

Poet Maya Angelou wore one of Mrs. Beane’s millinery creations. Civil rights activist Dorothy I. Height donned them for meetings with presidents and other officials. “Hats give me a lift and make me feel real special,” Height explained — a sentiment shared by the countless others who shopped at Mrs. Beane’s store.

Here's Vanilla Beane modeling one of her creations. When she was about 100 years of age. 

Wow! That's what I call a hat!

It takes presence, style, and guts to wear a hat like that, and Vanilla Beane apparently had plenty of all that. 

Mrs. Beane made her hats the old-fashioned way, wetting buckram — a stiff cotton — into molds decorated with all manner of fabrics. Keeping her fingernails cut short, Mr. Beane made tams, turbans, panamas, sailors and cloches. Decades of the repetitive fashioning turned her fingers stiff and rough.

“They look like I have been digging potatoes,” she said.

In addition to folks who wore Mrs. Beane's creations, there were those who collected them.  Sherry Watkins was one of the collectors. She owns 75 Beane creations. (I was going to say Beanies, but these hats are obviously so much more.)

There are, wouldn't you know, rules for hat wearing, and Beane was a proud evangelizer of them. She tutored Watkins on the ins and outs of hats. 

“Don’t match the hat to the outfit,” Watkins recalled. “Just buy a hat you like and the outfit will come. Never wear your hat more than one inch above your eyebrows. Slant it to look more interesting and possibly even risque.”

Love that first bit of advice. Right up there with 'don't buy a work of art because it matches your couch.'

In addition to her obituary in the WaPo, Vanilla Beane's death was also noted in USA Today and on NPR, among other sites.

Not bad for a girl who once picked tobacco in North Carolina.

Visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture is on my bucket list, and seeing some of Vanilla Beane's works of art is now on my bucket list within a bucket list.

Hats off to Vanilla Beane! They don't make 'em like they used to: hats, or folks like Vanilla Beane.

Who WOULDN'T want a flying bike!

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was The Flying Sandbox. I imagined myself in our sandbox, zooming over the rooftops. Our house! Susan's house! Bernadette's house! Nanny's house!

Gates Lane School, where I went to kindergarten. My grammar school, Our Lady of the Angels. Our church. (Ditto.)

I imagined flying over Henderson Pond (a.k.a., Hendy's). Parson's Cider Mill. The abandoned reservoir (a.k.a., The Little Res). Bennett Field. Hixon's Hollow. Hadwen Park. The Lucky Bakery. Maury's Delicatessen. McEarchern's Shoes, where we got our PF Flyers. The place that sold the gravestones. 

I was no more adventurous in the imaginary flying sandbox than I was in real life, and never gave a thought to flying over any place other than the neighborhood. Never even gave a thought to flying down city (which was Worcester for downtown, way back when). I only ever got as far in my dreams as Webster Square.

I always had one little problem with trying to reconcile our sandbox as the flying sandbox: our sandbox had no bottom.

My father had made ours by knocking together four long boards he got at Stone & Berg Lumber, with triangle pieces in every corner to provide seating and to keep the whole thing stable. He'd annually slap a new coat of whatever paint he had lying around on it. (One color I remember was a ghastly pinky-purple. There was nothing in our house of that color, so I'm guessing he got a pint on the cheap at Aubuchon's hardware store.) And each spring, he'd cart in a new load of sand to refresh the supply. 

And that was that. 

Despite the fact that our sandbox had no bottom IRL, in my imagination I gave it one before I took off. I wasn't going to take flight with nothing under my feet, just me dangling into thin air from the seat of our almost-a-sandbox.

Well, the flying  sandbox of my childhood can take a backseat to theXTURISMO hoverbike from AERWINS Technologies that was on display at the recent North American Auto Show in - where else! - Detroit.

Based in Delaware, AERWINS Technologies is an air mobility company that makes dro[nes and unmanned aerial vehicles. [CEO Shuhei] Komatsu said his company will make its public offering of stock on the NASDAQ exchange in November.

The hoverbike is being sold in Japan, the CEO also said. Japan doesn't classify the vehicle as an aircraft and doesn't require a license to pilot it, he added.

