Run, Eeyore, Run! Fight, Roo, Fight!

In January 2022, Winnie the Pooh - the classic original - left the House on Pooh Corner and entered the public domain. So far, the two most notable new works that play off Pooh have been horrific in their own ways.

Earlier this year, a British slasher film, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, made its dismal way to theaters. The plot? "Transformed into feral and bloodthirsty, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet terrorize Christopher Robin and a group of young women at a remote house."

I'm not wild about the cloyingness of the original Pooh stories. And don't ask me how I feel about the grotesquery that is the Disney version. But I'll take a hard pass on a slasher movie that features a "feral and bloodthirsty" Piglet. 

The market has pretty much spoken on this one, as the box office since February has only been about $5M. (In contrast, the new Disney Littlest Mermaid's box office has been boffo. The first weekend after its release its gross exceeded $100M.)

But I'd take the slasher pic any old day rather than continue to live in a world where someone thought it was a good idea to have Pooh, Christopher, Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga and Roo star in a book for pre-K and elementary school on what to do if they're caught up in a school shooting.

Parents and teachers in the Dallas area have expressed alarm and concern that the Stay Safe book, produced by a law enforcement consulting firm in Houston, has been sent home in the backpacks of children in pre-kindergarten and elementary classes.

The book features the honey-loving bear created by AA Milne and illustrator EH Shepard instructing kids about how to react to a mass shooting...

The subtitle to the Stay Safe book is: “If there is danger, let Winnie-the-Pooh and his Crew show you what to do: Run Hide Fight.” (Source: The Guardian)

Run, hide, fight is, of course, what the FBI advises we all do if a gunman shows up, guns a-blazing, at the workplace, restaurant, grocery store, shopping mall, concert, movie theater, and - of course - school, where you happen to have the ill fortune of being when some aggrieved psycho with an AR-15 decides to exercise the hell out of his First Amendment rights. (The FBI has produced a nifty little video PSA that shows how the staff and patrons ideally react when a bad guy with a gun decides to take out a bar. You'll be elated to know that a few good guys, even though they're unarmed - 0ther than the bottle of booze the bartender is armed with - take down the shooter.)

Inside pages of the book, featuring other characters from the Hundred Acre Wood, tell kids: “If it is safe to get away, we should RUN like Rabbit instead of stay … If danger is near, do not fear, HIDE like Pooh does until the police appear.”

The “hide” page has a drawing of Pooh burying his head in a pot of honey.

Hands in the air, by the way, when the police appear. Don't forget that key tip or you could get laid low by "friendly" fire.

Needless to say, many parents and teachers found the little gift pretty disturbing. One teacher's response:

“The fact that people think it’s a better idea to put out this book to a child rather than actually take any actions to stop shootings from happening in our schools, that really bothers me. It makes me feel so angry, so disappointed.

“It’s a year since Uvalde, and nothing has been done other than this book. That is putting it on the kids.”

Such a cool tie in that the books were given out to coincide with the first anniversary of the Uvalde school massacre. Sick, sick, sick.

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children, having scooted past car accidents last year. And our response? Pop up safe rooms for classroom. Bullet proof backpacks. Active shooter drills. (Turn your phone off; pretend you're dead.) Teaching fifth graders how to use whatever's at hand to make a tourniquet. 

And, of course, gun laws that are, in many states - and you know who they are - getting looser and looser. 

There is something colossally deranged going on in our society.

Winnie the Pooh and his pals belong in the 100 Acre Wood, not illustrating books on how to survive a shooting event. 

What is wrong with us???

ChatGPT? Seemed like a good idea at the time.

A NY attorney, apparently pressed for research time, decided to use ChatGPT to find some precedents for a brief he needed to present to court on behalf of his client. 

The client was suing Avianca Airline, claiming that he'd been injured in old-school fashion: his knee was clipped by the metal serving cart. 

It happens.

A few weeks ago, my elbow got clipped - just a bit - by a beverage cart that was being pushed a tad too aggressively. Not enough to sue, mind you. Or even think about suing. But my elbow was just a teeny-tiny bit out there, and the flight attendant should have noticed. It happens.

Anyway: 

When Avianca [citing statute of limitations issues] asked a Manhattan federal judge to toss out the case, Mr. [Roberto] Mata’s lawyers vehemently objected, submitting a 10-page brief that cited more than half a dozen relevant court decisions. There was Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines and, of course, Varghese v. China Southern Airlines, with its learned discussion of federal law and “the tolling effect of the automatic stay on a statute of limitations.”

There was just one hitch: No one — not the airline’s lawyers, not even the judge himself — could find the decisions or the quotations cited and summarized in the brief. (Source: NY Times)

ChatGPT had, unfortunately, done what any old human junior lawyer or paralegal could have done if they were lazy, stupid, and unscrupulous. It made stuff up.

The lawyer who "wrote" the brief, Steven Schwartz, is no legal newbie. He's been in practice for 30 years. 

Mr. Schwartz said that he had never used ChatGPT, and “therefore was unaware of the possibility that its content could be false.”

Hmmm. How is it that he didn't go to the Google and read up on some of the, ahem, peculiarities and misinformation spewing from chat bots.  

It's not that Steven Schwartz didn't do a bit of due diligence.  

He had, he told Judge [Kevin] Castel, even asked the program to verify that the cases were real.

It had said yes.

When Mr. Schwartz pushed back on the initial "yes," ChatGPT backed up its lie with assurances - and more fake citations.

“What is your source,” he wrote, according to the filing.

“I apologize for the confusion earlier,” ChatGPT responded, offering a legal citation.

“Are the other cases you provided fake,” Mr. Schwartz asked.

ChatGPT responded, “No, the other cases I provided are real and can be found in reputable legal databases.”

Tsk, tsk, ChatGPT. Liar, liar, natural language processing on fire.  

The judge is not amused, by the way. There's a hearing set for today at "to discuss potential sanctions." 

