Bac chosach on the mend

I spend a lot of time on my feet. 

I'm a walker, and for the last couple of years, week in week out, I've averaged seven miles a day. Walking is my thing. It lets me clear my mind and get away from obsessing on the increasingly disastrous news. It gets me out, and communing with as much nature as you're going to find in the city. On the majority of my walks, I'm doing some circuits of the Boston Public Garden - my front yard, or walking under the canopy on the Commonwealth Mall, or enjoying the calm of the Charles River as much as I can while dodging mine fields full of Canada goose turds.

I've always been a walker, but I became more every-day-regular (and more step-counting conscious) once my sister Trish gifted me with a Fitbit seven years ago.

Admittedly, I've become something of a walking obsessive. 

I started out getting 10,000 steps a day (a bit over four miles). I then upped the ante to five daily miles, then six. So seven? Why the hell not?

But once I settled on my Lucky Seven, I decided it didn't need to be daily, but, rather, a weekly average. As long as I got 49 miles in per week, I was good as gold. So I started front-loading, getting at least ten miles in on Sunday and Monday and putting these and any other extra miles I accumulated against later days in the week. Most weeks, by Saturday, I only needed two or three miles to hit my weekly goal.

For almost as long as I can remember, I've had flat feet, which was diagnosed by the school nurse when I was in grammar school.

It wasn't that big a deal. All part of the foot structure I inherited form my father: Long? ✔ Narrow? ✔ Flat? ✔ 

My father's flat feet had kept him out of the Army - he'd tried to enlist right after Pearl Harbor - but they were good enough to let him join the Navy, where he served from 1942-1946.

My own flat foot floogie meant that I had to do some exercises (walk back and forth in the hallway, on the sides of my feet, with the toes curled in), and wear supportive shoes (StrideRite saddle shoes) when the feet of everyone else in my world were shod in Weejun loafers. (Finally, half way through high school, my parents gave in and let me get a pair of Weejuns.)

Off an on, thanks to those flat feet, I've experienced occasional foot pain, which I've treated by wearing orthotics and/or a juttering foot massage device and/or warm foot soaks and/or rolling my poor tootsies on one of the several foot rollers I've acquired over the years. My favorite is the snappy silver-and-blue GoFit, which you keep in the freezer until needed. When I'm going on a trip, I always pack my Vermont Country Store wooden foot roller. Not as effective/soothing as the GoFit, but it does the trick.

Over the years, I've had occasional foot problems like plantar fasciitis and aching ankles, which I've taken care of PRN with some combo of exercise, massaging, soaking, rolling, bracing.

But mostly, things run walk smoothly, and I get those daily walks in.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an eleven-mile Sunday, followed by a ten-mile-plus Monday. And on that ten-mile-plus Monday, I was on my feet for six hours volunteering at St. Francis House.

Nothing out of my ordinary.

Tuesday was a beautiful day, and I decided to knock off a few morning miles along the paths of the Public Garden. 

After a mile or two, something gang aft agley, and I couldn't put any weight on my right foot.

Nothing had happened. I hadn't stumbled, tripped on a brick, twisted my ankle. But there I was, about 700 feet from home, trying to figure out how to get there without calling an Uber, or my brother Rick to drive over from Charlestown and pick me up. 

But with a combination of hopping and foot dragging, I made it into the house where I immediately ordered up a consult with Dr. Google.

It could be a hairline fracture. It could be tendonitis. 

Neither of those options made me happy, as they both called for 6-8 feet to recover,

I put in more detailed symptoms - where it hurt, level of pain, etc. - and Dr. Google suggested it might be something I'd never heard of: tarsal tunnel syndrome, the ankle equivalent of carpal tunnel. It happens to people with flat feet who overdo it with the walking and standing. 

Googling brought me to a YouTube of Dr. Jo demonstrating exercises for tarsal tunnel. 

I went through the series, and also did icing and foot elevation

The next morning, I as still dragging, but my foot felt better and I could definitely put some weight on it. 

But I didn't want to do it any harm, so I Ubered over to Mass General, where I needed to do a blood draw for my annual checkup. 

Throughout the week, I did those Dr. Jo exercises, iced and elevated my foot, and popped an NSAID so I could get a painless night's sleep.

I ran a couple of errands, wearing an ankle brace and even using my cane - an item I had for no reason in particular other than prescience ordered a couple of months ago - but mostly I stayed off my feet. I also stayed off my Fitbit, but I'm guessing my daily average plummeted from seven miles to something more closely approximating 700 feet.

By the weekend, I was a bit limpy, but nothing too terrible.

At my checkup last Tuesday, I had the ankle on my checklist to ask about. My doctor did a quick examination and told me that my diagnosis (tarpal tunnel syndrome) was likely correct, but that, to be on the safe side, I should get the foot x-ray, as there might be a hairline facture. She also advised me to keep doing what I've been doing, and slowly get back to the seven mile walking regime. But she suggested never doing two power-walk days in a row, especially if they're accompanied by a six hour standing-on-my-feet volunteering stint. 

Fortunately, my doctor is affiliated with MGH, and her office is a block away from the MGH X-ray clinic, so I scooted over there and they took me right away.

Within in a couple of hours, the results were in: no fracture.

All good news, as a fracture foot might have put me in a boot, and postponed my getting back to walking and volunteering. Plus I'm going to Ireland in a couple of weeks and will want to do a bit o' walking while I'm there. So I didn't want to be there with bum hockies.

Bum hockies, you may be asking?

This is what my father called bad feet. At least that's what we thought he was saying when he made a remark like "too bad that poor kid has bum hockies," when referring to Sean, a neighbor kid who had foot problems. 

I've never heard anyone other than my father use this expression, so I figured it was either made up - he had a few (my favorite being gayyahaddy,* what he yelled, for example, when he wanted to shoo away a dog that was about to take a dump in our backyard) - or was some sort of corruption of an Irish word. (One of those words, most commonly used by my grandmother, was "streely," which she used to describe a girl's long hair that she considered unkempt. Streely comes from streel, Irish for a slattern.)

But from whence cometh bum hcokies?

Having done a bit of sleuthing, I'm guessing it was some corruption of the Irish word for foot, chosach, which is kinda sorta pronounced kinda sorta like hockie Or that was the way we heard it. There's also bac chosach, which means lame or otherwise bum foot. So I'm guessing that's where it came from.