He said he's hoping the U.S. government classifies its XTURISMO as a non-aircraft. (Source: Detroit News)

And if you're worried about the likelihood of midair collisions:

It has myriad of safety features and sensors to keep riders safe, such as collision avoidance and radar.

That's a relief.

AERWINS plans on releasing a scaled down version of the hover bike in the US next year.

The estimated price for the current vehicle is $777,000. He said by 2025, he hopes to be able to get the cost down for a smaller, electric hoverbike to about $50,000.

They anticipate that there'll be both a recreational consumer market, and a market for law enforcement. 

I don't know if I like the idea of the police patrolling the skies in these things. Looks more Darth Vader-ish than Officer Friendly. 

And I don't know if I'm all that wild about the idea of our skies filled with all sorts of folks gunning around in these babies. 

Bad enough we're plagued by the bands of kids who rev around town on unlicensed electric bikes, running red lights, making way too much noise, and terrorizing pedestrians and drivers. The thought of these kids taking to the skies... Shudder, shudder.

Anyway, any problems will be moot until they get the price down. The average consumer is probably not going to spring for a $50K hover bike, let alone one that costs $777K. 

But if the price gets down from the stratosphere. And the safety issues really are resolved. Who WOULDN'T want a flying bike?

I haven't been on a bike in years, but this kid who flew all over Main South Worcester in her flying sandbox would love to take flight in an XTURISMO. Bring it!

Kinda makes me want to watch basketball

I'll confess to not being much of a basketball fan. 

Oh, I've watched a ton of it over the years, and have even been to The Garden (the old Garden) plenty of times, including for an exciting playoff game in the 1970's when the Celtics played a Milwaukee Bucks team that featured Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and an exciting Larry Bird-Dominique Wilkins shootout in the 1980s. For that one, I bought scalpers for my husband's birthday, bargaining the scalper down by ten bucks so I could also buy us a couple of beers.

But Jim was the basketball fan in the family, and I haven't paid all that much attention to basketball in general or the Celtics in particular since he died. 

I am, however, in Boston. Which is a SPORTS CITY. So, while I'm diehard with baseball in general and the Red Sox in particular, I keep an eye on the Pats, the Bruins, and the Celtics. And - bandwagoner if ever - I tend to keep a little closer eye on those teams if and when they're in the playoffs. And if and when they're in the SPORTS CITY news. 

As the Celtics were earlier this fall when their coach Ime Udoka was suspended for the year of having "engaged in an improper relationship with a subordinate team employee." 

This was all pretty much front page news in these parts. It's just how we roll and, since we don't tend to have much by way of closely contested political contests, there tends to be plenty of room for stories like this on the front page.

With the season upon us - and now in early swing - the big question was who was going to replace Udoka as the Celts' head coach. 

The Celtics chose Udoka's assistant, Joe Mazzulla to step in and run the show. 

Even after he was named acting head coach, I knew nothing except the vaguest things about him. Young guy (in his 30's). Kind of local. (He's from Rhode Island.) West Virginia something or other. (That's where he played college hoop.) Some kind of trouble down there - and not good trouble (youthful assault issue). 

Then The Boston Globe did a profile on him - front page news on my online subscription.) And it turns out, Joe Mazzulla's story is really good one. 

Mazzulla grew up in Johnston, RI, and played his high school ball at Bishop Hendricken, where he excelled in basketball. (When he had time between classes, he'd duck into the gym - in his Catholic boys school uni of jacket and tie and leather shoes - and shoot baskets.) Excelling enough to win himself a scholarship to a Division One basketball school, West Virginia.

It was while he was in college that he got in trouble. Injured an out for most of the season, he was apparently moping around a bar and ended up with a domestic battery charge. Counseling, community service, dealing with his demons. Mazzulla redeemed himself and the next year, his team made it to the March Madness Final Four.

Mazzulla wasn't NBA material, but could have forged a career playing pro overseas. Along the way, however, he figured out that he was more interested in and better at helping develop players, rather than being one himself.

This led to a college coaching career at a couple of West Virginia's Division Two schools.