Mr. Schwartz said he “greatly regrets” relying on ChatGPT “and will never do so in the future without absolute verification of its authenticity.”

The shoddy work of Mr. Schwartz and/or ChatGPT was found out because lawyers for Avianca did try to find the cases cited in the brief, presumably using old school search methods, like searching legal databases. Maybe even resorting to pulling dusty volumes down from their library and paging through. And they came up empty. Fake docket numbers. Fake dates. Fake plaintiffs. Fake judges. Even fake quotes. (In one instance, a fake quote cited an additional fake case.)

Welcome to the brave new world, Mr. Schwartz. (Wonder how much he billed his client for his discovery hours...)

An ode to Allbirds

I know, I know. I do (occasionally) read the business news. 

I know, I know. Things have been a bit rocky.

They missed their 4Q22 revenue target. By a lot.

Even though they beat (low) expectations, 1Q23 wasn't so hot, either.

One of their co-founders/co-CEO's departed the company.

Did the company go public too soon? Did they expand too quickly, opening too many stores? Is the direct-to-consumer model all that it's cracked up to be?

But I really and truly hope that Allbirds

makes it, because I love me their shoes. 

They claim wearing Allbirds is like walking on clouds, and I can vouch for that.

Inspired my sister Trish, who was sporting a pair of greys, I bought those dark blue ones about a year ago. 

They weren't my everyday sneakers. Even though I, with my flatty-flat feet, replaced the insoles with a pair of slightly more supportive orthotics, I do so much walking - I've averaged 7 miles a day for the last couple of years - that I've kept with New Balance or Asics for my long hauls.

But those Allbirds were just fine for shorter hops. And for hanging around the house. Super-comfy. Supportive enough. Super-comfy enough that I bought a black pair. And wore them daily (with orthotics replacing the comes-with insoles) on my recent trip to Ireland. I wasn't putting in 7 miles a day while I was there. More like 4. And the Allbirds stood the test.

So I decided to get a fun color.

Thus the turquoise pair, which I got on sale. (Some ask why someone who wears a size 11 would want a pair of ultra-bright turquoise sneaks. I say, why the hell not?)

I'd also been on the lookout for a pair of flats to wear in the summer, for those occasional occasions when I dress up a bit. I.e., put on a pair of black pants and a decent top. (I wear sneakers 99% of the time.) 

So I got a pair of Allbirds ballet flats. Which are super comfy, and have great support when compared to every other summer flat I've ever had. And they look plenty cute. No, they're not pointy toe styling, but they're not orthopedic clunky, either. Anyway, they're cute by old geezer lady standards, that's for sure. 

And when I wore them for the first time, it was like walking on clouds. Clouds that didn't give me blisters to boot. (To shoe?)

I wore them to the Saint Francis House volunteer appreciation dinner - maybe a mile-and-change round trip. I wore them out to dinner when we went to the foodie place on my visit to Tucson. I wore them out to the one dress-up dinner we had in Ireland. Then I put them to a longer test: up to Boston City Hall for a Saint Francis House reception for the exhibit of the works of our art therapy artists. (My house is already full of SFH outsider art, but, of course, I bought another painting at the exhibit.) Rather than go straight home, I went downtown to buy a mason jar (nut storage) at Home Goods and some salad dressing (too lazy to whip up my own) at Roach Bros. Then home.

Those ballet flats didn't let me down.

No foot pain, even after a couple of hours standing around and a longer than my normal flat-wearing walk.

So I bought a pair of blue ballet flats, too.

Given that I already have a pretty comfy, relatively supportive pair of Munro sandals - for when I get around to having a pedicure and can put my toe nails on display - I am now entirely good to go for summer footwear.

So thank you, Allbirds.

There is much to love about these shoes.

Okay, they're made in China, which is not my favorite thing in the world. (Some versions of New Balance sneakers are made in the US.)

But the company is dedicated to sustainability, from the materials they use, through their manufacturing process, through their shipping boxes. (The shoebox doubles as the shipping box. None of this Zappo's box-in-a-box nonsense.)

I guess if I were so committed to sustainability, I'd make do with one pair of sneakers and one pair of flats. But sometimes a girl - even an old girl - likes to mix it up.

So I'm all in on Allbirds. Sure hope the company makes it.

A Small Light. (D-Day)

Maybe it was because my parents met because of the war. (My father spent a couple of his Navy years stationed at Navy Pier in Chicago, which is where he met my Chicago-girl mother. And where I am, in fact, visiting today.)

Maybe it was the war's proximity to my own arrival on earth. As a child, it did seem way far in the past, but I was born just 4 years and change after WWII ended.

Maybe it was all those mostly god-awful black & white war movies I watched on Boston Movietime.

Whatever the reason, I've always been interested in World War II, especially the war in Europe. And the Holocaust. Both of which I've read extensively about, from childhood, through my school days, through my entire adult life. I've been to Dachau. Auschwitz. The Anne Frank House.

And of course I read The Diary of Anne Frank. So of course I knew about Miep Gies, the young Dutch woman who helped hide the Frank family from the Nazis. Who helped keep safe the Franks and the other Jews that were being sheltered in the building occupied by Opekta, a pectin (jam making ingredient) distributor. The company, which had been managed by Anne's father Otto, was located at Prinsengracht, now home of the Anne Frank House. Miep Gies was a secretary/office manager for Opekta.

Miep's story was recently recounted in A Small Light, a series shown on National Geographic.

While, like everyone else in the world, I knew the elements of the story, I was still gripped by it. At times, I was so tense, I could barely watch it. The day the Gestapo raided the Secret Annex and rounded up the Frank family and the other inhabitants. The day Miep went to Nazi headquarters and tried to ransom the Franks and others (the VanPels family and Dr. Pfeffer) who were still being held for transport. The day Otto came home from the war. The day he learned that neither of his daughters had survived. 

Miep did more than help the Jews in the Annex. She and her husband, who was a member of the Dutch Resistance, helped save other Jews, including some children they found hiding places for in the country.

