A not so beautiful day in the neighborhood

When I looked at the news from Worcester, my first reaction was that the neighborhood they w ere showing in the pictures looked like the neighborhood I grew up in. Main South, more specifically Webster Square or Our Lady of the Angels. (Because Worcester then and, for all I know now, was a city of Catholics, of parishes.) 

The pictures showed a blue collar neighborhood of neat houses - triple deckers, modest one- and two-family homes. The plots are small, the houses close together. There are a couple of American flags and, although I don't see one, I'm pretty sure there's a frontyard bathtub madonna somewhere on that street.

Really, the pictures I saw could have been shot in any number of Worcester neighborhoods. But without directly recognizing anything I was looking at, my spidey sense told me Main South, more specifically Webster Square or Our Lady of the Angels. Even more specifically, I thought 'that looks like Grandview Ave.' 

Well, close enough. 

It was Eureka Street, one parallel block over.

I should have known. In one of the pictures, you can see a part of Clark Manor Nursing Home, which is on Main Street, directly across from the top of Eureka. (That's the light brick building shown in this picture.)

When I say this is my neighborhood, I'm not talking about the larger neighborhood, the parish. 

This is exactly where I grew up.

Bernadette, my closest friend in grammar school, lived on the corner of Eureka and Main. I knew lots of kids who lived on Eureka.

I spent the first six-and-a-half years of my life in a flat in my grandmother's triple decker on Winchester Avenue, just off Main. Clark Manor Nursing Home is just next door to Nanny's house.

When we lived at Nanny's, there was no Clark Manor Nursing Home. Next to Nanny's was a large field where we played war games and everything else we could think of. And in front of Nanny's was a lot that, when we still lived there, was turned into a Sunoco gas station. I still remember how exciting it was when they put the gas tanks in. ("We" did not filler up there. For some reason, Sunoco was not considered as good a brand as Texaco, which is where my father bought his gas, at Walter Marchessault's station, just down the hill. Walter wore a snappy uniform that made him look like General Eisenhower, and at Christmas, there was always a Texaco related toy for boys to be had there.)

Across from the Sunoco, on the other corner of Main and Winchester, was Trimble Motors, a small used car lot - maybe 6 or 8 cars - that's been there since 1930. 

Back to Clark Manor Nursing Home. 

It went up when I was in high school.

By that point, the rest of the large field next to Nanny's had been developed into a neighborhood of modest one-families, and it's there we moved in 1956.

The bus stopped at Clark Manor, and throughout high school, I'd get off the bus, skirt the side of Clark Manor, past Nanny's, past the Ladners', through the Ciras' yard to get home from where the bus left me off. Then Clark Manor put up a fence - bastards! - that made scooting a bit more difficult. When I was in college, heading to my summer job as a Big Boy waitress down in Webster Square, I jumped the fence and ended up bruising a bone on the top of my foot, missing a few days of work. Bastards!

On the corner of Main and Eureka, opposite Bernadette's house, was - at first - Kaplan's Grocers. We didn't shop there. We shopped at Morris (Burack) Market, a block down from Kaplan's. I have no idea why. Maybe because the folks who owned and ran Burack's - Mr. and Mrs. Old School Litvak Jews - and their American daughter Sylvia and her husband Paul Bornstein (plus their sons, when they got old enough to put cans on shelves or man the cash register) were so pleasant and friendly. Whenever she visited Worcester, my German Chicago grandmother would make a beeline to Morris Market and chat up a storm with Mr. and Mrs. B in her German and the Buracks' Yiddish. I have no idea what they talked about, but my grandfather had been a butcher who owned a grocery store, so it may have been that.

Anyway, although it was about 90 seconds closer, we didn't shop at Kaplan's, which moved out before we left Nanny's decker for digs of our own. (The Kaplans had two daughters, roughly the ages of my sister Kath and me. They had long curly black hair and pierced ears. I thought they were Gypsies.)

Kaplan's was replaced by Pat's Laundromat. At one point, when the washing machine at Bernadette's house was on the fritz, she was sent over to Pat's to do the laundry. I went with. We screwed things up, forgetting to put detergent in the front loader, opening the door after the cycle had begun, and getting water all over the floor. I can't recall whether there was an attendant, or we went back to Bernadette's to get her much older brother to bail us out.

What else was in the neighborhood: Vic the barber, the Paree Beauty Salon, the Maincrest Pharmacy, and Empire Granite, which sold cemetery monuments from their front yard. 

