Oh, the places I've been. (Nothing too exciting, but still...)

I'll be spending this weekend in Washington, DC, visiting a friend who re-lo'd from Boston to be closer to her daughter and grandkids. 

After not much happening during covid, this has been a year when I put my traveling shoes back on.

Nothing too adventurous. I don't do too adventurous.

My travel has been extensive. To some extent. And that extent is the USA and Europe. I've hit almost all the states. If I were bucket listing, I'd say I need to tack on Alaska, North Dakota, Kentucky, and Tennessee. But who's bucket listing? Not eye said the fly(er). 

Elsewhere in North America, I've been a bit to Canada (Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, New Brunswick for Campobello). Less of a bit to Mexico: a walk-in trip to Tijuana. And Bermuda. I've been to Bermuda.

In Europe, I've been to lots of countries - England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Spain, Italy, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, The Netherlands, Germany (East and West), Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Lichtenstein, Austria, Switzerland, Yugoslavia (when it was Yugoslavia; I'm not 100% sure what countries-to-be I was in, other than Croatia and Macedonia; but hitching from Croatia to Macedonia, I'd have to have gone through a few other places), Czechoslovakia (when it was Czechoslovakia), Hungary, Poland, Greece, and Turkey. 

Some of these are, to date, one shots (c.f., Yugoslavia, the Scandinavian countries, Spain, Turkey, Greece and a few others). Others I've been to twice (Czechoslovakia, Scotland, The Netherlands). Still others I've visited multiple times, where multiple is >2 but < lots. These are France, Italy, Germany, England. And one country I've been to lots would be Ireland, where - top of head - I've been between 15 and 20 times, most recently this past May.

This latest trip was just to Dublin. Not my favorite city on the face of the earth, or even on the face of Ireland - that would be Galway - but I had my reason. (I.e., my niece Molly was in school there.) While there, I did something I'd never done before, and that was visit Glasnevin Cemetery, where many of Ireland's Greats are buried: Daniel O'Connell, Maude Gonne, Michael Collins, Kevin Barry, Countess Markievicz, and Brendan Behan, among others. (Sorry, I can't bring meself to mention Eamon deValera.) Among the others resting in piece there is one Maureen Rogers, whose grave we happened upon while strolling around. 

Where else did I get to this year?

Tucson, where I've been a handful of times - my sister Kath and my BIL Rick have a house there - but this was the first time I spotted a rattlesnake. Fortunately, it was dead. I also saw a live Gila Monster. Fortunately, they move pretty slowly. 

Long Island, lamentably, to visit a dying friend and, a couple of months later, for her memorial gathering. 

Chicago, with my sister Trish and my nieces Molly and Caroline, where we got to catch up over lunch with a couple of cousins, and I got in a nice long visit with my cousin Ellen. (I love Chicago, and if it weren't so flat...)

Ocean Park, Washington, where my brother Tom and my SIL Betsey live. The Pacific Northwest is so very, very beautiful. And wild. Although T & B have had bears looking for food in their cars, I didn't see any bear on this trip. (I have in the past.) But there were plenty of deer wandering around, and some marauding racoons. And a bat got in the house. (Somehow I slept through this incident.)

We stopped by Cape Disappointment, which wasn't a disappointment at all. 

And I got to meet my adorbs doggo niece, Grace O'Malley, who's just a year old and still very much a pupper.

A few weeks ago, I was in NYC for a few days with Trish and Molly, a trip built around a Noah Kahan concert. For all the times I've been in NYC - over 50+ years, it's got to be at least 100 - I've never been to a concert there. Even during the year I spent in grad school there in the early 70's, I don't remember any music. I've been to plenty of movies in NYC, a number of plays (off and on Broadway), and even a baseball game at old Yankee Stadium. But nary a concert. 

Mostly we did serious meandering. 

When it comes to serious meandering, there is no place like New York City. 

From the first time I set toe in there - on a Trailways Bus from Worcester, Massachusetts in April 1967 - I fell in love. I still get a rush whenever I come into Manhattan over the 59th Street Bridge. (Feeling groovy, as it were.)

I miss New York.

My country-boy husband loved The City, where he had lived for years before moving to Boston for grad school. We went all the time, and our last trip - shortly before Jim began home hospice - was to Manhattan. 

There is nothing like walking around New York City. Nothing.

Noah Kahan was great, by the way.

I'm happy to be doing some traveling, happy to know I still have it in me. 

I'd like to get to Portugal. Iceland's a maybe, as is Finland. And those missing states. 

I also want to see Pittsburgh for some reason. 

I would like to see Japan. And New Zealand. And Vietnam. But the thought of long flights gives me the ughs. 

I have no interest in going to anyplace that's hot (other than Vietnam, where I'd suck it up) which pretty much eliminates Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East. 

South America holds little appeal. 

I'm not the beach type, so the Caribbean is largley meh to me. 

Cuba does hold plenty of appeal. Maybe someday. 

There is absolutely travel ahead of me. 

That said, there's no place like home, even though when I got in from Portland, Oregon a few weeks back - after a long day's travel that began at 6 a.m. in Ocean Park, Washington, and ended in Boston, Massachusetts at 9:30 p.m., for 12.5 hours on the road - I found that there had been a minor backup in my shower. So there I was with my tile scrub and bleach, cleaning up when all I wanted to do was hop into the shower, followed by a hop into bed with my book.

Next trip? Who knows where? Who knows when?

But now that those traveling shoes have been dusted off...

Would you get on a flight with this pilot?

By airport standards, Boston's Logan is a golden oldie.

Older than Midway, older than LaGuardia, Logan is 100 years old. And while it has expanded and modernized over the years, it's still urban and it's still constrained by the neighborhoods and the ocean that's all around it. One of Logan's "features" is runways that crisscross each other, something that more new-fangled airports don't tend to have. Which is a good thing for them and the passengers who fly in and out, because those crisscrossing runways provide the opportunity for near misses, where a plane doing a criss nearly comes into up close and personal contact with a plane doing a cross.