It was all so heartbreaking, leavened by a few moments of joy in Miep's personal life, and in the Annex. 

One of those moments of joy was the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944.

By then, the Franks had been in hiding for nearly two years. But as they listened in on the great war news on their illegal radio, they could see that the end was in view. Any time now, the Allies would be in Amsterdam. The Germans would be gone. Anne Frank would be able to lead a normal teenage life, writing in her diary about schoolmates and beaux. About tennis games and the lack of chocolate in the deprived post-war period.

Miep and her husband would get on with their lives.

Instead...

Well, we all know the instead.

In August 1944, the Annex was raided. Of the eight Jews sheltered there, Otto Frank was the sole survivor. Anne and her sister Margot almost made it, but died in early 1945. Equally tragically, Peter Van Pels, the other teenaged occupant of the Annex, died just as the war ended in May 1945.

The title of A Small Light was taken from the words Miep Gies (who lived to be 100) used to end her presentations:

I don't like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others. Even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.

I often wonder what I would have done.

Would I have consorted with Nazis? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have.

But would I have done anything other than passively not be a Nazi? What if I'd worked in a government office keeping data on who and where the Dutch Jews were? Would I have quit in disgust? Gone along? Actively resisted and tried to help people escape?

Would I have helped a Jewish friend who asked for help? I like to think so. What about a random Jew I didn't know? What would I have done then? Risked my neck (and the necks of my family) for a stranger? Maybe. But maybe not. (From this vantage point, knowing what I know now about the treatment of those who helped Jews out, I'm thinking probably not. But I was less of a scaredy-cat when I was in my twenties, wouldn't have yet known of the full horrors, and if people I loved and trusted were involved in the Resistance, I might not have been an initiator, but I might have gotten involved.)

Miep wasn't arrested for her role in helping the Franks et al. She had been born in Vienna and, as a sickly child in war-torn Austria after the first world war, had been sent to live with a family in Holland, which pretty much adopted her. She recognized the Viennese accent of the Nazi who helped conduct the raid. She spoke to him in German, told him she was from Vienna, and he let her go, telling the other raiders that she knew nothing.

So she got off, which didn't keep her from making a last ditch effort to bribe the Germans to release the families she'd help hide. Amazingly, after being relieved of the cash in her pocketbook, Miep was just kicked to the curb and not herself arrested. 

Thus go the fortunes of war.

Anyway, today I'm thinking of those brave men who landed in Normandy on D-Day. And of brave Miep Gies, who was so very willing to "turn on a small light in a dark room."

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

On a more joyous note, this is a picture of Miep Gies and her husband Hans, with their baby son, taken in 1951. Sitting at Miep's shoulder is Otto Frank, who remained fast friends with Miep and Hans, and who lived with the Gies family for many years after the war. It was Miep, by the way, who - along with Bep, the other Opekta secretary - saved Anne's diary and hid it. They had hoped to return it to her after the war but, instead, gave it to Otto. The rest is history...

There once was a shack in Nantucket

I've been to Nantucket twice. Both day hops. One jaunt was in 1967, on a post-high-school graduation trip to the Cape. The other during the early 1970's on a day off from waitressing. 

So it's been a while.

Still, I remember Nantucket as ultra charming. Quaint streets. Rose-covered shingled cottages. Cobble-stone streets. Unique little shops. 

I always meant to get back for a weekend or something, but never got around to it. 

And then, as it happened, ultra charming - which was never cheap - became ultra expensive, and Nantucket became the place where the ultra wealthy own property. (I've even read that it's displaced the Hamptons as the it place for billionaires to buy their East Coast trophy house.)

So who owns property there? John Henry, owner of the Red Sox and The Boston Globe. Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Charles Schwab of the eponymous money company. And Charles Johnson, the owner of the San Francisco Giants.

Schwab and Johnson both own properties on Nantucket's Old North Wharf. Johnson - who I'm guessing may have a bigger "real" house elsewhere on the island - has a pretty modest house there on the wharf: 1,200 square feet (about the size of my condo). But, unlike my condo, Johnson's "fishing cottage" is valued at $6.5 million. (Schwab's house is larger - not sure by how much - but he paid $10 million for it in 2021.)

That's Johnson's, the two-story porched house next to the new build.

And it's the new build that's gotten Johnson's goat.

Just 18 inches - yikes! - from Johnson's place, that new build isn't a getaway for a fellow big mahoff billionaire. It's going to be a clam shack.

Johnson, 90, a former mutual fund executive and the principal owner of the San Francisco Giants, filed a lawsuit on May 12 in Nantucket Superior Court seeking to invalidate licenses the Straight Wharf Fish Market has received from local and state authorities.

Johnson and a cohort of his neighbors on the historic Old North Wharf have spoken out against the 62-seat restaurant publicly since March, saying it will be too noisy and cause too much congestion, but local boards have backed the plan. (Source: Boston Globe)

Congestion, you say? Congestion? Isn't a small wharf that holds 25 former fishing shacks all tarted up to be worth millions of buckaroos already pretty congested? As is, I understand, pretty much all of Downtown Nantucket is pretty darned congested in the high season, what with all those Nantucket Red wearing rich folks, both billionaire and wannabe, swanning around? 

Noise, you say? Yes, congested areas tend to be noisy. As can restaurants. But my understanding is that this joint, while it does/will have a liquor license, isn't going to be running as a bar/nightclub. Just a restaurant with a menu heavy on lobster and clam rolls. 

But Johnson wants that liquor license rescinded, and he wants to put the kibosh on the whole operation. 

While Johnson has sued to halt the project, his neighbor, billionaire businessman Charles Schwab, has come out in favor of the restaurant, support that came as a pleasant surprise to Frasca and Burleson.

In March, [Johnson's lawyer Danielle] deBenedictis had told the Select Board that in addition to Johnson, she also represented Schwab, 85, and several other wharf residents. But last month, Schwab said in a statement through his attorney that he never opposed the seafood restaurant and was never represented by deBenedictis.