(My sister Trish's theory of the case is that "hockies" comes from "hock", as in ham hock. She may be right, but I prefer my theory.)

Anyway, my bac chosach is on the mend. 

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*When my father was a kid, there was a neighborhood grocery store run by an Armenian immigrant. When he wanted to chase loitering kids away, he would holler at them to "gayyahaddy" - fractured English for "get the hell out of here."

Boston Red Sox had a farm. EE-I-EE-I-O.

It's been there for a while.

I've seen it plenty of times.

But I haven't really thought much about the farm at Fenway Park until I saw a piece on news about it.

The farm produces 7,000 pounds of fresh produce every year. They've been farming on top of Fenway since 2015 when ownership wanted more sustainable, local food sourcing. The food they grow is used in concession stands in the ballpark and for private event catering.

 "This knocks off a significant portion of produce being bought on the outside, so we're not shipping produce thousands of miles and bringing it here to Boston," [Green City Growers President Christopher] Grallert explained. (Source: CBS News/Boston)

"Used in concession stands?" Hmmmm.

I'm wracking my brain trying to think of anything on offer at Fenway that might use farm produce. 

I came up with classics likes hot dogs, burgers, sausage sandwiches, and CrackerJack. And latter-day spiff-things-up items like chowder and lobster rolls. But anything healthy? I struck out.

But I googled and, sure enough, if you're at a game at America's Most Beloved Ballpark, you can get a salad at the gluten free stand under Concourse A.

Which is good to know, even though I don't imagine I'll ever avail myself of the opportunity to eat healthy. If I want a salad, all I need to do is open my fridge. If I'm at the ballpark, my preference is for a sausage and pepper sandwich, with second choice going to a hot dog. Followed, in either case, by CrackerJack and/or a Sports Bar. (Minor complaint: I liked CrackerJack better when the prizes were something real, like a plastic charm or a tiny, non-workable yoyo which deployed thread instead of string. These days you get a flimsy little sticker or rub-on tattoo.)

Although eating healthy is not my ballpark jam, I'm delighted that the Red Sox are doing this. And by not doing my bit by going green with my food choices, I'm making a contribution to local food banks, as any produce not consumed at Fenway is donated to food justice organizations. (However, it could be that the pepper and onion part of my sausage sandwich was rooftop grown.)

The setup for Fenway Farms is all very cool and clever.

The farm operates using a modular system with milk crates that have a special lining inside, organic soil and that irrigation system. 

It's not only sustainable growing but in a city with many black asphalt roofs, the farm reduces heat in the area as well as reducing rainwater in the storm drains because it's used for the crops. 

"When we plant a garden and when we have plants breathing and respiring on a rooftop, we're actually reducing heat island effect," Grallert explained. 

We had so much rain this season, I'm betting that they didn't need to rely all that much on their irrigation system.

Fenway Farms is run by Green City Growers, which has 250 sites in Eastern Massachusetts, including 48 in Boston Public Schools. They call the farmers who work at Fenway "the Red Sox other farm team." 

This past season was a dismal one on for the Red Sox. They finished under .500 and played some pretty dreadful ball, especially late in the season when they totally collapsed. One of the few highlights of the season was seeing some of the younger players coming up through the Red Sox farm system. 

After a disappointing season, I'm delighted to be reminded that, when it comes to farm teams, the Red Sox are doing pretty well on both the field and farm fronts.

Maybe they'll even set up a pig farm out there somewhere. That way I could have a locavore sausage sandwich. 

Whatever happened to "Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us'

I do not like bus travel.

Whether local or short haul or long haul. I do not like buses.

Never have, never will.

I grew up in a city that didn't have rapid transit.

If you wanted to go down city (which was Worcester, Massachusetts, for downtown) for shopping or the movies, and you didn't have a car, you took the bus. I remember going down city with my mother and sister to shop at Denholm's, Barnard's, and Filene's. When I was a kid, my mother did not (yet) drive, and my father couldn't chauffeur us, as he was home taking care of the younger kids. So we took the 19 Burncoat down city, and the 19 Cherry Value back home. Once my sister Kathleen got her license, if we went shopping, Kath drove. Then I drove. Then my mother finally got her license. No more taking the bus down city to shop.

And - pre-license - if we wanted to go down city to see a movie, my friends and I took the bus.

Getting to my high school required taking a general-purpose city bus down city, and then transferring to a bus that was earmarked for Notre Dame Academy. The journey reversed on the way home. There was a late bus - the "activities bus" - but if you missed it, you had to trudge over to a general-purpose city bus stop and wait forever for a bus down city, where you could transfer for home.

I went to college in Boston, and the principal way of getting back and forth was via Trailways bus, with its ancient, gloomy, and dumpy terminal in Park Square, right next door to the Hillbilly Ranch, a notable music venue known for country & western and bluegrass. (I never stepped toe in there. It seemed too weird, cruddy, and adult to me.) 

From Park Square, I took the MBTA out to the Fenway stop and back to campus. 

Ah, rapid transit. 

Not that the Green Line was all that rapid. You could often walk faster. But not being on a bus was just so much cooler than being on a bus. 

Once I settled for life in Boston, where most of the time I didn't have a car, I took plenty of bus trips back and forth to Worcester while my mother was still living. Now, when I go to Worcester to visit my cousin Barbara, there's a train option. And I occasionally take a Peter Pan bus down to the Cape to visit Babs at her summer place in Pocasset. I used to drive - my own car, when I had one, or a rental -  but I really don't care to drive much anymore.

My first long haul via bus occurred in April 1967, when I took a Trailways bus to New York with a friend. My first trip there, and the beginning of my love affair with NYC. We stayed with her aunt in Queens, and took the subway into Manhattan each day for the week we were there. 

Taking the subway. Now that was cool. Romantic, even. 

My second long-haul bus trip was to Washington, DC for the November 1969 Moratorium against the Vietnam War. The trip was uncomfortable - I don't think there was a toilet on the bus - but seemed so very righteous.

Over the years, I've taken the bus to New York a few times, mostly when I spent a year there in grad school. 

But mostly, I've stayed off buses wherever possible, taking them here and there, but rarely. And, since the advent of Uber, even those rare occasions where I had to get somewhere that wasn't walkable, on the T, or accessible via commuter rail, bus trips have become rarer still.