Fortunately, "serious close calls at Logan are extremely rare:" 

But less serious runway incursions, where planes have more time to avoid each other, are on the rise at Boston’s airport, the FAA data shows. That’s in part because Logan’s crisscrossing runways and taxiways can create a congested environment where such incidents are more likely to occur, aviation experts say. (Source: Boston Globe)

But "serious close calls" do happen, and one of them happened last February when a JetBlue flight from Nashville, trying to land, narrowly avoided running into/running over a private jet from Florida-based Hop-a-Jet that was taking off - taking off, even though it hadn't been cleared by air traffic to do so.

“The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this incident to be: The Hop-a-Jet flight crew taking off without a takeoff clearance which resulted in a conflict with a JetBlue flight thathad been cleared to land on an intersecting runway,” the final report concluded. (Source: Boston Globe)

Thankfully, the JetBlue pilot was a real pro who managed to pull a smaller scale Sully Sullenberger and avoid the Hop-a-Jet by performing "a climb-out maneuver," hopping over the private jet in its path. (An aside: Hop-a-Jet was founded by a World War II Navy pilot named Harvey Hop who pioneered the private jet biz. Is there a more apt name for the founder of a private jet company than Harvey Hop???)

The crew wasn't even aware of the near miss until they landed in Fort Lauderdale. Then and there they were informed that "they had taken off without authorization."

Logan air traffic had told the Hop-a-Jet to get in line and wait their turn.

The LearJet’s flight crew read back the controller’s instructions, “however, they began the takeoff-roll instead,” the report said.

Oops. 

The Hop-a-Jet pilot "told investigators that 'he probably responded to the clearance, but in his mind, they were cleared for takeoff.'"

The captain also told the board, “I cannot understand what happened to me during the clearance, the only thing that comes to my mind is that the cold temperature in Boston affected me, I was not feeling completely well and had a stuffed nose. My apologies.”

"In his mind" he had the okay to take off? "In my mind" I'm a lot of things, but I haven't yet been given permission to, say, run a red light. 

Not to mention that it was cold in Boston in February, and the pilot was a tad bit under our often terrible weather? He "had a stuffed nose????"

Yikes! What kind of an excuse is that?

Stuffed nose? Squirt some saline solution or Afrin, pal. 

The NTSB report found that Hop-a-Jet was at fault, but didn't recommend any disciplinary action.

Ignoring air traffic control and just taking right off, and there's no nothing? No harm, no fault? Huh? Do you have to actually have to cause an accident to get your knuckles wrapped.

I have no idea if this guy is still flying, or whether, at 63, he took a bit of an early retirement. Maybe he's still out on sick leave, what with that stuffed nose and all.

O Captain, my Captain!

Would you get on a Hop-a-Jet flight with this guy?

Give food to the hungry

When I see people on the streets looking for money, I'll usually give them a couple of bucks and ask them if they know about St. Francis House, a shelter for those experiencing poverty and homelessness where I've been involved as a board member (until last year) and a volunteer for 25+ years. If the person I'm speaking with is a woman, I'll usually ask them if they know about the Women's Lunch Place. 

St. Francis House is open to anyone 18 and over, but the population we serve is largely male. When I've looked at the numbers in terms of people who come through the doors at some point or another during the year, the M-F ratio isn't all that skewed. But on a day to day basis - and I'm there on plenty of those day-to-days - the men way outnumber the women. I don't keep a formal count, but off the top of my head, I'd say that it might be as high as 8-1, maybe even 10-1. 

In our 56 units of SRO (Single Room Occupancy) housing, I think there's only one woman living in the building. One of my volunteer gigs is signing people up for showers, and the ratio there definitely runs 10-1 most days. That may be changing a bit, as we're seeing an influx of Haitian refugees, and many of them are young (really young) women. But, based on my pretty unscientific eyeball observations, we work with a ton more men than women.

We do have a women's center, a room where women can get away from the fray and chill, but, as the women I talk with on the streets often tell me, the crowd at SFH can be rough. Not that SFH isn't safe. I've been kicking around there for years and, while shit sometimes happens, I've never felt unsafe. 

Still, as I said, the crowd can be rough. 

Which is why I always make sure that women I see on the streets know about the Women's Lunch Place. 

WLP is a lot more than a lunch place. Like SFH, it provides many different services: breakfast and lunch, counseling, housing support, healthcare...In general, it's a place where women can feel comfortable and at home. 

I've been in there a couple of times over the years, mostly to drop off something or other. But I didn't really know much about them, other than that they have a sterling reputation. 

So I was delighted to see a recent article in the Boston Globe on Inna Khitrik, the WLP chef. 

My St. Francis volunteering regularly takes me into the kitchen, so I do know that it's a huge task to turn out hundreds of meals every day - at SFH, that's often as many as 700 between breakfast and lunch - and also make and distribute sandwiches a couple of times a day. The chef at SFH, Seth Green, is an absolute genius. The meals are nutritious and pretty darned good. (I've been known to take leftovers home; I've been known to be disappointed when one of my favorites is on the menu and there are no leftovers.) 

Inna Khitrik sounds like an absolute genius as well.

And what a story she has to tell.

Khitrik comes from a family of Russian (Belarus) Jews who fled to Israel. There she married, and when she was in her twenties, she and her family immigrated to Boston, where her husband had family.

Her first job in America was as a checkout clerk in a market owned by fellow Russian immigrants. She always loved to cook, so she began noodling (kugeling?) around with prepping food for the market's deli. This turned into a stint running her own salad bar. When that failed to take off, she worked as a personal chef and went on to run the food programs for a couple of senior living communities. 

Then she and her son Alex:

... opened Inna’s Kitchen in 2011, preparing global Jewish cuisine from scratch. It was a hit throughout Newton and beyond, known for gorgeous salads, soups, and abundant Kosher options. But, after 11 years, she sensed it was time for Alex to take over and for the mother-son pair to revert to a more traditional family dynamic. (Source: Boston Globe)

Khitrik then found her way to WLP, where she gets to stay in the food biz, planning meals for their guests, while also letting her help women in need - a particular concern of hers.  