To underscore the point, Schwab's attorney, Steven Cohen wrote:

“We all look forward to enjoying a fresh clam roll and cold soft-serve twist cone on the harbor,” he wrote.

Not that I'll be heading to Nantucket anytime soon, but to me it isn't summer until I have a clam roll. But I'll probably be heading down to Sullivan's on Castle Island in South Boston for mine. Perhaps not as charming and quaint as Nantucket, but cheaper and quicker to get to. 

Still, I'm hoping that the Nantucket clam shack is able to open soon, and that this Johnson NIMBY suit doesn't screw up their entire season.

Pretty funny to see the two old Old North Wharf billionaires throw down on different sides of this one. Maybe Schwab's home is downwind from the smell of fried clams, as opposed to Johnson's, which is butt up against it.

And pretty funny that some rich folks would ultra-wealth-ify a spot that had once been full of the shacks of actual working fishermen, and then turn around and want to clamp down on an actual clam shack opening in their midst.

Yet another reason I don't miss working...

Retirement has many things to recommend it. And ranking high amount those many things is that you're kinda-sorta on permanent vacation. Sure, it's mostly stay-cation, but your time is pretty much your own. You don't have to "put in" for time off;, you don't have to check in with your boss to see if that time off is okay; you don't have to put up with any peer pressure to not take off and leave your colleagues in a real - or as often as not, imagined - lurch. 

Nope, you can make those plane and VRBO rezzies months in advance on your very own say so. You can take - get this - two consecutive weeks off. (Hey, don't be a piker: you can take two consecutive years off.) As for occasional days off, you can wake up any morning and declare it a personal or mental health day, even if all you had planned for the day was a trip to the corner drugstore to pick up toothpaste. 

Of course, as a freelancer, I had been out of the corporate regiment for nearly two decades before I retired. My days off, my vacation policy, the hours I worked each day, were entirely under my control. Still, when I was freelancing, there were always client projects and priorities to juggle, so sometimes there were some times I couldn't just take off.

But mostly, if you're on your own, it's all (mostly) up to you. Sleep in. Work late. Take a four hour lunch break. Loaf your Saturdays away. Two-hour workday? Twelve-hour workday? MYOB! In my business, other than meetings that were fixed by the client, it was my call.

Anyway, not having to worry about formal and informal corporate vacay and hours-put-in policies is another reason why I don't miss working, and a recent article I saw on MSNBC brought this home in spades. 

The article was about how overwork has been pretty much normalized in a lot of workplaces.

This is nothing new. I don't think I ever worked anyplace where the implicit expectation wasn't that a professional workweek meant, at minimum, something north of 40 hours. No place I worked was as cutthroat as management consulting, investment banking, Big Eight Four accountancy, and white shoe law. (Then again, none of us made as much as those Bain consultants and white shoe lawyers.)

Many years ago, a friend of ours who was working at an investment bank in New York - was it Morgan Stanley? we're talking the way back of 1980's here - was visiting us for the weekend. Panic time! He remembered that he had left a document on his desk that should have been in his desk. He called the office, knowing that a colleague would be there on a Saturday, slugging away. He asked his colleague to put the document in a drawer. Her response? Fuck off! If you want it in the drawer, put it there yourself. Our friend high-tailed it back to New York.

So crazy hours are nothing new.

But the expectations thing has gotten worse now that the miracle that is the Internet makes it possible for employees to be "always on," which sadly translates into "always at work." Which means that the pressure to work all the time has increased, and spread to organizations that might once have been exempt from it. 

Be the first in! Be the last out! Even if you're on vacation, check those emails at 3 a.m. and "Reply to All" so that all are aware that you're the do-be (suck-up) who's working all hours! 

Conventional career wisdom practically encourages [this sort of behavior]. The message we’re given is: if you want to stand out at work, you need to extend yourself cheerfully and overdeliver. That way, you don’t leave a speck of doubt in people’s minds that you’re capable, productive, and worthy. Employers know this and often leverage it –and in plenty of cases, they reward employees according to just out-of-reach standards.

Nonsense, the article argues. All this equating "overwork" with "productivity" is making the workplace more toxic than ever. 

It cautions against glorifying those who brag about the late hours they worked.

I know it's been a while, but, while I didn't brag about it, I was often one of those extra-hours folks: arriving early, staying late, dragging in on weekends to finish things about and get a head start on the next week. Even at the time, I recognized that at times I was just being a sucker, letting myself get dragooned into extra work because it weirdly seemed flattering to be asked. And even at the time, I recognized that one of the reasons I dragged in so many Saturdays was because by mid-afternoon on Friday, I'd already decided to come in the next day. And so I spent those Friday afternoons lolling around, gossiping and shop talking with friends rather than being efficient and getting the g.d. work done. 

And I will note that, in my experience, the folks who were most efficient were working mothers. No fat in their work days! They were at work to work, and when they had to leave, they had to leave. There was a kiddo to pick up at daycare or the after school program. So they worked through lunch, chewing on their sandwich while sitting at the computer, rather than chewing the fat with others.

Then there's vacation time. 

A whopping 55 percent of U.S. workers didn’t use all of their paid time off in 2022, and about a third of employees don’t even have the option to take paid vacations. In addition to normalizing 50+ hour workweeks, most working people view vacations as a luxury they can’t afford – whether that means there isn’t any room in their financial budget or they simply don’t think they can spend a week or two away from work without (direct or indirect) consequences.

According to New View Strategies, 32 percent of Americans feel guilty for taking time off work, and the number increases to 41 percent when going away for seven days or longer. Over a third of workers also regret going on vacation because they need to double up their workload before they leave or when they return.

This is just awful. Awful as in awful. 

People need to take vacations. They need to get away. To spend time with family. To take care of "house stuff." Or to just hole-up and chill with a few good books. 

I still need vacations, and I don't work.

And when I did work in corporate, I never neglected to take the time coming to me. And I mostly tried to take a vacation that, if not two full weeks long, at least had enough + in the 7 days + so I'd have days when I could be thinking "next week at this time I'll still be on vacation."