I know that they're a necessity - both financially and out-of-the-way-location-wise -  but I have always, always, always found buses wildly depressing. 

But at no time when I've been on a bus have I ever feared that a bus I was on was going to break down and strand me in the middle of nowhere. Sure, there were were bus breakdowns. The no-frills (as if buses had frills) and ultra-cheap Fung Wa bus from Boston to NY was notorious for breaking down. On more than one occasion, I saw one pulled off to the side of the Mass Pike, the engine smoking away, flames shooting out, while the unfortunate passengers stood there waiting for help to arrive. But I never heard of another bus not being sent to retrieve the stranded passengers.

Which happened to the hapless passengers who were on a Greyhound bus from Boston to NYC last August. 

Elisa Kennedy was only on the bus to begin with as her Amtrak train had broken down. Since trains and buses all leave from South Station, she thought she'd just hop on the bus, Gus. A Greyhound bus.

But things didn’t go as planned. In a rural area of Connecticut, the bus abruptly pulled off the highway and the driver announced it could not continue due to serious mechanical problems. (Source: Boston Globe)

Granted, "serious mechanical problems" can occur on any mode of transpo, public or private. When it's private - your own car - you figure out how to get from wherever your car was towed to, to wherever you wanted to get to. But when it's public transportation you're on, most folks would make the reasonable assumption that you'd be taken care of. You might have to wait a while, but somehow a substitute means of transportation would show up.

Anyway, the passengers on the ill-fated Greyhound were ordered off the mechanically problematic but air-conditioned  bus, and made to stand in the broiling August sun in MiddleOfNowhere, CT. The driver had told the passengers that help was on the way, but two hours later, he had some bad news:

No bus was coming and, as far as Greyhound was concerned, they were on their own.

After fruitlessly trying to get an Uber or Lyft, Kennedy was able to find a livery car willing to come get her and a few fellow strandees she'd befriended, and drive them into New York. 

A couple of days later, Kennedy emailed Greyhound asking for a refund of her $83.98 ticket plus the $200 she had paid to complete her trip in the van.

But Greyhound said no.

Alas, her Greyhound ticket was non-refundable. When Kennedy tried again, she got this answer:

“We are unable to honor the request due to ticket restrictions, as the service was still provided, and the passenger [was] still able to complete the trip.”

Well, Kennedy was able to complete her trip no thanks to Greyhound. And maybe they did eventually send a rescue bus. 

But balking at refunding the ticket? Yikes!

Kennedy is still going for some compensation. She's lodged complaints with the state AG and federal bus regulators. And she enlisted the help of the Globe's consumer advocate.

He got a hold of Greyhound's mumbo jumbo, 10 page, densely worded contract. Where he found the Greyhound weasel word wiggle room.

“In cases where a bus becomes unserviceable during the trip,” Greyhound will exercise “reasonable commercial efforts” to provide passengers with “a substitute bus or transport.”

I suspect that Greyhound's interpretation of "reasonable commercial efforts" is different than that of the Globe ombudsman. I can only imagine...

When he pressed Greyhound on what "reasonable efforts" they'd made, they didn't answer .

Anyway, eventually Greyhound did agree to refund the price of Kennedy's ticket. (In contrast, Amtrak immediately refunded Kennedy when their train broke down.)

Whatever happened to their old motto, Go Greyhound, and leave the driving to us?

Greetings from Washington, DC

I know Boston. I know NYC. I know Chicago. I know San Francisco (or used to.) I don't know Washington, DC. But I'm a city lover from the jump, so I was happy to have the recent opportunity to spend the weekend there.

A couple of years ago, an empty-nester friend, who'd already decamped from the 'burbs to Boston proper, decided to make the move to DC, where one of her daughters - and two of her grandkids - live. (The other daughter is in Australia with the other grands, but that would have been too much of a leap, re-lo wise.)

Anyway, her husband was heading out for a golf weekend with the boys, so she asked if I wanted to come down.

Why not?

Jennie met me at National - I really can't bring myself to say Reagan - and we took the Metro to her 'hood: Eastern Market, which is part of Capitol Hill. 

(Landing at National, I realized that it had been so long, the last time I'd flown there, it was National. And it only had one terminal.)

Other than a little walk around the 'hood, we didn't do much on Day One, other than catch up (and eat and drink wine: nothing wrong there). 

But what a wonderful 'hood it is. 

Other than Georgetown, I'd never actually done a walkabout in any DC neighborhood.

It was love at first sight: all those charming row houses, including Jennie's. 

Day Two we were more ambitious, walking (10 miles) around the city.

We walked to the Mall, where on my first trip to Washington, I demonstrated against the Vietnam War at the November 1969 Moratorium, where we marched and, at the rally, sang "Give Peace a Chance" with Pete Seeger, and "If I Had a Hammer" with Peter Pall and Mary. It was a bitter cold day, and my friend Joyce and I stopped in at a drugstore (People's?) and spent three bucks a piece on cheesy yellow blankets that left a hefty amount of lint all over our pea jackets. Because we went off-plan to get those blankets, we didn't go to demonstrate at the Justice Department with our friends. So we didn't get tear-gassed. 

Back in present day, we went by the White House, which is just beautiful. Ditto the Capitol Building - but it gave me the chills to think of January 6th. And it made me angry to think of the fractious imbeciles in the House who seem hell bent on destroying the country, or at least our democracy. (Not that there aren't any fractious imbeciles in the Senate. Looking at you, Tommy Tuberville.)

We went by the Supreme Court, which made my stomach churn. (And, yeah, I went a bit fractious on my own and shot the bird.)

We didn't "do" any of the monuments, but I'd already been to the Lincoln, the Jefferson, and the Vietnam memorials on a previous tourist trip to DC with my husband, way back in the mid-1980's. (Probably during the Reagan Administration.)

Chef José Andrés - the brilliant humanitarian whose World Central Kitchen shows up wherever and whenever in the world there's a humanitarian need - has a bunch Washington restaurants, and we had a late lunch at one of them. We did the tasting menu, which was fabulous - six courses, each of which had 2-4 components. All wonderful, but too much of a good thing: we brought a lot of food home.

On a full stomach, we kept walking.