“I wanted to serve women because it’s hard to be a woman. But it’s even more important serving somebody who is underprivileged, who cannot afford it. We not only have homeless people — we also have people who just cannot afford to live,” she says.

The menus she comes up with sound yummy. And she even bakes desserts. (At SFH, dessert = piece of fruit. On candy-related holidays - Halloween, Christmas, Valentine's Day, Easter - I buy giant bags of candy for the folks who hang out in the Resource Center, where I spend my Monday and Thursday mornings. But other than Thanksgiving and Christmas, when pie is served, SFH is a no-dessert-other-than-fruit zone.)

In grammar school, we had to memorize the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. There was even a little ditty we sang as an aide memoire. 

The chief corporal works of mercy, they number seven
Practice the corporal works of mercy, and go to heaven

First up for the corporal works of mercy: Give food to the hungry.

Whenever I work in the kitchen at St. Francis House, I realize how lucky I am, and how very hungry - and in need - the folks who come through our doors are. Same goes for the Women's Lunch Place. 

Thankfully, there are organizations who meet this need,

I believe the works of mercy are a Catholic thing. Inna Khitrik is Jewish (as is Seth Green). If there's a heaven, then she's going to find her way there (as will Seth - and I can't wait to tell him so). 

Elon Musk: worse, worser, worsest. (And it's nothing new.)

If you like to write about bad business behavior - which, of course, I do - Elon Musk is surely the gift that keeps on giving. Trumpian in his grandiosity and malignity, Musk even looks like a Bond villain. Mr. X would fit. Or, because he is so cartoonish, maybe a Batman villain. 

Sometimes the gifts that Musk gives were born in the way back, gifts that were kicked off in yesteryear and eventually show up as horrors of present as these gifts are unwrapped.

Thus, I give you the Tesla recharge scandaleen.

About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing

to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments. (Source: Reuters)

The "Diversion Team" was tasked with canceling as many appointments that were related to range problems, appointments that were costing Tesla as much as $1K per visit. 

Inside the Nevada team’s office, some employees celebrated canceling service appointments by putting their phones on mute and striking a metal xylophone, triggering applause from coworkers who sometimes stood on desks. The team often closed hundreds of cases a week and staffers were tracked on their average number of diverted appointments per day.

Turns out, the in-person service appointments weren't actually necessary, so Tesla owners weren't being put in any danger by not being able to come in and have their vehicles checked out. Those vehicles were just fine. It was the owners' expectations of how far they could go on a charge that were out of whack. And they were out of whack because they'd been set pretty high. 

Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that would show drivers “rosy” projections for the distance it could travel on a full battery, according to a person familiar with an early design of the software for its in-dash readouts.

When the battery started to drift below 50% of its maximum charge, more accurate numbers for the remaining range were displayed. (To keep the Teslas from coming to a dead stop because of a rapid drop off in the battery's juice, "Teslas were designed with a 'safety buffer,' allowing about 15 miles (24 km) of additional range even after the dash readout showed an empty battery.")

The order to show the rosiest of range estimates came from none other than Elon Musk. 

“Elon wanted to show good range numbers when fully charged,” the person said, adding: “When you buy a car off the lot seeing 350-mile, 400-mile range, it makes you feel good.”

No thought given to that feel good dissipates pretty quickly when you get behind the wheel and find that if it's hotter out, or colder out, or whateverer out, that 350-mile or 400-mile range was going to drop. (It's mostly cold weather that impacts range, but there are other impacts: heat, lead foot driving, AC, headwinds.) And drivers would understandably think there was something wrong with the car when they weren't getting the mileage that was advertised. 

The miles you get per battery charge is like MPG, an important consideration when buying an electric vehicle. But it's more important than MPG because there are a lot more gas stations around for internal combustion vehicles than there are charging stations. And charging takes more time - it can take considerably more time - to fill 'er up. When it comes to EVs, "range anxiety – the fear of running out of power before reaching a charger – has been a primary obstacle to boosting electric-vehicle sales."

Reuters could not determine whether Tesla still uses algorithms that boost in-dash range estimates. But automotive testers and regulators continue to flag the company for exaggerating the distance its vehicles can travel before their batteries run out.

And Tesla has been fined by the South Korean government for advertising range that could plummet to half what's advertised in cold weather. 

Tesla is (supposedly) working to improve the range info on its dashboard and in its marketing communications. Which will just catch them up to the other EV producers, which are more accurate in their range estimates. While many of their estimates were still off, one study showed that Tesla's estimates were double the average "off" of other EV makers. 

Jonathan Elfalan is the "vehicle testing director" for Edmunds.com, a leading automotive site. 

“They've gotten really good at exploiting the rule book and maximizing certain points to work in their favor involving EPA tests,” Elfalan told Reuters. The practice can “misrepresent what their customers will experience with their vehicles.”

The more we learn about Elon Musk, the more it goes from worse, to worse, to worsest. Am I the only one who'd be delighted to hear learn that Elon Musk, tootling along in the latest Tesla model, ran out of juice and ended up stranded on the side of the highway? I might even get out my xylophone and tap out a bit of "Ode to Joy."

Sometimes crime does pay. Someone else's crime, anyway.

Back in the early 1960's, before I lived here, the Boston Strangler murdered nine Boston-area women. His final victim was killed on Charles Street, just around the corner from my home.

In 1975, shortly after I moved to Beacon Hill, the manager of a Baskin-Robbins on Charles Street died while trying to blow up a "real" ice cream store across the street. Because who would want gummy, nasty B-R ice cream when they could get the real deal across the street?

In the late 1980's or early 1990's (Google's got nothin'), the manager of the Mrs. Fields Cookie store on Charles Street - I believe this is the very address where the Baskin-Robbins once was - was killed during a robbery. The eerie thing is that my husband, my sister, and I had walked past the store while the body was in there, undiscovered. 

One morning in 2008, I walked out my front door and noticed a couple of government-looking black SUV's outside a building a few doors down. Turns out it was the FBI, searching the place where Christian Gerhartsreiter, a.k.a., Clark Rockefeller, was living when he kidnapped his daughter. (He's now in prison in California, for murder.)