Occasionally, there had been a bit of pressure to get me to put off a vacation.

One time in particular, the company I was working for had a major product launch coming up, and I played a major and visible role in the launch, which was scheduled for a month or so after my return from vacation. A few weeks before that vacation, the company's CMO announced at a team meeting that he was cancelling all vacations until after the launch. 

I told him that I wasn't able (subtext: or willing) to cancel my plans, which had a lot of moving parts and involved a house on Christmas Cove in Maine with me, my husband, our friend Michele, and my sister Trish and her family. Mr. CMO gave me a withering look and said, "I'm even postponing my honeymoon for this launch." 

Mr. CMO and I got along (mostly) pretty well, so I said, "Well, it's a good thing you're not the blushing 21 year old groom, isn't it." (I think this was wife number three, and they were already living together, so what was the big deal?) Mr. CMO did laugh. Kinda-sorta. 

Meanwhile, one of my colleagues jumped right in to announce that he would cancel his vacation, and that we should all support Mr. CMO, blah-di-blah-di-blah. 

This was twenty years before we had ever heard of Logan Roy or Succession, but what popped into my head - once I got through the obligatory flash thought of "what a suck up" - at that moment was Logan Roy's classic response to almost every situation: "Oh, fuck off."

I didn't say anything of the kind.

What I was also thinking was, twenty, thirty, forty years from now, the people I love (dead or alive) will still be part of my life, while the folks on the big product launch team would be vague memories. 

Anyway, I did agree to make one check in call in the morning of Vacation Day One, when we had a regular weekly call scheduled. Fortunately, the cell coverage was so crappy in Christmas Cove that it wasn't worth staying on the phone for more than a couple of minutes. 

Of course I wasn't needed. The people on my team were able to take care of things while I was away, and the big launch went off without a hitch. (Other than the fact that the entire product and its launch was one big ridiculous hitch. A post for another day...)

If we stand a chance to reduce toxicity and overwork at work, it starts with seeing employees not as workers who *happen* to have personal lives on nights and weekends - but as full, multidimensional human beings. People who want to use their gifts, operate according to their values, and get paid fairly in the process.

Amen to this! 

All this pressure to overperform in terms of "time served" is yet another reason I don't miss working. 

All hail, Martha Stewart!

I can't recall exactly when Martha Stewart came on the scene. Forty-ish years ago, I'm guessing.

I remember seeing her on TV, and pretty much every time she opened her mouth I thought 'how ridiculous.'

There was the hand-made wrapping paper, made using potato prints. The factory-perfect Christmas cookies that would have taken a mere mortal a kabillion hours to make, and which wouldn't have come out anywhere near as fabulous as Martha's. (Is that a reindeer or an elf???)

Then there was the revelation that she changed the duvet covers, curtains, and pictures on the wall in all the rooms of her home every season. 

What?

Even if I wanted to do something more theme-y for Christmas than throw the red and green plaid table cloth on the dining room table, and plunking the picture taken the moment before I stopped believing in Santa on the mantel, where would I store everything? And wouldn't it cost a lot? An awful lot?

For everyone who found Martha inspirational, there's got to be another who finds the thought of trying to keep anywhere near to up with her completely depressing. Probably the same person.

Secretly, of course, as much as I liked to make fun of Martha Stewart, I actually liked a lot of her design. Middle brow. Middle age. Whatever. 

I like her stuff, and have a bit of it around. 

The platter and bowl with the lemons and the blue sponge print trim? Just the thing for hosting Easter dinner. 

It may not be a full house beautiful overhaul for the holiday, but it's something. Something functional, something pretty, something affordable (great sale at Macy's). 

Then Martha Stewart went to prison for insider trading.

She indeed done wrong. But her wrongdoing was pretty Mickey Mouse by swindler standards. I pretty much felt that if she hadn't been Martha Stewart, she wouldn't have spent a day in the hoosegow, let alone five months.

Anyway, I believe in second chances, so I was happy to see that she rebuilt her reputation and empire once she did her time.

And now she's a cover girl, gracing one version of the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. 

At the age of 81. 

I can't quite figure out what that swimsuit is. But I love the orange schmatta that's so artfully draped. 

Sure, the picture may have been airbrushed and filtered. But those 81 year old boobs are doing what 81 year old boobs tend to do. They're sagging. 

“I am so thrilled to be on the cover,” Stewart wrote on Instagram, sharing a photo of herself clad in a white, deeply plunging one-piece suit.

She added: “My motto has always been: ‘when you’re through changing, you’re through,’ so I thought, why not be up for this opportunity of a lifetime? I hope this cover inspires you to challenge yourself to try new things, no matter what stage of life you are in.” (Source: WaPo)

The swimsuit cover is getting mixed reactions. 

I'm on team "You go, girl old lady!" And I'm in good company. Jennifer Garner commented "You are amazing."

But there's plenty of oppo commentary out there.

Martha isn't showing us honest aging. She's privileged, pampered, and has obviously had "work" done. (For the record, Stewart says that she hasn't had plastic surgery, but does admit to having work done by a dermatologist: plumping, botoxing...) The naysayers cry that the cover-girling of Martha is ageist and classist, that she's always been blonde and beautiful, and that putting her on the cover just plays to ageist, classist, racist, sexist, ableist definitions of beauty.

Yawn...Maybe standards of beauty are arbitrary, but I'm fine with having beautiful people do the modeling. 

However airbrushed and photoshopped, filtered and plumped, Martha Stewart may have been for her cover, she credits good genes for her looking so good. And she prepared for that shot:

Stewart told the “Today” show...that she had eliminated bread and pasta from her diet and went to Pilates classes every other day in preparation for her January photo shoot. It took place in the Dominican Republic, where she tried on nine different bathing suits and was snapped by photographer Ruven Afanador.

“To be on the cover at my age was a challenge, and I think I met the challenge,” she said on “Today,” adding: “It was kind of fun.”