We wanted to go up into the tower of the Waldorf Astoria, the hotel that replaced the Trump grift-o extravaganza in the old Post Office building, but, alas, the tower was closed for the day. (We did get to use the fancy ladies room in the lobby.)

So we soldiered on to the National Gallery, where we spent some time in the modern building. Like all the DC museums that are run by the government, it was free. Our taxpayer money in action, and what a great use. 

More walking around the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and back to Jennie's.

Where we had a little vino and ended up playing Cagney and Lacey, sleuthing whatever happened to a hideous murder case that Kevin had been on the jury for in the mid-1970's. We found that the murderer, a teenager at the time, who had slit his mother's throat and raped her, had been released and was back in his hometown. And that his younger brother, who had witnessed to crime, seems to have had a reasonably good and productive life: college education, good jobs, a couple of kids, an interesting hobby. (Thank you, Google.) 

Jennie, of course, texted our discoveries to Kevin, who - predictably - thought we were nuts.

On Sunday: more walking around the charming neighborhood and a quick visit with her daughter's family. They also live in a charming row house, a couple of blocks from Jennie. An excellent reason for K&J to have moved to DC. 

Jennie drove me to the airport - a two-fer, as Kevin was arriving - so I got to a 30-second meet and greet with him when she dropped me off.

Next time, we'll do more museum-ing. I want to see the Holocaust Museum and the Museum of African American History. I want to see the World War II memorial. 

Mostly I came away adding Washington DC to the list of cities I would have been perfectly happy to live in. I suppose it helped that the weather was perfect: no humidity, 70-ish, not a cloud in the sky. I don't imagine if I'd been there in the swampy summer I would have been so enamored. But I loved the neighborhoods, the vibrancy, the parks, the fact that there are no tall buildings. 

What a beautiful city. Too bad that, these days, it's the site of so much soul-sucking, mind-numbing horseshit on the part of a part (R-) of our government. Sigh...

Want to be a cop? I heard Coffee City, Texas, has a few openings.

I recently came across the craziest of cray stories - crazy even by Texas standards. 

First off, there's the name. Coffee City. 

City? 

Coffee City's population is 250-ish.

That doesn't even make it a town or a village. We're talking hamlet. 

But Coffee City it is, which came into being after Lake Palestine was manmade in the early 1960's. Because the "city" was located in a wet county bordering on a couple of dry counties, some enterprising folks opened liquor stores there. 

That business dried up when one of those dry counties went wet, siphoning off a good swath of their customer base.

In searching for a new source of funding, Coffee City did what so many good-ol'-boy-towns do. It turned itself into a speed trap, and last year the "city" took in $1M in court fees from its speed ticket business - not bad, considering their itsy-bitsy population. Roughly $4K per capita  Not bad at all, at all.

But in terms of efficiency, they were using an awful lot of police officers to staff their speed trap. Quite wildly, this "city" of 250 had 50 police officers. That's one cop for every 5 residents. 

This makes no sense whatsoever. None. 

Maybe if the "city" were raking in, say, $10M from their speed traps. Even $5M would at least cover the costs of having all those police officers. But a measly $1M, while a reasonably robust revenue take for a "city" with only 250 residents, is a piddly $20K per cop. 

Fifty cops for a town of 250???? Boston, in contrast, has a bit over 2,000 cops for a population a bit over 650K, a ratio of 1 police officer per 325 citizens. If we had the Coffee City ratio, we'd have police force of 130,000!!!! NYC, which has a police force of 36,000 to keep its 8.5M residents safe and sound would have a police force of 1.7M!!!!!

Anyway, Coffee City no longer has a police force of 50.

Thanks to an investigative report by a Houston TV station, the "city" no longer has a police force at all. For the time being, they'll be counting on the county sheriff's office to keep the "city" safe and, presumably, collect the speed trap loot.

It wasn't just the excessive number of cops in the City that KHOU focused on. They also turned their lens onto who exactly was manning the ranks:

The ranks of the Coffee City police have ballooned with bad-apple cops, who had reportedly received demotions and even dishonorable discharges from other jurisdictions for a litany of egregious behavior, including aggravated assault and endangering a child. (Source: Rolling Stone)

Among the other goodies that KHOU found:

Remarkably, the KHOU investigation found that several officers on the Coffee City force do not even work in Coffee City. Instead, they work in a division in Houston, 200 miles to the south, tracking down big-city residents with outstanding traffic fines or for a failure to appear in Coffee City court.

Within a few days of the KHOU expose, the city powers sprung into action, firing Chief of Police JohnJay Portillo and laying off the entire police force.  

Mayor Jeff Blackstone said that:

...the city decided to disband the police department rather than conduct individual investigations into every officer. Any officer who wants to stay with the department must reapply once the city hires a new police chief, CBS reported.

"We're going to have a new police department that everybody in the community can trust," Blackstone told the outlet.

..."We're going to have a new police department that everybody in the community can trust," Blackstone told [KHOU]. (Source: Insider)

All well and good, but where was the "city" when the august police chief was in hiring mode, quadrupling the police force in a scant two years time? No one noticed that a good portion of the town budget was paying for 50 police officers? I don't care how poorly the Coffee City police officers were paid, it had to be more than the $20K per cop that all the speed trapping placed in the "city" coffers. 

Fifty police officers for a "city" with a population of 250? This is just crazy-ville. 

Good that Coffee City has come to its senses. 

But, jeez...

Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day

When I was a kid, I loved Columbus Day. 

A month-and-change into the school year, it was a nice break. 

It didn't give us a three-day weekend. That change didn't come until I was out of school. Still, a day off's a day off, no matter what day of the week October 12th fell on. And, unlike the welcome little oddball holy days that parochial schools got off, there were absolutely no obligations that came along with Columbus Day. No having to get up and go to Mass before enjoy some slack time. Nope. Columbus Day was blessedly secular. Loll in bed, followed by not much of anything. If it was a nice day, the family might go out for a spin, as back in the day, my father got the day off. 

Columbus Day was, as I wrote in 2011, a Nifty Little Holiday. Nifty until we came to the realization that Christopher Columbus was a colossal P.O.S. 

Given Christopher Columbus' status as a P.O.S., and not the benevolent sailor who crossed the ocean blue in the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, I thought it might make sense to rebrand the holiday as Immigrants Day. After all, even if he didn't stick around, his exploration did help pave the way for making us a nation of immigrants. And it would allow us to still pay homage to the descendants of Italian immigrants, for whom Columbus Day has always been a pretty big deal. 