So, my neighborhood: CHECK! (Blue collar: CHECK!)

And what was going on in my little blue-collar neighborhood on a beautiful spring day last week?

An ICE raid in which all sorts of feds - ICE, ATF, Customs and Border Patrol, whoever/whatever (many, on a warm and sunny day, wearing black neck warmers pulled up to their noses to help disguise themselves) -  converged on a home on Eureka Street to, warrantless, and explaining nothing to anyone, seized a woman and roughly hustled her into an unmarked van to be spirited away to wherever, for however long. 

Activists had gotten a head's up on the raid and had gathered to try to protect the woman. The federales felt threatened, so they whistled in the Worcester police to protect them. (Lots of controversy about how enthusiastically WPD participated in this incident.)

Predictably, mayhem ensued, along with the predictable rough handling of the woman being arrested, and her sixteen year old daughter, who in trying to protect her mother, was thrown face down to the ground. She was arrested, as were a Worcester City Councillor and a woman running for School Committee.

Ain't nobody, including us bleeding hearts, who wants to keep hardened criminals, drug-dealers, "bad hombres," bad mujeres, and anyone else who's in the US illegally AND crime-spreeing to stay here. 

But plenty of us are scared shitless of how common these unwarranted procedures are happening, often with an unwarranted degree of force and cruelty. 

Whatever this woman on Eureka Street was up to - unless she was housing an arsenal, running a meth lab, or human trafficking - does the government really need such a thuggish show of force to take her in?

A few months ago, a Tufts grad student, Rumeysa Ozturk, was kidnapped off the streets and spirited away - without being told where she was going or why, without being able to contact a lawyer before she was shipped off - when it appears that her only offense was co-signing an editorial in the Tufts student newspaper, asking for better treatment of those in Gaza. (Late last week, a federal judge ordered her release, and the Trump forces of darkness surprisingly complied.)

And Goebbels think, look, and act alike Stephen Miller, is calling for suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. A writ allows people who are being detained to go before a judge to figure out whether their detention is lawful. The writ of habeas corpus doesn't just work for members of MS-13. It works for those who've been shipped off to a concentration camp in El Salvador who aren't gang members. And for the woman on Eureka Street. And, oh yes, for those of us who are US citizens. Or it should. 

It's all so frightening. 

There was an excellent (depressing but excellent) essay in The New York Times last week entitled "How Will We Know When We Have Lost Our Democracy?" In it, Steven LevitskyLucan Way and Daniel Ziblatt write:

Authoritarianism is harder to recognize than it used to be. Most 21st-century autocrats are elected. Rather than violently suppress opposition like Castro or Pinochet, today’s autocrats convert public institutions into political weapons, using law enforcement, tax and regulatory agencies to punish opponents and bully the media and civil society onto the sidelines. We call this competitive authoritarianism — a system in which parties compete in elections but the systematic abuse of an incumbent’s power tilts the playing field against the opposition. It is how autocrats rule in contemporary Hungary, India, Serbia and Turkey and how Hugo Chávez ruled in Venezuela.

The descent into competitive authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarms. Because governments attack their rivals through nominally legal means like defamation suits, tax audits and politically targeted investigations, citizens are often slow to realize they are succumbing to authoritarian rule. More than a decade into Mr. Chávez’s rule, most Venezuelans still believed they lived in a democracy.

How, then, can we tell whether America has crossed the line into authoritarianism? We propose a simple metric: the cost of opposing the government. In democracies, citizens are not punished for peacefully opposing those in power. They need not worry about publishing critical opinions, supporting opposition candidates or engaging in peaceful protest because they know they will not suffer retribution from the government. In fact, the idea of legitimate opposition — that all citizens have a right to criticize, organize opposition to and seek to remove the government through elections — is a foundational principle of democracy.

Under authoritarianism, by contrast, opposition comes with a price. Citizens and organizations that run afoul of the government become targets of a range of punitive measures: Politicians may be investigated and prosecuted on baseless or petty charges, media outlets may be hit with frivolous defamation suits or adverse regulatory rulings, businesses may face tax audits or be denied critical contracts or licenses, universities and other civic institutions may lose essential funding or tax-exempt status, and journalists, activists and other critics may be harassed, threatened or physically attacked by government supporters.

When citizens must think twice about criticizing or opposing the government because they could credibly face government retribution, they no longer live in a full democracy.