In 2009, the Craigslist Killer (a medical school student) killed a woman in a hotel that's about a 15 minute walk from where I live. The next year, he committed suicide in the jail that's about a 10 minute walk from where I live. 

There may be other crimes associated with my neighborhood, but these are the ones I have top of mind. Overall, it's a pretty safe place to live. (Way more property crime than violent crime.)

Nonetheless, there is a Beacon Hill Crime Tour. It naturally includes the Boston Strangler, but also harkens back in time to John Webster's murder of George Parkman. This crime was quite the sensation because it involved two scions of Beacon Hill Brahmin families who were both professors at Harvard Medical School. 

My interest is piqued, and I may sign up for the tour. It's even free!

You have to pay forty bucks to go on Joe Leeman's true crime tour.

Join Retired Boston Police Detective Joe Leeman on his gritty tour of Boston’s criminal underworld, by way of an old-fashioned Police Ride Along. Detective Leeman points out numerous crime scenes from Boston past, while enjoying the many historical and architectural locations Boston has to offer. In addition, Detective Leeman will explain several cases where he was assigned as the lead detective, he will speak of these investigations in depth, and explain their ultimate dispositions. (Source: Boston Detective Tours)

Leeman, who was inspired by a London Jack the Ripper tour he took years ago:

...describes [his] tour as “60 percent crime, 40 percent history.” He doesn’t want to be “all doom and gloom” even though he acknowledges some customers often lobby for more blood and guts. (Source: Boston Globe)

But seems as if there's plenty of blood (c.f., Whitey Bulger) and guts (c.f., Sacco and Vanzetti) already. Anyway, the ex-cop angle is a good differentiator from the competition. 

And, amazing as it seems, there is competition.

The Boston Crime Tour is a heavy-on-the-Whitey-Bulger walking tour that costs thirty bucks. And the Original Boston Mob Tour that has plenty of Whitey, but gives equal time to the Italian, Jewish, and Irish mobs, for a hefty price of $79.

Seems like crime does pay. Someone else's crime, anyway.

Sorry/Not Sorry. (Burning Man 2023)

Even under the most pleasant of circumstances, it's hard for me to imagine a more hellish experience than attending Burning Man, the counterculture arts and whatever festival held each Labor Day weekend in the Nevada desert.

Not my cup of tea, or whatever it is the bev of choice might be at Burning Man. (I am way too reserved, too introverted, too cynical, too rational, etc. Plus I like my creature comforts way too much. Not to mention that I'm not now, nor have I ever been, someone hoping to expand my consciousness with the assistance of illegal substances.)

The crowd appears to be largely composed of what, back in the day, we would have referred to as "ow-wowers," only instead of just guys with scraggly beards and  "chicks" that my grandmother would have categorized as streelin' in jeans and India print "hippie shirts", there are a lot of 21st century adds: Birkenstocks, fleeces, crazy pants on the guys, diaphanous glam costumes for the women, etc. Still, they do seem to be the sort of folks given to reacting to everything with a hearty (or stoned) "ow wow!", many of them looking to escape their straight buttoned-down existence for a long weekend of star- and navel-gazing.

I am by no means a conservative. And if I'm not a conservative now, I was by no means a conservative in my youth, during the hippie era. With my bellbottoms, long hair, wooden beads, Dr. Scholls, and boho shirt, Sgt. Joe Friday on Dragnet would have made me for a radical, left wing hippie. Mostly what I was was a an anti-Vietnam War protestor who listened to folk music and occasionally smoked a joint. But I was by no stretch of the imagination a candidate for Burning Man.

Mass protest, certainly. Love in, be in? Include me out.

In August 1969, I could have gone to Woodstock.

I was working as a waitress at Big Boy's in Worcester's Webster Square, and a few of the other college-girl waitresses were going.

No thanks. Not my vibe.

Instead, I worked extra shifts to fill in for the Woodstockers.

While I did like the music - when the album was released the following May, I of course bought it - but I would have despised every moment, even if torrential rains hadn't turned it into a mud fest.

So, no Burning Man for me.

That said, I would certainly not have wished dreadful weather on the event. But I can't say that I didn't chuckle just a bit when the news came out that unseasonable weather - lotsa rain - had turned the desert into quicksand, and that all roads in and out were closed, stranding tens of thousands of latter day ow-wowers, who were asked to conserve food and water and shelter in place while waiting for the playa (the patch o' desert where Burning Man is held) to dry out.

The rains having stopped, attendees started to trickle out yesterday, traffic-jamming on the one lane road out of the campground. (Some attendees had made their getaway over the weekend by walking out - with difficulty - through the squelching mud.)

Sounds and looks like an absolute horror show to me, but most attendees remained upbeat, claiming that the adverse conditions had brought out the best of the fest.

Although she had managed to escape early yesterday "when the main road wasn't being guarded," Boston attendees Cindy Bishop:

...said spirits were still high at the festival when they had left. Most people she spoke with said they planned to stay for the ceremonial burns.
The spirit in there,” she said, “was really like, ‘We’re going to take care of each other and make the best of it.’” (Source: AP News)

Rebecca Barger stuck it out:

“Everyone has just adapted, sharing RVs for sleeping, offering food and coffee,” Barger said. “I danced in foot-deep clay for hours to incredible DJs.”

Dancing in foot-deep clay for hours? I don't care how incredible those DJs were. This sounds like yuck. Especially as it has been reported that, given the alkali nature of the ground, once it gets wet, it can lacerate any bare spots it finds on your body. Ouchie!

Meanwhile, I came across an article from Wired that appeared in April of this year. The piece asked a burning, and quite prescient, question: Can Burning Man Pull Out of Its Climate Death Spiral?

After all, Burning Man 2022 had been on trip to the beach. Not that it's supposed to be: 

That this featureless, skin-cracking-dry expanse of white dust isn’t easy living has always been the point of hosting Burning Man there. But last year’s conditions led to a general sense of burnout and malaise, and many of the 80,000 attendees asked the existential question of whether it was still worth it to throw a party in a desert on a warming planet. (Source: Wired)

I guess the decision for 2023 was that it was still worth it, but Wired thinks, what with climate change, "the event might slowly decay."