I lost that argument. Many cities and states now celebrate the day-formerly-known-as-Columbus-Day as Indigenous Peoples' Day. Boston made the switch to honoring indigenous people, but I believe that Massachusetts is still in the Columbus Day

column. (A day celebrating the pre-Columbian population certainly makes sense, but I'd still like to see a day honoring immigrants - especially in the present climate when so many seem to view immigrants as the enemy, unwelcome on our shores, an existential threat. In late August, on a boat tour in NYC, we passed near to the Statue of Liberty, which never fails to move me - this daughter of a mother who landed on Ellis Island as a toddler - to near-tears. Maybe we can swap out Thanksgiving for Indigenous, and turn Indigenous/Columbus into Immigrants' Day. You heard it here.)

In 2020, my holiday post - when the holiday fell on October 12: the old, original Columbus Day date - dealt with the decapitation of the statue of Christopher Columbus that stood in Boston's Columbus Park. Off with his head! Out with the statue!

Last year, Pink Slip celebrated Not Columbus Day, highlighting a statue of Columbus that still stands in Worcester, whose City Council last year tabled a decision to remove it from its prominent spot in front of Union Station, just around the corner from Worcester's historically Italian neighborhood.

This year, I will be doing my usual Monday thing, volunteering at St. Francis House. If it's nice out, after my time at SFH, I might walk down to (the still named Columbus) Columbus Park, which abuts Boston's North End, our historically Italian neighborhood. Maybe I'll pick up a sub - and Italian, of course - at Bricco's. Which I get isn't that indigenous-honoring a thing to do, but will put me in a bit of a celebratory mood.

Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day. 

Jeepers, Creepers

A short while ago, I wrote about an AI professional portrait generated that turned the brown eyes of an Asian-American woman blue, presumably to make her look whiter and, hence, more professional.

Anyway, it got me thinking about my own eye color, which is blue. 

Maybe.

It may sound ridiculous to reach oldish age and not know exactly what color my eyes are, but there you have it.

For much of my life, when asked about my eye color, I always said blue. But they were never the beautiful, beautiful blue eyes that so many of family members and friends seemed to have been blessed with. Sky blue. Lake blue. Dark blue. Light blue. True blue. Blue blue. 

Mine were blue, alright.

After all, on my license it says BLU, so it's even official.

But that BLU is but pretty much 'Meh' blue. 

And it's changeable. If I wear blue, they're pretty much blue. If I wear black, they're gray. Teal sweater? Those eyes are greenish-blue. 

When I wore contacts, which I did from my late teens through 30 or so, I sometimes got the colored lenses to make my eyes seem bluer. 

Turning eyes bluer may well have been something of a mini-obsession, an obsession-een. 

As a little girl, I had a Ginnette doll, part of a Vogue Doll series made up of Ginny (the most popular), Ginnette (Ginny's baby sister), and Jill (Ginny's big sister, a more wholesome version of Barbie, pre-Barbie; my sister Kath had Jill). 

I liked Ginny, but I loved Ginnette, whom I called Netty. 

This isn't my Netty. (Most toys didn't survive childhood in the Rogers family, that's for sure. I still have Sniffy, the stuffed dog I got for my fourth birthday. Other than that...) But my Netty did have this adorable pink and grey snowsuit outfit. 

Anyway, in my cra little seven-year-old way, I decided that Netty's eyes were insufficiently blue. So I decided to play cosmetic ophthalmologist and, armed with a Magic Marker, I made her eyes bluer than blue. And, of course, managed to color in the whites of Netty's eyes, making her look like a zombie psycho baby.  

Fast forward six+ decades and, while I would never take a Magic Marker to my own baby meh blues, I do sit here wondering what color they actually are.

Sometimes, I've described my eyes as gray-blue, and that may be closer to the truth. When I googled gray-blue eye, I found this image, which seems pretty close to my eye color.

And it's apparently pretty rare. Only one-percent of Americans are estimated to have eyes this color peepers. Jeepers! (Always knew I was an oddball. Just more confirmation.)

Then there's that brownish-goldish ring around the iris. 

Yep, I got that, too.

Live and learn, and I've just learned that this is something called central heterochromia. Even rarer. Even more oddball, apparently. 

They're sometimes called sunflower eyes, which I prefer to central heterochromia.

Jeepers Creepers, where'd you get those sunflower peepers?

Who knows? It's supposedly not genetic, but my niece Caroline has it, too.

Sunflower eye? Who knew? Maybe my eye doctor. I'll be seeing him in a few weeks. I think I'll ask.

Are the peasants rally that revolting? Just ask Tim Gurner.

When I worked as Durgin-Park waitress, way, way, way, back in the day, there was a crudely framed sign hanging in the waitress break room. The sign, which I've guessing was vintage 1920's or 1930's, had apparently been corporate swag given to Durgin by a salesman for a fruit company. Maybe the company that sold them the strawberries that went into their famous strawberry shortcake.

I didn't recall the full quote but I did remember the bromide was attributed to Elbert Hubbard. (Elbert Hubbard was eccentric writer-artisan-philosopher who went down with the Lusitania, and who was no apparent relation to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology.) So I was able to google it up, and here's what the sign in the D-P breakroom said. Unfortunately, our sign was minus the picture of Elbert and his snappy chapeau.

The man we worked for was a rage-filled drinker with a gluttonous appetite and an absolutely malevolent disposition. He was perpetually firing waitresses for some made-up-on-the-spot infraction, a scenario that was always followed by the fired waitress - or one of the older gals who'd waited there forever - beseeching the boss so that the fired waitress could get her job back. After an intercession, the waitress was always hired back. 

This boss was a total madman.

In one encounter I had with him, he saw me returning a very nasty-looking serving of our famous "Poor Man's Roast Beef," a thin slice of usually not all that bad rump roast. (One of the items available on the 99 cent lunch menu.) In this case, rather than a nice, rarish slice of goodness, the cook had asked me to try to serve a patched together plate composed of a couple of gristly end cuts. The cook assured me that he'd take it back. I just had to try to serve it.

Predictably, the patron refused the meal - especially galling, given that her lunch companion was served a normal plate. But the boss wasn't happy to see it returned.