By that measure, America has crossed the line into competitive authoritarianism. The Trump administration’s weaponization of government agencies and flurry of punitive actions against critics has raised the cost of opposition for a wide range of Americans.

A few weeks ago, I went to make a donation to the legal fund for pro-Palestinian activist, and Columbia grad student, Mahmoud Khalil. As I was about to press the button, I thought, hey, this could get me on an enemy of the state list. The donation was fifty bucks. I'm a nobody. But it's not unimaginable to think that the government could start hassling people they decide are a bit too mouthy when it comes to their feelings about the current regime. They'll start with the big guys, of course: cancel their Global Entry card; hassle them at the border to see if they have a meme on their phone that depicts Trump as the rotter that he is; set up specious investigations that go nowhere but cost the victim a ton of time and money. But eventually they'll run out of the big guys and start coming after the little folks, too.

I'm a nobody.

And I honestly don't know what I'll do if and when the stakes get higher. If and when they start hassling, arresting, brutalizing the nobodies. 

For now, I'm shooting my mouth off, sending small donations where needed, supporting democracy, and heading out with my 12" x 16" whiteboard to the demonstrations that are occurring with not enough frequency to my liking. (I got a whiteboard so I could keep up with the outrages in real time.)

Democracy is under attack! What do we do? Stand up, fight back!

They say that if you wonder what you would have been doing in the early stages of Hitler's regime, it's what you're doing now. 

I'm not going to flatter myself for being some big, brave super hero. I have a lot more time on my hands than others to do a little standing up, a little fighting back. And I actually don't believe that we're going to get to Hitlerian Holocaust levels here. But Argentina in the 1970's? Orban's Hungary? Yeah, I can see it. 

And if it actually came to putting my life on the line, I'd probably sit down, shut up.

Hopefully it never comes to that...

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

Article by Luke O'Neil of Welcome to Hell World on the Eureka Street incident. 

Image Source: This week in Worcester.

One big, sordid mess

My alma mater has been in the news lately. 

And the news that's been in the news is not good.

I'm a graduate of Emmanuel College in Boston. Class of 1971. So, an old girl who was there when the college was all women. And when the comparable Catholic men's colleges like Holy Cross and Providence College were still all men. 

The school had been founded in 1919 to serve the daughters of Boston's large and fertile Catholic population. Initially, the majority of the students were the daughters of Irish immigrants, with a smattering of Italian and Lithuanian/Polish immigrant daughters thrown in. Fast forward to when I was a student there, and the school had a slightly broader geographic reach - the vast majority of "Emmas" (as we called ourselves) were from New England, New York, and New Jersey - but the demographics were largely the same: overwhelmingly white Irish Catholic (with those same smatterings), only now we were the granddaughters, not the daughters of immigrants. 

Students came primarily from Catholic high schools which had long been - and still are - feeder schools for Catholic colleges. (Wouldn't want your kiddos to lose the faith now, would you? 'Cause that'd never happen at a Catholic school...)

There were an awful lot of very bright girls at Emmanuel, young woman who, if they hadn't been fed into the Catholic college maw, would have found themselves right at home in the Seven Sisters, the Ivies, and other top schools. 

When I was there, Emmanuel had about 1,600 students - 400 per class.

But then the Holy Crosses and Providence Colleges of the world went co-ed, and a lot of the girls who'd been fed into the Catholic women's colleges were now being fed into co-ed schools.

The school's population plummetted. I think there were some years in the 1980's when there were fewer than 100 students in a class. 

Emmanuel almost went under, but thanks to the vision and management genius of its long-term President, Sister Janet Eisner - and to Emmanuel's prime location in the Fenway area of Boston - the school has survived. Among other things, Emmanuel went co-ed, and is now a good enough little Catholic college along the lines of local schools like Merrimack and Stonehill. 

I have no idea what the demographics there are now, but I believe there are a lot more first-gen-to-college, a lot more minorities. For the most part, the kids of the women in my class who I was friendly with had children who went to better known schools that are higher up the academic food chain than Emmanuel College. 

Still, the school survives. 

I haven't been an especially active alumna. 