His first job was as an unpaid assistant at Glenville State. A couple of years later, he found a paid position at Fairmont State.

This was all pretty unglamorous. After games, he picked trash up off the gym floor. He washed the team's clothing. Cooked spaghetti for the kids. At Fairmont, he used some of his puny salary to help build a weight room for his team.

But he was a dogged worker, a student of the game, and, just as he had excelled at basketball in high school and college, he excelled at studying game books, coming up with novel game plans, and boning up on obscure rules - anything to give his team an edge. 

Mazzulla was also considered a players' coach. His team members loved him. Knowing first hand that most players don't go on to lucrative professional careers - especially if they played for obscure D-2 teams - he paid attention to making sure his athletes were more than just athletes.

Mazzulla's step in to the pros was joining the staff of the Maine Red Claws (now the Maine Celtics) in the NBA's G-League, which is a developmental league. There, he was paid a princely $15K. Plus a hotel room. 

In Maine, Mazzulla was able to show his stuff, and after a few years, he was in the mix for a job coaching in the real pros. 

He became the assistant coach of the Boston Celtics, and when Udoka was suspended, the Celts tapped Mazzulla for the head coaching job. They didn't even bother to mount a search for the position, which tells us plenty about the faith they had in Joe Mazzulla. (Also likely says something about this not looking like such a plum job to a team outsider, given that it's conceivable the Udoka could come back next year.) 

I'm not doing Joe Mazzulla any justice here, but from reading the article, he just sounds like a great guy who's overcome plenty in his still young life - if anything, growing up half Italian and half Black in Johnston, RI can't have been all that easy - and who, at 34, has already accomplished an awful lot.

This is such a feel good story. 

The Celtic made it to the NBA finals last spring, but didn't manage to grab the brass ring. 

Wait until this year. Or next year. Or whatever the 2022-2023 season is called.

Anyway, the Celts have been doing okay so far this season, and here's hoping they have an even better season than they did last year.

Joe Mazzulla kinda makes me want to watch basketball again. 

Trick of Treat

Thought I'd stroll around the 'hood and check out the Halloween decorations. As always, they're pretty good. And since my neighborhood is old, brick, gaslit, and can give off Halloween vibes, this is no surprise. Here's a sampling of what I saw the other day:

Just out back: the last angry ghosts

Things look a bit kinder and gentler around the corner

Not all that interesting, but if you look closely, those pumpkin-eens are rotting away. 

Subtle, with those skeletal hands in the corners, but I'm wondering when the rats are going to delve into that pumpkin/gourd heap.

Hanging around Mt. Vernon Street.

Wonder if the kids in the family picked these decorations?

Vs. the professionally done Alice in Wonderland theme going here.

This is in Louisburg Square, where the rich folks dwell. (How long have I lived here and I still can't remember whether it's Lewisburg Square or Looeyburg Square. 

This is John Kerry's house. I suspect he had little to do with setting this up.

This is Louisburg Square again, just out front of John Kerry's house. Oh, and I looked it up. It's pronounced Lewisburg Square.

I can't figure out what's going on here, but when I walked by there was a 10 person production crew out front, all wearing matching Patagonia jackets. I think that this is where Robin Cook, the author of Coma and other books lives or lived. Whatever it is, I wasn't invited. 

Just hanging around.

Us, too.

Pillow Talk at a gift shop. Sleep well, my sweet. 

Mummy heads at Blackstone's, my favorite gift shop.

Whitney Hotel.  Same as last year's, but definitely a keeper.

If it's decent weather tonight, I'll head out to see the kiddos. Trick or Treaters are all over the Hill. But they don't tend to stop by Beacon Street, so I'm off the giving-out hook.

Maybe I'll get me a Butterfinger to chomp on along the way. 

Root, root, root for someone. In this case, the Phillies.

I'm a lifelong baseball fan.

Even when "my" team isn't in it - and this year, the Red Sox were abysmally out of it - I catch at least a couple of innings in most of the playoff games. And will pretty much watch all of the World Series, which starts tonight.