“To me, it is a testament to good living, and I think that all of us should think about good living. … The whole aging thing is so boring.”

Well, yeah, "the whole aging thing" is kind of boring. But it's inevitable - at least if you'd prefer living to dying. 

But, what the hell. 

She's a woman of a certain age+, who grew up middle-class in New Jersey and, at a time when few women did so, built an incredible career for herself. And if the capstone of that career ends up being a cover on the SI swimsuit edition, well, good for her.  

All hail, Martha Stewart. 

Don't let the door hit ya

Who among us hasn't, at one point or another, had at least a flash fantasy of upping stakes and becoming an ex-pat. 

I mean, if things get bad enough here - and who's to say they won't - I can imagine throwing myself on the mercy of the Irish government and seeking asylum. 

This fear factor works both ways, of course. 

My idea of nirvana - separation of church and state, reproductive rights for women, common sense gun laws, unbanned books, respect for science, letting schoolkids learn why it was a big deal that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community - might well be someone else's hellscape. 

And while I might want to immigrate to the relatively progressive Erin Isle (Ireland! Progressive! Imagine that!), or to relatively progressive Germany (Germany! Progressive! Imagine that!), where I can also make an ancestral claim (which would likely not mean anything, given that I don't speak German), someone on the other side of the political spectrum might want to land in Orban's Hungary, or Erdogan's Turkey. Or even Putin's Russia.

Who'd want to go to Russia? 

No free press. Regular defenestration of political "enemies." A poor, sanctioned economy. Insane war with Ukraine. Twenty-percent of the population lacks indoor plumbing. Worse weather than New England.

While Russia may not seem all that inviting a place, I guess it's all a matter of perspective, and Russia may be preparing the way for some disgruntled North Americans.

Plans are underway in Russia to build a settlement for conservative American and Canadian immigrants seeking to leave the West “for ideological reasons,” at least according to a Moscow-based immigration lawyer.

Timur Beslangurov, a partner in the law firm VISTA Immigration, claimed that construction would begin next year on a village in the Moscow region for about 200 families from North America, financed by the immigrants themselves.

“The reason is propaganda of radical values: Today they have 70 genders, and who knows what will come next,” he said in comments at a legal forum in St Petersburg, which were reported by Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency Thursday. No evidence has been provided publicly for the claims, and it’s not 100 percent clear what Beslangurov’s role in the reported project is. (Source: Vice)

First off, I find it amazing that Russia has immigration lawyers. 

But I suppose there are worse places to live, direly impoverished, violent, war torn countries, like Yemen and Sudan. Or Haiti and Venezuela, sources of so many of the refugees knocking a our door. 

It's just that I don't imagine there are a ton of Americans or Canadians who'd be happy in Russia. 

Sure, there's Edward Snowden, but other than that... Aren't so many of the best and brightest Russia has to offer trying to get to the West? But I suppose if you're all caught up in the culture wars, and truly worried about the possibility of 70 genders, Russia might look like a good deal.

But how reliable is this Timur Beslangurov? Sounds like he might be cooking up this scheme - to be financed by the immigrants themselves who, presumably, would at least be able to afford indoor plumbing - so that he can make a few bucks. (As in: "it’s not 100 percent clear what Beslangurov’s role in the reported project is." Hmmmmm. This sounds pretty darned American to me.) 

Vice News tried to get Beslangurov to pony up some of the hundreds of potential immigrants he claims are other there, but he brushed them off. The time to reveal these would-be Russians is not quite ripe. 

But it's certainly no secret that the Russians are pro-right wing, stirring up crap in Western democracies by promoting misinformation. 

They certainly tried to help get Trump elected, and they go all out promoting their devotion to Christian European identity - the Russian version of white nationalism. 

And the Russians love, love, love them some Tucker Carlson. Perhaps Tucker could be the pioneer immigrant, the vanguard of the waves of prospective Americans who're mad as hell and who aren't going to take it anymore. 

Sure, I piss and moan, but I don't imagine that I'll be fleeing the US anytime soon. Warts and all, it's my country and I don't want to give "them" the satisfaction of driving me out. Not yet, anyway.

And I suspect that most of the disgruntled folks eying Russia feel the same way.

But if they do decide to leave, well, don't let the door hit ya on the way out. And please do take Tucker Carlson with you. 

Nothing succeeds like "Succession"

Like a lot of folks out there in TV land, on Sunday evening, I was glued to the final episode of Succession, a brilliant series about an enormously wealthy family all jockeying to take the reins of their mega right-wing media empire from the hands of the empire's founder, leader and paterfamilias. 

I haven't enjoyed any series as much since The Sopranos faded to black in 2007.

If you know anything about Succession, it's likely that Logan Roy - founder, leader, paterfamilias - is brilliant, cruel, and ruthless. And that Logan Roy's offspring - Connor, Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan - are mostly incompetent, cruel, and ruthless. And generally, although they all talk a good game, clueless.

Although there are occasional - make that rare - glimmers of decency, empathy, and integrity, pretty much all of the main characters are god-awful: immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral. You have to go down a few tiers to find a character who's even vaguely sympathetic or likable. (This is so unlike The Sopranos, where most of the characters were immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral, but somehow sympathetic and likable.)

For the final season, the creators took Logan Roy out early - he died of a stroke, on his private (of course) jet while heading to do the big deal. Thus the season was given over to the siblings (minus Connor, who's cluelessly focused on his weird non-starter of a political career) conniving near and far to seize control of waystar/ROYCO, the family biz.

Let the schemers scheme; let the games begin.

We knew all along that Kendall, who wanted it so badly it was palpable, wouldn't succeed, yeah? 

And it really wasn't all that much of a surprise that in the end Shiv betrayed Kendall, and threw in with her husband Tom who, like his wife and in-laws, is thoroughly immoral, amoral, unmoral, anti-moral, incompetent, cruel, and ruthless - although, because Tom wasn't raised by wolves and has more of a sense of what work means, and has an occasional glimmer of competence, he's marginally (slimly marginally) less all of the above than the Roy sibs. (Not that I'm any good at predicting this stuff, but my sister Trish and I had figured Tom for the win.)