In truth, I wish I'd been fed into one of those higher up the food chain colleges. I got a decent enough education and made a couple of sterling life-long friends, but I wish I'd gone to a school that was more diverse. (Seriously, folks, when I went to Emmanuel the food service people told us that we were the only college they managed where the students drank more tea than coffee. This was, of course, thanks to the Irish heritage shared by so many of us.) I wish I'd gone to a school that was more challenging, and, yes - snob warning - more prominent. Someplace where the name of the school was shorthand for "someone who goes here is probably pretty intelligent." (I took care of that by making sure my grad schools were top of the line. I started out in a PhD program at Columbia - back in the day before Columbia folded and became a big mess - and, after figuring out that a political science PhD was not for me, went to business school at MIT.) I also wish I'd gone to a school with men. (Also made up for that with Columbia and MIT.)

As I said, I haven't been an especially active alumna. That is until a decade ago when I got involved in the Dorothy Day Lecture Series, which, each April, hosts a speaker on a social justice topic. The women on the DDL committee - most of them from my class or class-adjacent - are all wonderful: deeply compassionate, deeply empathetic, highly accomplished, highly intelligent. I was friendly-ish with a couple of them when we were in school, but now I count all of them as friends. 

We were just coming off the high of another successful lecture - this one on Gaza, the most fraught (and controversial) topic we've ever taken on - when the article in the online Boston Globe appeared, at pretty much the same time I found a midnight email from Beth Ross, Emmanuel's president, giving the alumni/ae a head's up on what was just breaking:

A 29-year-old assistant admissions administrator at Emmanuel College who allegedly offered to pay prospective students “for some fun” was arrested last week on charges of attempted sex trafficking of a minor, according to federal prosecutors. (Source: Boston Globe)

Jacob Henriques, an Emmanuel graduate (gulp!), offered one prospective student $400 for that fun, and also asked her whether he wanted him to share some porn videos and pictures with her. And then he sent them anyway. The young woman, a 17 year old senior who had just committed to attending EC, had no idea who he was or how he'd gotten her number. Turns out, he'd gotten her number from the admissions system, which he, of course, had access to. (He had met her on a campus tour.)

The young woman blocked him from texting, so he tried emailing her. (He approached at least three other prospective students on well.) Among other things, Henriques had asked her whether she was up for participating in a "gangbang." 

Not clear how Emmanuel first found out about these incidents, but I'm guessing a parent contacted the school and they either recognized the phone number, or figured out the Henriques had had contact with the students, and had accessed the systems to get info on them. But the school jumped on it right away - no cover up, no handle it internally nonsense.

Here's part of Emmanuel's statement:

“Because the safety and well-being of all is our highest priority, and consistent with established policies, we took strong action upon learning of this issue, immediately contacting law enforcement and launching an investigation that led to the prompt termination of the individual,” the statement said. “We have cooperated fully with authorities from the moment this matter came to our attention and will continue to do so.”

Henriques has been fired, but that's the least of his worries. 

If convicted as charged, Henriques faces the possibility of life in prison with a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years, [US Attorney Leah B.] Foley’s statement said. 

Yes, the US Department of Justice is after this guy. (Good to see the locals are focused on something other than maliciously going after those who Trump perceives as the enemy.)

My first thoughts are with the victims of this perverted moron. I know that today's kids are a lot less naive, a lot more sophisticated, than the girls of my era. But still, inviting young women to a paid-for "gangbang?" How colossally sordid.

My second thoughts are with Emmanuel and its reputation.

This story has been all over the place, from local coverage to The New York Times, People Magazine, network TV news, and (no surprise) the scurrilous rag that is the New York Post. When I was in my doctor's waiting room the other day, they had a local news show on the TV. Flowing along the chyron was a headline about this story. 

I can only imagine how the students, faculty, and adminstrators feel about this. 

I can only imagine that a lot of folks - not just the immediate victims - are rethinking Emmanuel College as an option.

Everyone's tried so hard to keep the school going when so many small, underendowed, small liberal arts colleges are going under. I have never been all that optimstic about the school's chance for survival, and have long thought that "the play" for Emmanuel is to become part of Boston College, providing that (also Catholic) school with an urban (highly valuable) campus. Maybe BC would relo their nursing school there? Emmanuel is in a very hospital-heavy area. It would make sense. To me anyway.

All I know is that these young woman didn't deserve to get swept into this big, sordid mess. And my alma mater didn't deserve it, either.

Pink Slip to mommy blogger: you stink!