I'm also guessing that this year's weather debacle might nudge that decay along a bit. But that may just be me. I am so not a candidate to go rough it in the desert with 80,000 ow-wowers.

Labor Day 2023

Hard to believe that it's already Labor Day.

Oh, we still have summer weather on the horizon, and summer ain't over 'til it's over in a few weeks. Still, Labor Day = summer's over.

But Labor Day is, of course, more than the end of summer. It's a day to honor workers - especially worker-workers: the folks who swing the hammers, deliver the goods, deliver the mail, deliver the people, wipe the butts, repair downed phone lines, pick the lettuce, empty the bedpans, fix the engines, pave the roads, wash the windows, clean the floors, bag the groceries. 

Not that those who work at white collar professional jobs aren't workers. 

But when I think of Labor Day, it's mostly the workers who take their shower at the end of the day, rather than at the beginning of he day, who come to mind. 

That and labor unions, for whom Labor Day is a high holiday.

So hats of to the worker workers. And hats off to the unions. (Not to mention congratulations to the UPS drivers, and Teamster president Sean O'Brien - a local boy - for securing a strong contract without having to go out on strike.)

Happy Labor Day!

Cow Parade 2023

I have no idea what cows have to do with Boston. 

If they were going to go with Boston fauna, the cod would have been a better representation of our fair city. After all, it's the statue of the Sacred Cod that's dangled over the chambers of our State House since 1784, not the Sacred Cow. 

When you think Boson, who thinks cows? We're not Vermont. We're not Wisconsin. 

But people don't tend to get warm and fuzzy about fish. Cows, on the other hand are fun and friendly, cuddly - sorry! - even. 

And the painted cow statues pastured all over the city are absolutely beautiful. 

I have by no means seen them all, but the ones I've come across are absolutely gorgeous.

Here's the cows I've seen. So far.

They're for sale, a fundraiser for Dana Farber/the Jimmy Fund. Dana Farber specializes in adult cancer, and the Jimmy Fund, part of Dana Farber, is an organization (long associated with the Boston Red Sox - since the days of Ted Williams) that focuses on pediatric cancer.

A completely wonderful cause. 

Wish I had a place to stable one of them, but even if I did, it would be too hard to pick a favorite. (I do keep going back to the Greek vase cow.) 

If I can't have one, at least I can provide them with a small bit of fodder. So I did. 

I'll miss them when they're no longer around. (And they're only up until Monday...)

I hope they raise a ton of moola!

Ice Ice, Baby!

It's highly unlikely that I'll ever own another car in my life. And there's a non-zero probability that I'll never even get behind the wheel again. The only time I've driven since before covid was taking my sister Trish back home from her colonoscopy. 

It's not as if I don't like to drive. I actually love to get in the car and go. It's just that having a car I don't need is a big PITA - a big costly PITA. Sure, there's non-ownership opportunities to drive, but since no two rent-a or Zip cars are the same, hopping into temporary wheels has such an upfront learning curve - where are the wipers? the lights and the gas tank? does that icon mean open the tank, the trunk, the hood? why can't I adjust these mirrors manually? - that I dread hopping into one. 

None of this prevents me from fantasizing about driving cross-country, replicating the trip my friend Joyce and I made in 1972 in her little green Karmann Ghia. 

But, no.

The truth is, there's scant chance that I'll ever own another car. But if I did, I would have to put my money where my mouth w.r.t. environmental concerns is and get me a hybrid, maybe even an EV, even though I know that having an EV without owning a home where you can plug it in and charge it would be a tremendous PITA.

Since this probably isn't going to happen, I hadn't put a lot of thought into just how tremendous a PITA having a car where you couldn't just roll into a gas station and fill 'er up would be. Which is plenty enough challenging if you live, where I do, in what is something of a gas station desert. When I was a car owner, there were a couple of gas station's in my 'hood. All of them long gone. When I've had to fill up a rent-a or top off a Zipcar tank, I've had to do so near Fenway Park or in Charlestown.

A recent article in The Boston Globe brought the EV challenge home.

It seems that there are too many EVs chasing too few charging stations. 

While 80% of EV owners (like my friend Peter) juice up at home, that leaves 20% of EV owners crawling around looking for a charger. What happens if you can't find one? Does your car just stop dead the minute the battery zeroes out? It's not like the old days when you could glide your car to the side of the road, trudge to the nearest gas station, and trudge back with a gallon or two in your handy-dandy (and suddenly heavy-heavy) bright red gas can.

The scarcity of public charging stations leads to the inevitable: human behavior, which, as we all well know, isn't always all that noble and giving. 

There are intra-EV drivers who violate EV etiquette, leaving their cars connected for hours after they've completely recharged their batteries. And there are those who plunk there for a complete recharge, even when there's a queue of cars who just need a little boost.

It probably should come as no surprise that a significant strain of tension isn’t EV driver vs. EV driver at all. Rather, it pits EV drivers against those driving Internal Combustion Engine cars. It happens when a motorist driving a gas-powered car parks in a spot reserved for EV charging — either because he wants the spot or as an act of rebellion. The acronym is ICE and the act is called ICING. (Source: Boston Globe)

I know up close and personal how god-awful it is to hunt for a parking place. Sometimes, after driving around for half an hour or so, you think you've spotted a space, only to find out that there's a hydrant there, or a loading zone sign. 

If it's after a snowstorm, and you live (and park) in South Boston, you may find that the space you're eying has an old kitchen chair or old toilet occupying it, a sure sign that the person who shoveled it out expects it to be ready for them when they return. The price of ignoring the kitchen chair or old toilet could be slashed tires, a smashed window, a keyed door, a beatdown. Those, of course, don't seem like the sort of deeds an EV driver who finds the charging station occupied by a gas guzzler would resort to, but desperate times/desperate measures.

Boston is in the process of making "it a ticketable offense for a non-EV to be parked in an EV charging space." So there's that. But that won't solve the problem of lack of infrastructure. And that problem is only going to get worse before it gets better. 