After screaming at me for a minute or so, he asked me to point out the table were the unsatisfied customer was sitting. He grabbed the "Poor Man's" out of my hand, stormed over to the customer, slammed the meal down in front of her and told her if she didn't like it, she could get the hell out of his restaurant.

To no one's surprise, she chose option two.

As the two women at the table gathered up their coats and pocketbooks, the boss turned to me and snarled, "Make sure you charge them 10 cents for the cornbread."

Needless to say...

Anyway, when the boss was on a particular rager, one of us was guaranteed to start quoting from the Elbert Hubbard sign, laughing all the way.

My bottom line: there's no reason to pledge fealty to, or even speak well of, an employer who's god-awful, even if he is providing your (corn)bread and butter.

Long way to lead into an article I saw the other day on an Australian jackass - a millionaire property developer - who thinks that an increase in the unemployment rate would bring the employer-employee relationship back into what to him is a more natural balance. I.e., captain of industry with his boot on the neck of a groveling worker who's gotten a bit too uppity.

Here's what this jackass had to say:

“We need to see pain in the economy,” Tim Gurner, CEO of the Gurner Group, told the Australian Financial Review’s property summit Tuesday. “We need to see unemployment rise — unemployment has to jump 40 to 50 percent, in my view.” (Source: Washington Post)

It's estimated that this sort of jump in unemployment would translate into 800,000 Aussies on the unemployment line. Swell.

“I think the problem that we’ve had is that people decided they didn’t really want to work so much any more through covid, and that has had a massive issue on productivity,” he said. Tradespeople, he said, “have been paid a lot to do not too much in the last few years, and we need to see that change.”

 I'm sure there are plenty of people - in both the US and Australia - who really don't want to work anymore. I'm equally sure - maybe even more sure - that most people do want to work. Work gives purpose, structure, companionship, and - oh, yeah - income. Things most people want. Even those uppity tradespeople And if there aren't enough people joining the trades, the Econ 101 answer is to make their sort of work more attractive. Which usually means "paid a lot."

“We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around,” he continued. “There’s been a systematic change where employees feel the employer is extremely lucky to have them, as opposed to the other way around. So it’s a dynamic that has to change."

A world in which employees are supposed to feel "extremely lucky" to have a job? Sure sounds like job hell to me. (And no, I don't believe anyone should sit around growling, condemning, and eternally finding fault - the behavior proscribed by Elbert Hubbard in another quote on what employees owe the man - at least not when they should be working. But out for an after work beer with trusted colleagues? Yacking to a friend who's heard it all before? Once you get home, to your spouse? Sheesh. Bitching about work is one of life's great pleasures. 

Those changes had already begun, Gurner said, with “massive layoffs” leading to what he described as “less arrogance in the employment market.” 

"Less arrogance." Yes sir, Master Gurner. 

Can you imagine working for someone who holds his employees in such scorn? Who exudes a big old let them eat cake/the peasants are revolting vibe. 

I'm guessing that even Elbert Hubbard would think that Tim Gurner's a putz. 

Fred Dibnah: They don't make 'em like they used to

Ever heard of the late Fred Dibnah, MBE? 

Me neither.

But what an interesting character Fred was.

I came across Fred in early September, when a mention of him came across my Twitter feed in a form of a post from the BBC noting that "#OnThisDay 1979: Extraordinary steeplejack Fred Dibnah was introduced to the nation." 

The BBC story about Fred - linked in the tweet and well worth a look - chronicled the intrepid steeplejack's climb up a very tall brick chimney that, over the next little while, the intrepid steeplejack dismantled, one brick at a time, all by his lonesome.

Fred, who was born in 1938, was always interested in steeplejack work, so he was a natural to become a chimney man. But his career coincided with the decline of manufacturing in England. When Fred was a lad, all those mills - his hometown of Bolton, near Manchester, was a center for the cotton spinning industry - were still in operation. Powered by coal, they all had massive chimneys to keep the spinning spinning. But over time...

I live in New England, and when I was a kid, there were knitting mills - sibling factories to spinning mills - all over the place. Each summer, my family would make a trip to a mill (Ware, Massachusetts; Fall River, Mass.) to pick up a summer supply of t-shirts for five kids at the mill's outlet store. These mills went the way of the Bolton spinning mills. (Occasionally, you see a New England chimney stack that's still standing. Guess there were no Fred Dibnah to do the dismantling.)

Anyway, Fred began doing chimney, clocktower, and steeple repairs, and then - as the market changed - had a good business there for a while, taking down smokestacks before they tumbled on their own accord. 

Fred was a charming and interesting character, and he became a subject of a documentary. And another documentary. And television news special interest pieces. 

Suddenly, he was famous. There were visitors just showing up unannounced at his home. He started getting fan mail. 

And then both the repair and dismantling work and the BBC special interest dried up. But through happy happenstance, the indomitable Fred ended up with a TV program of his own: Fed Dibnah's Industrial Age, which focused on the maintenance and restoration of industrial sites around the country. 

The show was well received, and several other series followed, one on Victorian heroes (an interest of Fred's), another called The Building of Britain, which focused on sites like cathedrals and the Globe Theatre. Then there was Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam. (Steam was a lifelong fascination of Fred's.)

Someone along the line, Fred became an MBE. (Member of the Order of the British Empire, an honour bestowed by the reigning monarch, in Fred's case, the late Queen E.) Here's Fred on his trip to Buckingham Palace: 

I was slightly nervous shaking hands with the Queen. She asked me if I was still climbing chimneys. It beats me how she keeps tabs on everybody. I never thought I would be receiving an MBE.

Fred was also awarded a couple of honorary doctorates in engineering. Not bad for the son of a bloke who worked at a bleach works, and a mum who was a charlady at the local gasworks. When this sort of success for a working class guy happens, people talk about "only in America." But for all its class-bound whatever, I guess it can kinda-sorta happen in England, oo. 

Fred died in 2004, of cancer. I'm guessing his death (age 66) was accelerated by all his exposure to ancient brick dust and debris. The smoking probably didn't help, either. But what a life. 

Source for info on Fred: Wikipedia. 

Boo, Booz Allen! Yay, Sarah Feinberg!