We've all done things that we're ashamed of. Hell, I still feel guilty about a mean thing I did to one of my best friends when we were in second grade. This was almost 70 years ago. What I did was write a note that I left on Susan's back stairs that said "You stink." And I signed it "Ginny Whelan." (I wasn't a mean kid, and maybe that's why this one sticks with me. I don't remember why I did this - seven year olds aren't especially deep thinkers. What did Susan do that hurt my feelings, ticked me off? She was another very nice, un-mean girl. I probably chose to use Ginny's name because she a) had a cute older brother (something I totally coveted), and b) a playhouse in her backyard (ditto).)

Sure, I've done worse things along the way - sinnier sins, wrongier wrongs - but the point is that we all have, if the Catholic catechism illustration is factual, spots on the milk bottles that are our immortal souls.

So of course it is understandable that mommy blogger Amanda Harding has done something that she felt the need to fess up to in one of her mommy posts. (For some reason, her article came up on my Bluesky timeline or in general Google. It's not like a pay a ton of attention to mommy bloggers.) 

The title of Harding's article was a true confession: I used to return everything I bought from Target. I thought it was the ultimate parenting hack — I was wrong.

Even if you weren't raised Catholic, confession can be good for your milk bottle soul. You go, mommy blogger! You go!

What Amanda Harding had been doing, over the course of three years, was taking advantage of a no-questions-asked Target return policy, and was getting her money back on every item she used only once.

Matching pink and white family outfits (mommy, daddy, five kids) for a mall portrait? Harding spent hundreds of dollars kitting the fam out. Trouble was, after the portrait was snapped, the kiddos didn't like the clothing. The girls' shirts were itchy and tight; the boys didn't like pink. 

She "didn't have the energy" to try to unload the stuff on Facebook Marketplace, so she thought she'd try just returning it. Bingo! She got her money back.

A new hobby was born: buy stuff at Target, use it once, and get your money back. No need to hang on to those Halloween costumes, which for some reason, a younger kid wouldn't be willing and able to wear next Halloween. Return it, already. Special gear neeed for "school spirit days?" Harding wanted her kids to have new and shiny stuff. So buy it, use it once, bring it back. Seriously, I know I'm old, but I was one of five kids and stuff got - get this - used multiple times, and by more than one kid. Has Harding never heard of the idea of hand-me-downs? Do they no longer exist? 

Another return: 

I discovered a cake stand and pitcher we used for my daughter's 11th birthday brunch. If we had another party, she'd want a new aesthetic, and the items would continue to gather dust. I returned both and got back $20. (Source: AOL. The original article appeared on Business Insider)

Aside to mommy blogger: if your child wants a new aesthetic for her next birthday brunch, why not have her create some placemats. Or something.  

Anyway, Harding had a rationale for her behavior:

I thought the hack was ridding my house of clutter and keeping my spending low....[It was] the ultimate decluttering technique.

Well, she's right. She was de-cluttering her house and keeping expenses down. But how is this hack anything other than theft.

You can declutter your home by donating or yard-sale-ing the clutter you don't want or need. You can keep your spending low by not buying crap like a one-time cake stand to begin with. (And how's this for a cake stand hack: cover a box with wrapping paper, preferably wrapping paper salvaged for a carefully-unwrapped gift.)

As time went by, Harding had a discovery:

I found that buying, using, and returning items alleviated some of the financial and organizational mental load of parenthood.

Puhl-eeze. Although I didn't have kids, I do know that having them brings with it a "financial and organizational mental load." And I'm sure it's quite exacting. But life in general - whether you've got kiddos or not -  brings with it a "financial and organizational mental load." And one way to alleviate the load is to stop buying crap you don't need.

There was no end to Harding's rationalization of her behavior.

While she did understand that, because she kept buying new items with the money she got for her returns, she really wasn't achieving much by way of financial benefits. But she felt that her stategy suceeded in that it kept her from overbuying. I.e., to enjoy the use of all the stuff she wanted, if not for her returns, she would have been spending more. Thus her reutrn policy was contributing to keeping the family budget in check. 

And then, Harding had an epiphany. 

"Just pick something! We can always return it," my daughter yelled at her sister in a store once.

That's when my "greatest parenting hack" sounded more like a dirty little secret coming out of my 11-year-old daughter's mouth.

Out of the mouths of babes!

...my kid made me feel ashamed of the hack, and I realized I was misusing a loophole.

...That moment forced me to reflect on the integrity of this behavior. Returning things felt like the responsible thing to do. But was it? Is buying something with the intent to use it and return it wrong?

I didn't want to teach my kids to think that when they grew up, they could buy whatever they wanted as long as there was a loophole.  