The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles to be electric by 2030, and an analysis by PwC, the global accounting firm, found that the charging market needs to grow nearly tenfold to satisfy the needs of the estimated 27 million EVs that will be on the road by then.

A tenfold increase, you say? 

Think I'll stick with Uber and public transpo.

Talk about monofocus

I know next to nothing about them, other than to say that when it comes to nature, butterflies are right up there when it comes to beauty. I don't see butterflies that often - sadly, I'm more likely to come across a moth (after it's taken a nibble out of my favorite wool sweater, of course) - but when I do spot one, I'm always in awe of its fragility and brilliance. 

When I think of (or see) a butterfly, it's likely to be a monarch, big and bold, a brilliant orange. 

And seeing that butterfly always makes my day, even though it's always a random event and nothing I plan (or hunt) for.

If seeing a run-of-the-mill monarch makes my day, imagine what spotting a bog elfin meant to Bryan Pfeiffer. He's been on the hunt for one for 21 years. 

I had never heard of the bog elfin. It's tiny and a rather dull brown, and I'm sure if I'd come across one, I would have thought it was a moth. 

But for Pfeiffer, finding a bog elfin was a mission. 

The bog elfin had never been confirmed in Vermont, but Pfeiffer’s gut told him it was there. So the entomologist logged countless miles through isolated terrain swarming with mosquitos and black flies, armed with binoculars and a butterfly net and a determination his friends and colleagues marveled at. He was 44 when his search began; a heart attack and a knee replacement later, he found himself at age 65, wondering the sort of things people wonder as the years race by. “Every year I felt like my window was closing,” he said. (Source: Boston Globe)

Finding the holy grail after 21 years is personally satisfying for Pfeiffer, but it also means that the state of Vermont is charged with preserving this little guy.

“In our safeguarding little brown butterflies, like protecting speech, we show reverence not only for the popular and charismatic and profitable, but for the obscure and the vulnerable as well,” he wrote. “Vermont is now a better place for having bog elfins — up there in the spruce where they belong, overseeing the orchids and songbirds and blackflies, even aging biologists like me. Protecting little brown butterflies is good for the integrity of nature — as it is for integrity of humans.” 

I can only begin to imagine being so monofocused, having such a quest. Would that I had been as determined to pursue anything with that zeal and determination in my life. (Sigh.) At my age, is it too late to begin a 21 year quest? And what would that quest be? The Great American Novel? The not-so-great-self-published-American novel? (The latter would sure be more achievable, and probably wouldn't take 21 years which I may or may not have. Can I be monofocused for 21 months? I suspect I have at least that much more time.)

Bryan Pfeiffer, out there in the Vermont bogs, fighting off mosquitoes and black flies, armed only with binoculars, camera, and butterfly net, looking for a tiny, obscure little brown butterfly is nothing if not an inspiration. To me, at least.

Onward!

Will capitalism save us? Here's hoping!

Doom and gloomer that I am, I worry incessantly about a) the prospect of fascism taking hold in the US; and b) climate change making large swaths of earth unlivable. 

Capitalism isn't all that likely to do much about the former. After all, if you look at, say, fascist Nazi Germany, businesses did pretty well - I.G. Farben, come on down! - until the not quite so gemütlichkeit aspects of fascism, like militarism and nationalism, came to the fore, resulting in the nearly total destruction of Germany. 

But since we can't seem to get out of our way politically  to address the climate crisis (although the Biden administration is gamely trying), it looks like it might be up to capitalism to save us.

I've long maintained that insurance companies may lead the way, since they'll be the ones that weather-wrought destruction will cost bigtime. We're seeing insurers pull out of the homeowners business in Florida. Maybe that'll nudge things along a bit. (A girl can hope, can't she?)

I'm also guessing that the airlines - dealing with increasing (and increasingly costly) delays and cancellations caused by unprecedented weather incidents - are going to be putting some energy behind climate change initiatives. 

And - assuming the money going in is smart money - there's this bit of good news:

Investors are spending big on climate projects. Global warming helps make periods of extreme heat more frequent, longer and more intense, and it will continue

getting worse unless humans essentially stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, scientists say. Venture investing in climate tech has boomed since the post-Covid recovery began (though it fell, along with venture funding overall, in the first half of the year). And global public and private investment in climate finance, on projects ranging from decarbonizing architecture and transport to developing renewable energy initiatives, more than doubled from 2011 to 2021, to an estimated $850 billion, according to the Climate Policy Initiative, a nonprofit climate advocacy group. (It will top $1 trillion with the passage of the Biden administration’s sweeping climate bills, the European Union’s Green Deal and China’s low-carbon development initiatives announced in its latest five-year plan.)

“There’s been huge, huge progress” in developing green technologies and bringing down their costs, said Bella Tonkonogy, the U.S. director of Climate Policy Initiative whose funders include the Bloomberg Foundation and the German government. (Source: NY Times)

Then there's investment in solutions that will help us adapt to the damage that's already been done - and can't be undone.

While this type of investment is a relatively small proportion of overall "climate finance" - roughly 7 percent - it's growing. 

I'm sure we'd all like to see the majority of investment going into long term "stop the problem" solutions that, e.g., wean us off fossil fuels, but it's reassuring to learn that some money will be going into projects that will help us withstand the heat, the water, the storms. 

The downside of investing in adaptation projects is that it may lull us into taking our eye off the prize of trying to make sure that atmospheric conditions don't get any worse. Still, investing in adaptation strategies is, I'm hoping, mostly for the good. 

Will capitalism save us? Here's hoping!

As for fascism, don't get me started. 

Tahoe's overtourism challenge

Most of what I know about Lake Tahoe comes from early 1960's hipster Rat Pack-ian references to "Tahoe" made by Frank and Sammy, often using the same sly, knowing, winking way they referred to "Vegas." 

I know Lake Tahoe from watching all those years of Bonanza, on which show the Ponderosa, the Cartwrights' sprawling ranch, bordered on the lake. Or did the Cartwrights own it? 