All in all, I found Succession brilliantly written and acted. The locations were fabulous. (Who doesn't want to spend time on a mega yacht off the coast of Croatia, even if it's only vicariously?) And in its portrayal of such dreadful 0.0001 percenters, Succession was often downright funny. 

I enjoyed watching this series, but I can't say I'll miss it - or any of the characters. Just such awful-awfuls. Meanwhile, Tony Soprano, and Carm, and Meadow, and Sal, and Ginny Sac, and Janice. Big Pussy, Little Pussy, Olivia, Uncle Junior. Dr. Melfi. Christopher and Ade. Them I still miss.

On a more positive note, Trish and I had also figured that they weren't going to leave us thinking that Mencken, the fascist candidate for president that waystar/ROYCO was trying to tilt the scales for was going to win. Looks like, once they count the mail-in ballots, Jiminez will snag Wisconsin and will be the next president. Phew.

My bottom line: nothing succeeds like Succession. Unless it's The Sopranos.

Bad-a-bing!

Memorial Day: Broken Record Time

Here's a total cut and paste of last year's Memorial Day post. Not that I've run out of things to say - what? me? - but, when it comes to holidays, it's kinda/sorta plus ça change.

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.  

Too Bad, TB12, Too Bad

While acknowledging that Tom Brady is without a doubt the GOAT - Greatest of All Time - when it comes to quarterbacks, I am not a fan. I didn't particularly like him when he was doing great, glorious, and GOAT-y things for the local football franchise. And I sure as hell didn't like him once he took his ball and jockstrap and decamped to Tampa Bay.

What's not to like? Just that I found him banal and boring, which admittedly may have had plenty to do with his being guarded about revealing the real person inside when living in the eye of the celebrity hurricane, with millions of strangers wanting a piece of him. And then there was the weird: his personal fatwa on consuming white foods and nightshades.

Despite not particularly liking the guy, I nonetheless have mixed feelings abut the closing of the local outpost of TB12 "the star quarterback's sleek sports therapy facility."

The 699 Boylston St. location opened in August 2019, billing itself as a “performance and recovery center” complete with merchandise, training facilities and a “turf area,” and a smoothie bar...

“Everything that we do at TB12 is inspired by Tom and how he lives his life,” John Burns, the former chief executive of TB12, said in a 2019 interview with the Globe, “and how he prepares and gets himself ready to perform every day in football, but then, I think, also importantly, how he focuses on his recovery, so he can get back and do it again the next day.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Rather than gloat about the failure of the Back Bay TB12 and/or feel bad for the folks who were employed there who have lost their jobs, I thought I'd take a look at some of the business issues that may or may not have contributed to this outfit folding.

Location, location, location: If I were going to open a facility like this, i.e., one tied to a local sports hero that, presumably, catered to his fans, i.e., Brady Bros, I don't know that I'd have set up shop in Back Bay. I'm sure they did location analysis, and the area does have other successfulsports-related stores - largely those dedicated to runners, given the Back Bay's association with the Boston Marathon. (Boylston Street has a looser tie to the Patriots: the duck boat parades celebrating each Super Bowl win did got down Boylston.) And yet, one would think that there might have been a more natural audience in the Financial District. Not that there aren't a lot of young, male employees in Back Bay. There's insurance, consulting, and financial services aplenty. But I'm guessing that there are more of them in the Financial District.

It also may have made more sense to locate somewhere where there's parking. Just saying.

Covid, covid, covid: The timing couldn't have been worse. TB12 opened their doors in August 2019. Six months later, covid shut the city down. Whether the TB12 audience members were working in the Back Bay or the Financial District mattered not. For over a year, there was nobody working there. They were all working from home.

Back Bay is one of my walking paths and, believe me, during the height of covid, I could walk down Boylston Street, passing by TB12, and not see a living soul out and about anywhere.

So unfortunate timing.

(I will also add that, pre- and post-covid, I rarely saw anyone in TB12, and I walk by there once or twice a week, nosy enough to peek in.)

Don't let the door hit ya...Sure, there was covid, which ended up drop kicking many local businesses. But covid also coincided with Tom Brady's departure from the local scene. Many fans, grateful for Brady's greatness, and all those Super Bowls, continued to root for him. Others haven't been so forgiving, carrying on like jilted lovers.

So even if covid hadn't struck - and that's very big IF - the colossal Brady lovefest was dented big time once he left town. Did half the potential audience for TB12 turn on him when he turned on "us?" Could be.

The standalone business model: I noticed that, with the exception of flagship locations in Tampa and Foxboro, MA (home of the New England Patriots), I noted that all the TB12 locations are "partnerships." Which sounds like you're co-locating in other facilities and, thus, presumably, have lower costs. 

Anyway, the TB12 store in Boston is no longer. Too bad, TB12, too bad. It'll be interesting to see whether the company survives. 

"Ah, look at all the lonely people"

Caryn Marjorie is an influencer, with millions of followers across her social platforms. She's only 23, and has been pulling in about $1M a year. But she figured that, given the primarily male audience she influences, she was leaving money on the table. 

So she decided to take advantage of AI technology and turn her persona in CarynAI

...a voice-based chatbot that bills itself as a virtual girlfriend, with a voice and personality close enough to that of human Marjorie that people are willing to pay $1 per minute for a relationship with the bot. (Source: Yahoo (originally from Fortune)

To create this "virtual girlfriend," AI technology at Forever Voices ingested thousands of hours of the "real" Caryn Marjorie, culled from her old YouTube videos. 

In the first week of a paid beta, CarynAI brought in over $70K in revenue. They anticipate that CarynAI could be worth about $5M per month, spending:

...anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours every day in individual conversations, discussing plans for the future, sharing intimate feelings and even engaging in sexually charged chats.