Yes, Amanda Harding, mommy blogger. Good mommy blogger. You've seen the light! You want your kids to be honest. You want to parent by example. Yes, yes, yes!

So has she quit her dishonest ways?

That would be a 'no.'

Instead, she confesses:

I've continued returning most items I buy at Target.

But, she continues:

...I'm trying to slow down with the returns and set a good example for my kids. Now, when I head to Target, I try not to bring any items [to return] with me.

What is wrong with this woman? She realizes that what she's doing is wrong, and setting a bad example for her children, and yet she persists with her dishonest behavior. And writes about it, thinking - thinking what? that this will place her in a good light? That her kids will admire her more?

Target does "reserve the right to deny returns, refunds, and exhanges, including but not limited to prevent fraud, suspected fraud, or abuse." (This is from their website, found in an editor's note on the article.)

Hope they clamp down on this mommy-blogging fraud.

And I've got a message for Amanda Harding: You stink! And I'm going to sign my own name to it, not Ginny Whelan's!

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

Source of image: Party Happier.

DOGE Bro Wannabe

Alex Shieh is a sophomore at Brown University.

So he's obviously a pretty smart kid, with the requisite grades, AP courses, SAT's, and enough of the eye-catching goodies to catch the eye of someone in the Brown admissions office. Enough goodies to differentiate him from the tens of thousands of pretty smart kids who apply to Brown every year, with against-the-odds chance of acceptance. 

From his LinkedIn profile, I'd say that Shieh's main eye-catcher was so-founding a (now defunct) political poll while he was a student at Phillips Academy. 

Since his acceptance at Brown, he has also contributed a couple of op-ed pieces to The Boston Globe. Topic: the need to get rid of affirmative action in university admissions, which Shieh argues disadvantages Asian-Americans. 

He's certainly entitled to his opinion.

And he's certainly entitled as well.

Yes, he's the grandchild of immigrants. But they came to the States to get their PhDs and stayed. And he went to Phillips Academy, an elite prep school that's a feeder to elite colleges and universities. (Not that this guarantees acceptance, any more than legacy status, athletic prowess, celebrity parents, or a family that can afford to name a building guarantees acceptance. Okay, maybe naming a building does. But it sure helps to come from a feeder school.)

And Alex Shieh is something of a DOGE Bro Wannabe, who took it upon himself to set up an online publication to track what he deems inefficiencies that contribute mightily to Brown's price tag. (Tuition is a bit over $70K, and when you factor in housing, fees, etc., the tab is a bit over $90K.)

Bloat@Brown is modeled after the Trump administration’s Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency and purports to highlight administrative waste within the University. (Source: Brown Daily Herald)

To help him find all the waste he was looking for, on March 18, Shieh, positioning himself as a reporter for what had been Brown's (long inactive) conservative newspaper:

...Shieh sent emails to approximately 3,800 Brown staff members asking them to “describe what tasks you performed in the past week,” mirroring a similar February email DOGE sent to federal employees. Before Shieh decided to take the site down due to repeated hacks, the AI-powered database featured a search function that returned ratings of “every Brown administrator in three domains: legality, redundancy and bullshit jobs,” according to the website.

He only got a few responses - one of which was "Fuck Off" - but his work caught the eye of the Brown administration, which decided that Shieh was in violation of the student conduct code. 

And, as Shieh was no doubt hoping, he also caught the eye of Elon Musk and "conservative activist Bill Ackman [who] described the effort as “impressive,” lauding its “remarkable” parallels to the Musk-led DOGE."  (Musk you know; Ackman is a billionaire hedgie and big man off campus, going after a number of elite schools that he perceives as anti-Israel. A former supporter of Democrats, Ackman's now a major Trumpean.)

Hoping to catch even more eyes, Shieh has used X to address Trump and "Secretary of Education" Linda McMahon, appealing for their support under the mantle of free speech and transparency. And it looks kinda-sorta like Shieh would like to make a federal case out of things. As in 'look how Brown is going after righteous me; gee, don't they realize that thanks to their DEI, Brown's federal funding is at stake.'

Righteous me claims that his aims are noble.

“I’m trying to help the administration to find people that might be redundant,” Shieh said.

Hmmm. "People that," not "people who?" Sure sounds to me like Shieh just might consider people as inanimate objects, not people as actual living, breathing, sentient human beings. How DOGE-like. (Then there's that posing with the chainsaw.)