Booz Allen is one of those big-name, smarty-pants, fancy-arse consulting firms. Right up there with McKinsey, Bain, and the Boston Consulting Group. Although I interviewed with them when I was in B-school (and did not get an offer, which was a good thing on both sides of the equation), I don't know a ton about them, other than that they're a big-name, smarty-pants, fancy-arse consultancy that charges clients a ton of money. In return, the clients may or may not get something of value. Caveat emptor.

Sarah Feinberg, a whip-smart (Wharton MBA) combat-hardened Marine Corps veteran - who, on top of all this and completely irrelevant to the matter at hand, is a very attractive mom of three little boys - was working in finance at Booz when she noticed a little problem.

Booz, it seemed, was "losing tens of millions of dollars and, in her view, billing more than it should on U.S. government contracts to cover the losses." She reported her concerns, and THIS:

Only a few months into a new finance job, Sarah Feinberg felt stunned when a senior manager with a Northern Virginia-based defense contractor called federal auditors “too stupid” to notice overcharging, according to a federal complaint she filed. (Source: Washington Post)

Steinberg also alleged that an exec told her that the amounts were so small dollar potatoes in the grand scheme of things that they would not bother to go after Booz to get the overpayments back. (Booz asserts that they were in billing compliance, and that Federal rules and regs are ambiguous.)

Anyway, Steinberg kept raising her concerns to senior Booz execs, including the CFO, to know avail. She left Booz and, in 2016, she blew the whistle and filed a complaint against her employee. 

And, eventually, justice was served up:

In July, the Justice Department, which investigated her complaint, announced that Booz Allen had agreed to pay $377 million — $209 million in restitution to the federal government and the rest in penalties — to settle the matter, one of the largest awards in a government procurement case in history.

Feinberg was awarded $42M (after the lawyer's got their share) for her efforts. 

Not surprisingly, big-name, smarty-pants, fancy-arse Booz Allen denies any wrong-doing. 

Company officials told investors on an earnings call in late July that they settled the case to avoid protracted litigation. Horacio Rozanski, the president and chief executive, said the company “acted lawfully and responsibly.”

No surprise here. A couple of years ago, McKinsey, a fellow big-name, smarty-pants, fancy-arse consultancy, paid nearly $600M to settle claims regarding their liability for the work they did with Purdue Pharma that helped them sell OxyContin and create the opioid crisis. McKinsey, too, claimed that they settled to avoid protracted legal woes, and that they had done nothing wrong (even as they helped Purdue figure out to increase sales, even in the face of learning that Oxy was so dangerously and addictive).

Legal analysts have questioned whether the system has been effective in delivering a strong enough message of deterrence to companies that operate within the federal government’s vast contracting network. In civil cases, they say, companies are rarely required to admit liability, senior executives often do not face personal accountability, and investors typically react with a shrug, sometimes pushing stock prices higher because the legal cloud is lifted.

“Assuming the company is not debarred and can continue to do business with the government, there’s a real question, in terms of the system as a whole, of whether the consequences are significant enough,” said Seton Hall University law professor Jacob T. Elberg, a former federal prosecutor.

Feinberg doesn't believe that the Booz settlement went far enough.

“The settlement has to be more than the damages or you’re giving them an interest-free loan, not a penalty,” Feinberg said.

The DOJ counters that it was fair, and sends a "strong message of deterrence."

We'll see about that.  

In the meantime, Sarah Feinberg is a bit richer, and will use nearly one third of her award for charitable work. She's active in her local Catholic Charities organization and in her church, and wants to invest in "underserved communities. She and her husband sound like genuinely good and committed folks, who have "helped resettle an Afghan refugee family with three children in a condominium they own in Shirlington, Va." (Feinberg served with the Marines in Afghanistan.)

Shame on big-name, smarty-pants, fancy-arsed Booz Allen. 

Yay, Sarah Feinberg! Semper fi!

RIP Tim Wakefield

The post below was written on Saturday. On Sunday, while heading back into Boston from a trip to Brookfield Orchard with my sister Trish and niece Molly, Molly saw on her phone that Boston that former Red Sox knuckleballer, and current game analyst on NESN had died.

We had just been talking about Wake, mostly in the context of talking about what a dick former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling is (see below), and what a great guy Wakefield was.

This is such sad news for Red Sox Nation. Wake was universally beloved, not for his athletic brilliance - of course he was a great athlete: you don't make and stick in the pros if you're not - but for the fact that he was such a good guy.

I teared up a bit when Molly passed the news on to us. When we hurtled by Fenway Park - which you can see from the Mass Pike - we saluted Tim Wakefield. 

The post below still stands.

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I have a (generation-younger) friend who is a breast cancer survivor. Her diagnosis and treatment are now about six or seven years in the rearview mirror, and so far, so good.

At the same time my friend was undergoing her treatment, her husband was diagnosed with and treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma. His lymphoma recurred and he underwent a stem cell transplant. His cancer re-recurred last year, but the chemo regime they have him on seems to be doing some good, and is at least keeping worse things at bay.

This couple has two kids who were pre-adolescents when this all began, and who are now teenagers. 

When children are involved, the serious, possibly terminal, illness of a parent is devastating to family life. (Been there, done that, on the kid end of things.) I cannot imagine how terrible it must be when the health of both parents is at stake. 

I thought of this the other day when I heard that former Red Sox pitcher (and current Red Sox analyst on NESN) Tim

Wakefield and his wife both have cancer. "Bad" cancers, not "good" cancers like thyroid and prostate that are (relatively) easily treatable and generally survivable. From what I've read (unconfirmed), Tim Wakefield has an aggressive form of brain caner; Stacy Wakefield has pancreatic cancer (never a good thing). 

The Wakefields have two kids. Not as young as my friend's children were when she and her husband were first battling their illnesses, but - I looked it up - the Wakefield kids are still pretty young. Both kids are in their late teens. An age when you are really not prepared for the death of a parent (been there, done that), let alone having to contemplate the death of both parents.

I am a long-time, exceedingly devoted fan of the Red Sox.

Tim Wakefield isn't one of the greatest Red Sox players of all time. He's not destined for the Hall of Fame. He's no Ted Williams. He's no Pedro Martinez. Et al.

But I've always liked Tim Wakefield.