The real Caryn sees something more than dollar signs. 

...she believes the company has the potential to “cure loneliness.”

Up until now, Forever Voices as produced chatbot versions of celebs like Steve Jobs, Taylor Swift, and Donald Trump.

Unlike those bots, which are in some ways high-tech parlor tricks, CarynAI goes a step further by promising to create a real emotional bond with users, bringing to mind the 2013 movie Her and raising all sorts of ethical questions.

Ya think?

How healthy is it to have men developing relationships with a call girl - or is it a call bot? - rather than developing relationships with a real, live woman. The sort of relationships in which there's always the possibility that there'll be real, live sex, rather than jerking off while a call bot talks dirty to you - you and thousands of other guys, because AI-bots can wildly scale. 

At least in the good old phone sex days, you were talking to a human being. (Or so I gather. Phone sex is beyond my experiential sphere.)

I find the entire thing incredibly sad. Right down to the founding story of Forever Voices.

CEO and Founder John Meyer feels that his tech is important for young people who are, like himself (Asperger's, I take it) neuro-atypical, and who may have a hard time making connections. Some believe it may actually help users become more socially adept, able to transfer the skills they're building conversing with a bot to real life. 

Meyer created his first AI bot so that he could replicate his father, who committed suicide in 2017. 

“It’s this magical experience,” he says, speaking to the AI simulation of his father. “And it’s incredible to apply to other forms.”

Trust me when I say that I still miss my father, who died in 1971. If there's an afterlife, I'll be delighted to catch up with him. But I can't imagine how creepy, depressing, and weird it would be to have a convo with his AI doppelganger. Instead, I'll just keep settling for sharing "Dad memories" with my sibs.

As for those who get addicted to hanging with Caryn AI

...Meyer says that at two hours per day of use, they “might” start “in very subtle ways” training the AI to “slow down a little bit.”

Operative word here: "might." 

When there's big bucks at stake... 

In addition to the romantic/sexual bots out there, some developers are creating chat therapists. Sort of.

DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman recently unveiled an A.I. chatbot called Pi that’s designed to listen to the daily stresses in people’s lives and offer a “supportive line”—though it makes clear to users that it is not meant to be a substitute for a real life therapist. 

Oh, not at all... 

There's a lot of cautionary talk emerging about putting the brakes on chat AI until the ethical issues are better thought through. But methinks the genie is pretty much out of the bottle.

Scary. Scary and sad.

So I'll leave you with a bit of the Beatles, Eleanor Rigby from way back in 1966, when all we needed to worry about was real relationships, not artificial ones. 

All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)

Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people (Ah, look at all the lonely people)
Where do they all belong?

Another reason I'm just as happy to be from then, not now... 

Killing your husband so you'll have something to write about? Bold move, that.

In March 2022, Kouri Richins suddenly lost her husband, the father of her three boys. 

She channeled her grief into writing a book for those little guys. Are You With Me is blurbed thus on Google books:

Wherever you go, whoever you become, their love remains with you.

A heartwarming and reassuring book that gently guides children through the difficult experience of losing a loved one. Written by a loving mother who personally

faced this challenge, this book is designed to offer comfort and solace to young minds in a way that is both accessible and engaging.

With vivid and colorful illustrations, "Are You With Me" follows the story of a child who has lost their father, but who is reminded that his presence still exists all around them, just like an angel watching over them. Whether it's playing at the park or simply enjoying a quiet moment at home, the child is comforted by the knowledge that their father is always by their side.

As a book that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit, "Are You With Me" is a must-read for any child who has experienced the pain of loss, and for parents who want to provide their children with the emotional support they need to heal and grow.

A story of hope, healing, and the unbreakable bond between parent and child... (Source: Google Books)

Heartwarming...reassuring..."written by a loving mother who personally faced this challenge..."

The book was published on the first anniversary of Eric Richins' death. Kouri Richins capped the book's rollout with an appearance on a Utah news segment. The anchors congratulated her "for being an amazing mother."

But that was then, and this news is now. Kouri Richins has been arrested, charged with killing her husband with fentanyl.

Wow! They say to write what you know, and Kouri Richins sure knew what it was like to explain their father's death to her children. (Kind of like writers who go to war so that they'll have something to write about.) But killing your husband so you'll have something to write about? Bold move, that.

From the get go, Eric Richins' family suspected that his death wasn't quite the weird accident/bad luck/one-drink-and-a-gummy/maybe-he-was-hooked-on-painkillers passing the Kouri Richins claimed. 

...Eric’s family members told investigators shortly after his death they suspected Kouri killed him. According to warrants, “he warned them that if anything happened to him, she was to blame.” (Source: KPCW)

One of Eric's sisters alleges that on a trip to Greece a couple of years back, he believed his wife had tried to poison him. 

The suspicions of your sister-in-law wouldn't actually make for much of a case, but there's plenty more, including Kouri's having fiddled around with her husband's insurance policy. (Seriously, how dumb are people that they don't realize that this information would come out. Cherchez l'insurance policy is pretty automatic, no?)

Then there's some suspicion that, a month before his death - on Valentine's Day 2022, of all sweet and sentimental things - Eric nearly died from an allergic reaction after a romantic dinner.

Court filings say Kouri had purchased $900 of fentanyl pills from an acquaintance a few days before their dinner. Two weeks later, she asked for $900 more, and shortly after that, Eric had died of an overdose.

Eric definitely smelled a rat: 

Before his death, Eric changed the beneficiary of his will and his power of attorney, replacing Kouri with his sister.

His sisters claim that Eric "believed Kouri might 'kill him for the money.'" It's alleged in the warrant that Eric was planning on filing for divorce. Etc. 

Anyway, the bereft (merry?) widow decided to write about 'grieving for kids.' In her TV appearance touting her book:

...she disclosed plans to publish sequels. The next title in the works was “Mom, how far away is heaven?” as well as a book for young girls struggling with grief and husbands who lost their wives.

Maybe that sequel should be "Mom, how far away is prison?"