The team I was rooting for to win the 2022 World Series was the Cleveland Guardians.

I was pulling for Cleveland for a number of reasons. For one thing, they haven't won since 1948 - even before I was born -  and this is the longest World Series drought among the 30 Major League Baseball teams. When Cleveland last won, they were the Indians, and there were only 16 teams, 8 in the American League, 8 in the National. There were no wildcards, no divisional playoffs, no league championships. Whoever finished first in their league made it to the October Classic (which now runs into early November...). In 1948, those teams were Cleveland (AL) and the Boston Braves, now in Atlanta, in the NL. 

Then there's the Cleveland manager, Terry "Tito" Francona, who managed the Red Sox to their first World Series championship in 86 years, way back in 2004. Francona is forever in my heart. Good guy. Deserves to win, if anyone really ever does.

I also like that the team is now named for the "Guardians of Traffic," the wicked-cool Art Deco statues that grace a bridge near their stadium. 

And I like that Cleveland is a low payroll team, ranking 28th among the 30 MLB teams with a lowly team payroll of $82M. Alas, Cleveland lost to the Damn Yankees (3rd highest payroll, at $265M) in the divisional playoffs. 

Although "my" team is a big spender (6th highest 2022 MLB payroll at $223M), I like to see the little spenders make it big.

Beyond wanting Cleveland to win, my only other rooting interest during the playoffs was rooting against the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees. Fortunately, the baseball gods smiled on me and the Dodgers lost their divisional series, and the Yankees lost their league championship series. This made me very happy. Bad enough I have all the political goings-on to fret about. My parallel nightmare scenario was Dodgers vs. Yankees in the World Series. 

You just cannot watch any sort of sporting event without picking a side. Would I really have had to root for the Yankees?

Thankfully, I was spared that decision.

Mostly, I enjoyed watching the playoff games.

Loved seeing the Astros sweep the hapless Yankees. And I much enjoyed that New York's mental strength coach thought that, with the Yankees down 3-0 and facing elimination, it would be motivating to show them a video of the only team that ever came back from a 3-0 deficit to win a league championship. That team would be the Red Sox, who famously rebounded in 2004 to snatch victory from the jaws of the Yankees. The motivation apparently didn't work.

The National League Championship Series between the Phillies and the San Diego Padres was far better. The games had a lot of lead changes and the whole thing was far more exciting than the outcome- Phillies winning in 5 games - suggests.

Based mostly on geographic proximity, I was rooting for the Phillies to beat San Diego. Which they did.

Generally, I will go with the American League in the World Series.

But for a variety of reasons, I really don't like the Houston Astros.

Yes, I recognize that they are an excellent team, well balanced, well coached. Nonetheless, based in large part on their having knocked the Olde Town Team out of contention in the 2021 league championship series, I just plain don't like them. Plus, Texas.

Sure, the Phillies are a big money club. Fourth on the list at $255M. But so's Houston, coming in ninth at $193M.

But the Phillies seem like a gritty and likable bunch. They are a pleasure to watch. And I know a lot more folks from Philly than I do folks from Houston.

I hope the Phillies win it all. 

But if they don't, I won't be in any way, shape, or form distraught. (Distraught is what I'll experience if Pennsylvania elects Oz to the Senate.)

Once the World Series concludes, I will promptly forget who won and begin mentally preparing myself for the start of the 2023 baseball season, when it will be the 'wait until next year' year that Red Sox fans are hoping for. 

But you have to root, root, root for someone. And this year, for me, it's the Philadelphia Phillies.

Now let's go play some ball.

Simplify!

Even though I'm no longer a working stiff, I still occasionally - okay, rarely - enjoy (kinda sorta) reading about what's cookin' in the good old work world. And this includes what the academics have to say. Especially if the academic is Professor Bob Sutton of Stanford.

I don't know Bob but, in the past, I've reviewed his works, or keyed posts off of them. (Among other books, Bob wrote The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't. As you can imagine, I had plenty to say about that one.) We also had a bit of an e-mail correspondence back in the day. 

Bob is a wonderful writer: interesting, witty, and humane, and - who doesn't like flattery - back in the day (long, long ago) when we were blog-pals, Bob recommended Pink Slip to his readers.