What's not to like? He was a gamer on the field, and a model of community involvement off the field. (He's a long-time supporter of the Jimmy Fund, an organization, closely associated with the Red Sox, devoted to wiping out cancer in kids.) He always came across as kind, even-tempered, generous, and humble. Plus he was a pretty good-looking guy. (The kind of good-looking guy that middle-aged and old-crone women crush on.)

The only Red Sox player I can think of who was as universally beloved as Tim Wakefield is the late Johnny Pesky, who was a teammate of Ted Williams and was associated with the Red Sox for most of his adult life. He died at the age of 93. 

No one ever had an unkind word to say about Johnny Pesky. No one ever had an unkind word to say about Tim Wakefield.

Perhaps this was because neither of these men trafficked in unkind words, at least publicly. 

Good guys!

There are many ballplayers who aren't exactly good guys, and chief in my annals of former Red Sox who are pretty much the anti-mensch, there's Curt Schilling.

As a Red Sox fan, I have some gratitude to Schilling for the instrumental role he played in helping the Red Sox reverse the "curse of the Bambino" and win the World Series in 2004. For sheer drama, it's hard to match the famed "bloody sock" game he pitched in -  the sixth game of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees, when the Sox came back after getting drubbed in the first three games to winning the AL pennant.  (Schilling had a stitched up tendon injury that quite visibly bled through.) The Red Sox winning that series against the Yankees was the high point of my life as a fan. After the ALCS playoff, winning the World Series that year was anticlimactic, inevitable almost.

So, belated thanks, Curt Schilling, for your role there.

But, other than that, Curt Schilling has done little to endear himself to me.

He's a a loud-mouth MAGA who is always getting in trouble with comments that most normal folks interpret as god-awful. E.g., anti-Muslim, anti-trans. He collects Nazi paraphernalia. (Big yewwwww.) And he's a colossal know-it-all who managed to run a gaming software company into bankruptcy after hornswoggling the state of Rhode Island into investing in it. 

Schilling just comes across as a complete jerk. I'm sure he has friends. There are a lot of complete jerks out there and, of course, they find each other, and no doubt revel in each other's company. But I don't imagine that there's any part of the universe in which Curt Schilling is as beloved by former teammates and fans as is Tim Wakefield.

And Schilling's role in outing the health issues Tim and Stacy Wakefield are coping with does nothing to improve my opinion of him.

Last week, on his podcast, Schilling said the following:

“Tim Wakefield … the knuckleballer, is sick. And I talked to [former teammate, former Red Sox catcher] Doug Mirabelli yesterday, and it’s not a message that Tim has asked anyone to share and I’m not even sure if he wants it shared. But as a Christian and a man of faith, I have seen prayer work, and so I’m going to talk about it. …Tomorrow is never, ever a given. Tim’s wife, Stacy, who is one of the sweetest women you’ll ever meet, is very sick with pancreatic cancer. … We’re all thinking about them and praying for her. But recently, Tim was diagnosed with a very serious, very aggressive form of brain cancer.

The following day, Red Sox issued a statement which was approved by the Wakefields: 

We are aware of the statements and inquiries about the health of Tim and Stacy Wakefield, Unfortunately, this information has been shared publicly without their permission. Their health is a deeply personal matter they intended to keep private as they navigate treatment and work to tackle this disease.

Tim and Stacy are appreciative of the support and love that has always been extended to them and respectfully ask for privacy at this time. (Source: Boston Globe)

Given his status as a loud-mouth, MAGA jerk, there has long been a lot of antipathy towards Curt Schilling in these parts, and his revealing the Wakefield situation has upped my anti.

My favorite response was from the Twitter account of Catherine Varitek, wife of former Red Sox catcher (and current Red Sox coach) Jason Varitek. Varitek was a teammate of both Schilling and Wakefield. Ms. Varitek tweeted:

Fuck you Curt Schilling, that wasn’t your place!

She spoke for so many member of Red Sox nation and, I'm sure gained plenty of new Twitter followers. Not just me.

Look, I'm sure that Schilling was upset to hear the news, which it sounds like he got second-hand from another teammate. Schilling and Wake are roughly the same age. I'm sure the news hit close to home. And I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that he wanted to pray for his former colleague and his wife. 

But you'd have thought that, before he shot of his big, podcasting mouth, he'd have waited just a dern minute.

Schilling gives himself a way when he podcasted:

...it’s not a message that Tim has asked anyone to share and I’m not even sure if he wants it shared.

So why didn't he check things out before he ran with his scoop. Why didn't he ask the guy who told him (Doug Mirabelli, who was the designated Red Sox catcher for Wakefield because Mirabelli could catch a knuckleball)? Why didn't he google to see whether the news was out?

No, he had to go ahead and show-off that he was in the know.

He could certainly have asked for prayers without outing Wakefield.

How about this:

I've just heard that a former teammate of mine and his wife have both been diagnosed with cancer. 

Then he could have gone honking on about being a Christian and the power of prayer. 

Was Schilling afraid that this would set off wild speculation about who he was talking about? Schilling played for a few teams over the course of his career. Five teams and a long career makes for a lot of possibilities. Wild speculation? So what! 

Was he afraid that there wouldn't be as many prayers if he didn't name names? Brother...

I'm sure that if Curt Schilling were a nicer guy, people would be cutting him plenty of slack. After he learned about Wakefield from the Schilling podcast, another former Red Sox - Wade Boggs - tweeted out the news. But after he learned that the news wasn't supposed to be out, he sent out an apology tweet. No one's mad at Wade Boggs.

But Curt Schilling is a big blowhard who always has to play the big man. Everything always has to be about him. ("...as a Christian, as a man of faith").

In his podcast, he issued something of a pre-apology: 

And if they didn't want this to be public, I sincerely apologize, but I do believe that a gigantic, worldwide Red Sox Nation group hug and prayers is warranted for this one.

Pre-apology not accepted. Schilling sure had a feeling that going public might not be what the Wakefields wanted.

And I'm with the Wakefield children. Facing the prospect of the death of a parent is a terrible burden for a kid to shoulder, even if they are on the cusp of adulthood and think they're all grown up. (Been there, done that.) The prospect of losing both parents in short order - which, if things are as dire as Schilling has said - is certainly a possibility, is exponentially more terrible. 

I don't pray, but if I did, I'd be prayers up for the Wakefield children.  

Meanwhile, I'm with Catherine Varitek on this one.