I also know Lake Tahoe from The Godfather because that's where the Corleone family decamped to from Queens in Godfather II after Vito, the godfather himself, died. The (gorgeous) house that Michael and his family lived in was shot up by enemies on the night of his son Anthony's Holy Communion. And it was on Lake Tahoe that hapless, gormless Fredo Corleone made his final, fatal fishing trip, condemned to a watery grave by his brother Michael for being in unwitting cahoots with the enemies who shot up Casa Corleone. 

I know Lake Tahoe because have been there once in person, when a years-ago visit to a friend in Reno included lunch at a hamburger joint somewhere on the lake. (Good burgers; excellent view.)

Finally, I know it from its occasional appearance on House Hunters or some other show on HGTV.

So I know by reputation, by TV and movies, and by personal appearance that the area is just gorgeous. 

I'm an Easterner by baptism and by desire, and, to me, New England is beautiful. But the West, well, it's just breathtaking. 

That the Lake Tahoe area is beautiful isn't exactly a secret. Plenty of tourists know that, too. So many tourists that, last November, Fodor's noted that Lake Tahoe has a "people problem" - as in too many - and recommended that tourists stay away. They added Lake Tahoe to "Fodor's No List 2023," where it keeps company with the cliffs of Normandy, and with Antarctica, on the list of areas where "nature needs a break." 

(Fodor's also warned tourists off of "suffering cultural hotspots" like Venice, Cornwall, Amsterdam, and Thailand; 

and "destinations suffering from water crises" (among them Maui and the American Southwest).

Tourism can just be too much of a good thing, sayeth Fodor. And, as someone who has tourists clomping by my front door pretty much every day during the high season, I can sayeth it as welleth. 

When the Fodor warning came out, Tahoe tourism officials were surprised, "miffed," even. (As an aside: is "miffed" a great word or what?) Some found it "a little bit shocking." But they also recognized that landing on the "no list" was well-founded. And that they needed to do something about it. 

Since Fodor’s declared last November that “Lake Tahoe has a people problem,” some unlikely voices have expressed a new willingness to consider taxes or fees on motorists, a nonstarter not long ago.

Meanwhile local business and tourism officials are lining up behind a new effort to persuade people to check out less trafficked parts of the lake and to visit outside of high season.

The idea is to preserve a $5 billion local economy built around the tourists who come to hike, camp, boat, bike, ski and gamble, while also easing their impact on the environment and communities. Roughly one-third the size of the Sierra Nevada’s also-crowded Yosemite National Park, the Lake Tahoe Basin gets about three times as many visitors — around 15 million each year.

“We know that we really need to get out of the tourism marketing business and get into the tourism management business,” said Carol Cha plin, CEO of the Lake Tahoe Visitor’s Authority. (Source: Fortune)

Recently, a plan for "sustainably preserving" the gold mine that is Lake Tahoe tourism - a plan backed by a group of "conservation, business, governmental, and private entities" - was released. Some of the ideas in the plan call for encouraging midweek and off-peak visits. Other ideas address traffic and parking "nightmares", and promoting public transportation to ease those nightmares. The idea of charging a fee to drive through town is also being batted around. (If you've driven through Carmel in California, you'll remember paying a fee to get onto the Monterrey Peninsula.)

Solving the overtourism problem won't be easy. 

...especially because of the multiple jurisdictions involved, including five counties in two states, individual towns, regulators, the Coast Guard and the U.S. Forest Service.

But here's hoping.

Meanwhile, getting on the Fodor No List hasn't exactly put a crimp in Tahoe tourism. 

Hotel occupancy between December and April, the height of the ski season, was up 12% from last year, Chaplin said, and that included a stretch when visitation fell off or was flat as one of the wettest winters on record snowed in neighborhoods and businesses and buried roads and highways.

Tourists want to go where tourists want to go... 

All Aboard, Amtrak

I'm a train fan, but that's train fan with a small t and a small f.

Mostly, when I'm on a train it's the commuter train to see my sister in Salem or my cousin outside Worcester. When I travel to NYC, which I don't do near as often as I used to, I like to take the Amtrak Acela. Sometimes, anyway.

My longest train journey was from Orlando to Boston, when a colleague and I managed to hop on Amtrak after we were stranded at a business conference on 9/11 in 2001. That was a pretty scary trip. There wasn't a lot of information to be had, and we weren't sure when we left Orlando whether we were going to get home - the promise was that we'd get as far as Richmond, Virginia - and whether the US was somehow at war (which it was and wasn't). That was one long trip.

I've taken trains on occasion in Europe, most recently to get from one side of Ireland to the other. 

As a kid, my family sometimes took the train from Worcester - the Lake Shore Limited - when we visited my mother's family in Chicago. 

And I always liked my train trips in a way that I never actually liked an airplane flight. 

I loved looking out the windows, watching the country roll by, wondering who lived in those towns, on those farms. Who was driving on those roads that were running parallel to the tracks, and where were they going in such an all-fired hurry?

I sometimes fantasize about taking the train cross country, or at least as far as Chicago. Or the train that runs through the Canadian Rockies. (Which better have that glass-topped observation car if I ever do get on it.)

I don't really have a bucket list, but, if I had one, some train travel would be on it.

Nat Read is 84 years old, and he's a Train Fan with a capital T and a capital F. His bucket list - or maybe it was his life's quest - was traveling Amtrak in the entirety of its route. All glorious (and not so glorious) 21,400 miles of it.

In July, he came to Boston to board the Downeaster to

Brunswick, Maine, so he could finish (in his own words) "the last thread of passenger rail on Amtrak's spiderweb map."

“I feel fulfilled, this has been over 80 years it’s taken me, and to be in Brunswick after all of this, it’s an elated feeling,” Read said from Maine on Friday. “It was a day I will remember forever.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Amtrak hasn't been around for 80 years - it was founded in 1971 - but 80 years back, when Nat Read was just a little guy,h he took his first train ride. On a steam engine. This was during World War II, when he traveled with his mother and brother from Kentucky to visit his father, a serviceman who was stationed in Texas. 

A few years later, he traveled to a Boy Scout Jamboree via railroad. 

By then, he was solidly in love with rail travel.