Anyway, the latest I've seen by him is an article of his that appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal, which - miraculously - Bob managed to get in front of the paywall.

In "Why Bosses Should Ask Employees to Do Less—Not More," Bob argues that rather than piling on more of everything organizations should think about simplifying. 

It isn’t that addition is inherently bad. But when leaders are undisciplined about piling on staff, gizmos, software, meetings, rules, training and management fads, organizations become too complicated, their people get overwhelmed and exhausted, and their resources are spread so thin that all their work suffers.

Been there, experienced that. All of it.

I worked for one company that was, admittedly, completely undisciplined and supremely dysfunctional. I might even say that this one place put the dys in dysfunctional. I have never seen anything that could quite compare to the crazy little Cambridge place where I spent the longest block (over 9 years) of time during my corporate career. It goes without saying that I loved working there, even though it was spectacularly nuts. (My sister Kath long maintained that I sought out dysfunctional workplaces because I didn't have enough dysfunction in my own life.)

Anyway, at one point, Dysfunctional Software, Inc. (or, as I referred to it in All Worked Up (in which I wrote about the Charismatic Asshole) The Next Billion Dollar Software Company. [Aside to the reader: it wasn't.]) brought in a retired admiral to instill some discipline and turn things around. [Aside to the reader: he didn't.]

One thing that The Admiral tried to do was put some processes in place. And the first place he started was having the retired Chief Petty Office he brought in with him create a manual for how to order office supplies. A 17-page manual complete with flow charts. 

Prior to joining Dysfunctional Software, Inc., I'd spent a few grim years at Wang Labs, which had insane processes for everything. Even Wang didn't have a 17-page manual detailing how to order a pencil.

Bob's article included an interactive component, asking readers "which time-wasting activity most needs to be cut back in your organization?" The choices: Meetings, Emails, Documentation/Record Keeping, Hiring Processes, Socializing, Training, Performance Reviews. 

I do have one question - by Socializing, does Bob mean "obligatory fun" corporate functions, or hanging around BS-ing with colleagues - but for the most part, the choices are good ones. I will observe that I never worked for any place where we spent too much time on Performance Reviews. I often went years without giving or receiving one. 

Anyway, although I don't work, and thus don't have an organization, I voted anyway. (Hope this doesn't constitute voter fraud.)

And I voted for Meetings.

One (needless to say, dysfunctional) place I worked - it dysfunctioned its way into bankruptcy and dissolution - was completely meeting-crazy.

You could literally spend your entire day in meetings, from 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Other than the absence of the bell ringing alerting us to change classes, I often felt as if I were back in high school. Five minutes before the hour, pick up your notebooks and move onto your next class meeting. 

Some folks brought their laptops and did work during the meetings, which I was never bold enough to do. Of course, when the meetings were blessedly on a conference bridge - this was before meeting technology was advanced enough for Zoom-like video meetings - we could turn on mute and work away.

A prominent feature of meetings in this company was that we were often fed at them, generally that meant a full breakfast at an early a.m. meeting, and - of course - a full lunch for noon gatherings. 

After a while, I figured out which meetings I could delegate someone else in my group to attend. This often meant that the meeting organizer was pissed off. It was deemed insulting to send someone junior. But everyone did it, and enough was enough. I made it okay for the people who I dispatched in my stead by giving them opportunities to attend and, if possible, have a real role at, meetings where there were more senior people they could gain some visibility, strut their stuff, network...

In his article, Bob includes a lot of good examples - far better than my personal experiences: his are actually researched. So since the piece isn't behind the WSJ paywall, go forth and read. 

Here's his bottom line on why more isn't necessarily more.

For so many companies, the opposite—less, less, less—is the key to success. Subtraction clears our minds and gives us time to focus on what really counts. It sets the stage for creative work, giving us the space to fail, fret, discuss, argue about and experiment with seemingly crazy ideas—the ideas that can transform a company, and make employees happier and more productive.

Addition by subtraction. Not that I have any skin in this particular game, but I'm all for it.