“I have a fascination with watching America go by,” he said in an interview earlier in the week. “Sitting up high in a rail car and looking at the deserts of the West, the farmlands of the Midwest, the small communities of the Northeast, and being on a magic carpet to watch America unfold. I’ve never grown tired of that.”

Those trips in the 40's and 50's were, of course, made in the heyday of rail travel - before plane travel became affordable to the masses, before the interstate highway system was built. Train travel was actually pretty glamorous. (So was airplane travel before they made it affordable enough so us great unwashed could fly.) But through the thick and thin of rail travel, it's been part of who Nat Read is. 

Read’s love of railroads and thirst for adventure permeated into every aspect of his life. In addition to being a lifelong train rider, he served as vice president of public relations for the US High Speed Rail Corporation. He was part of an effort to build a high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Diego in 1983 — an “exciting idea” that, he said, failed to get the population’s consensus and ultimately failed.

Being into train travel may seem a bit old school, fuddy-duddy. But Nat Read has had adventures that go way beyond riding the rails. He's been to 100 countries, and all seven continents. He's "stood on both the North and South poles." He made it to the South Pole while in the Navy, and made it to the North Pole on a nuclear icebreaker. A Russian nuclear icebreaker.

Read has had a lot of jobs in his life. In addition to his years in the service and with the High Speed Rail Corporation, he's been a writer and a cop. He's also done stand-up comedy.

A few years back, when looking over the Amtrak route map, he realized he didn't have all that many legs to ride complete the entire shebang. So he decided to check them all off of his list. He was interrupted by covid, but hopped back on as soon as he could. 

Which brought him to the end of the line: the Amtrak Downeaster to Brunswick, Maine. 

“I’ve set different goals and satisfied them one at a time. I’m 84 years old now and kind of coming to the end of the list,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

I'm quite sure that Nat Read will find something to occupy his time before he waves to the little red caboose. 

Anyway, my hat's off to him for finishing his incredible journey. Make that a conductor's hat. Or an engineer's cap.

All aboard, Amtrak!

Going to extremes

As long as there's been tourism, there's been tourism for the rich. 

In fact, when tourism was first a thing, it was pretty much exclusively for the rich. If you were a peasant hard-scrabbling a living on your piece of dirt, you probably never took a day off (other than Sunday, when you were stuck in church) or traveled more than a mile or two from where you were born. 

But nobles? They got to sail off to parts unknown to the peasants. 

The only non-rich adventure travel was done by explorers and missionaries. 

In the mid-19th century, with the rise of a middle class, vacation travel became popular, but the best of it was, of course, reserved for the well to do. They got to pack their trunks and take the Grand Tour of Europe. 

Late twentieth century tourism went mass market. People started taking vacations; they started going places. Many of us reversed the travel of our grandparents and great-grandparents. They emigrated from Europe for economic opportunity; we went back, guidebooks in hand, to look around. The more adventurous among us - which would not include me - went on African safaris, toured Angor Wat, flew to Rio by the Sea-o, soaked it up in Bali. 

But for the wealthy, none of this pedestrian middle-class tourism was enough to satisfy the travel bug. After all, what's the big thrill of seeing the Cliffs of Moher or lighting a candle in Notre Dame if Maureen Rogers can afford to do it.

Thus the rise of extreme tourism, which the recent implosion of the OceanGate Titan submarine shone a glaring spotlight on.

And if you thought that travel agents had gone the way of switchboard operators, you've got another think coming. 

Kristin Chambers is a Boston-based extreme-travel agent, or as they're better known, travel consultants. Because when someone's big-spending, you're not agenting, you're consulting.

“There’s always those that are really looking to up-level and go where almost no one on Earth can go,” said Chambers, who runs the Newbury Street firms D.A. Luxury Travel and TRAVELLUSTRE. “They’ve been super successful in their careers. They’ve accomplished, accomplished, accomplished. So, what’s next?” (Source: Boston Globe)

Extreme tourists are paying what is to me an extreme amount of money to up-level. The Titan tourists sprung for $250K per for their rendezvous with destiny. 

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ company Blue Origin routinely brings paying customers to near-space for a rumored $1 million. Climbers are flocking to Mount Everest in record numbers, with some paying six figures for “fully custom” experiences. And amateur adventurers can now get to the North and South poles in just days — a trip that would take months a few decades ago.

A plunge to rubberneck at the Titanic's remains will probably be off-limits for a while, but if abyss-level deep sea is your thing, there are tours to the Mariana Trench for $750K.

Extreme tourists tend to be male, aged 40-60, and as Chambers noted, they're accomplished, accomplished, accomplished. And competitive, competitive, competitive. 

Modern adventurers don’t just want to scale Everest anymore. They also tackle the “Seven Summits,” a series of trips to the tallest peaks on every continent. Then both poles. And then the “Second Seven,” the world’s next-highest peaks, just to be in even more exclusive company.

Eric Larsen runs tours to the North and South Poles.  

“There’s a desire to be unique and distinctive from everyone else. That’s where you get into this race to do all these things,” Larsen said. “They’ve got something they’re trying to prove.”

But Larsen worries that something is lost when modern navigation and aviation make visiting the Earth’s farthest reaches as convenient as booking a dinner reservation — albeit a very expensive one.

At the highest tiers, he said, adventures just aren’t what they used to be.

“If you go to space, are you an adventurer because you sit in a rocket and get flown there?” he said. 

But some extreme tourists don't want to just sit on their arse and get space shot. They want to really court danger.  

Shannon Stowell runs the Adventure Travel Trade Association, which had among its members the ill-fated OceanGate Expeditions. He's heard some pretty strange requests:

One client said she wanted to travel to Mexico, then link up with a smuggler and illegally cross the US border, just for the thrill.

“We gave that a hard ‘No,’” Stowell said. “We said, there’s no way we’re going to be involved in anything, first of all, illegal, and second, insane.”

So much for the 40-60 male demographic. I guess illegal and insanity knows no gender bounds. Bet she could have found some cartel member who would have obliged her. Or at least taken the money off her and dumped her body in the Rio Grande. 

There's extreme tourism, then there's really going to extremes.