“I’m a big fan of cutting wasteful spending,” Shieh, 20, told The Post. “This is no different to what Elon Musk is uncovering in the federal government,” he added, referring to the DOGE head and Senior Advisor to President Donald Trump. (Source: NY Post)

Of course, we've yet to see much detail on all that waste and fraud that DOGE has uncovered. Just stupid stuff like claiming that little kids collecting Social Security is evidence of fraud. (As someone from a family whose kids collected Social Security after our father died, I know up close and personal that this ain't fraud.) And willy-nilly cutting legitimate and important programs like food inspection, veterans' suicide prevention, etc., while all the while treating government employees with wanton cruelty and disregard. (Not saying there isn't any government waste; you just need to go after it more planfully, and involve those who actually know how government works and what programs do. And, yes, government does work. Or did until the current regime was installed. And, yes, there's probably plenty of stupid spending at Brown. How about college and university tuition madness as the topic for another post?)

Anyway, there went Alex Shieh, with his so called "journalistic inquiry," asking Brown employees: 

...“explain [their] role,” “describe what tasks [they] performed in the past week,” and “explain how Brown students would be impacted if [their] position was eliminated.”

Seriously, who wants to emulate members of the DOGE brigade, those soul-less, heartless, empathy-less punks?

Oh, I know. Some smart kid who wants to catch the eye of Trump, Musk, et al., and gain notoriety - fame and fortune, of course - at the expense of decency. Why would any Brown employee have to explain themselves to this tool?

Shieh's hearing is tomorrow. I'm sure he'll get what he's hoping for, i.e., any kind of slap on the wrist that he can throw into the maw of the Alex Shieh publicity engine.

What was it that one Brown employee told him. Oh, yeah, Fuck Off!

Eau de Peanut Butter Cookie?

I'm involved with two charitable organizations - a large day shelter, and an organization that helps families in need around the holidays - that get tons of donations. Literally tons. 

And over the many years I'vebeen involved with these outfits, I've seen a lot of wacky donations come through the doors.

A pair of red velvet loafers with the Harvard crest on it. (Fight fiercely, Harvard homeless person, wearing those suckers on the street.) An ugly-ass pair of jeans with a dragon appliqued on them that turned out to cost $800. (I googled.) An office golf putting set - cup, club, balls. (So on point for an unhoused golfer, or a kid living with their mom and sibs in a single room in an emergency shelter.)

Then there was the five-gallon bucket full of concrete mix. (This was a gift intended for a kiddo who wanted a construction-related toy. It was so heavy, we figured out something was wrong, so we swapped this donation - which came from someone mean and/or crazy - out for a toy dump truck.)

A giant trash bag filled with clean but used thongs. (Yes, you read that right.) Some Independent Pleasure Club of NJ gear. (Turns out, it was part of an all-Black men's basketball league of the early 20th century.) Etc.

Recently, one of "my" organizations received a donation of several thousand 18 oz. bottles of Girl Scount branded NATIVE body wash, Peanut Butter Cookie flavored scented. 

I've never heard of NATIVE brand, but I understand from a member of the fam who has two teenage daughters that it's a thing with the youngs. (NATIVE is owned by P&G, but its brand is "clean:" natural ingredients, no bad chemicals, no animal cruelty involved.)

I did see NATIVE products at CVS the other day, and some of the fragrances sounded fine. I like anything cucumbur or lemon scented. But they were under lock and key, so I took a pass on purchase. 

But peanut butter scented???

I can see why someone might want G.S. Thin Mint. Or Samoas, for the cocoanut fragrance. Or plain vanilla Trefoils. But Peanut Butter cookies? Who wants to smell like a peanut butter cookie.

I grabbed a couple for my niece Caroline, who is going to try to use it to lure her doggo into the shower. (Nora, like most pups, loves peanut butter. Just hope she doesn't try to lick it off herself.)

But, seriously, who, other than perhaps a dog, wants to smell like peanut butter.

Not that there's anything wrong with PB. I love peanut butter and it is one food item that, guaranteed, I will always have on my shelves. With ample backup. 

But as a body wash?

Apparently, the market on this product has spoken. Which is why we now have ton of NATIVE Girl Scout Peanut Butter body wash - and no Thin Mint, no Samoa, no nothing else...

We will, of course, use it. Make that we both will. For the last few years, "my" two groups have done some cross donations. The day shelter got a donation of good-brand sneakers in kid sizes. The holiday charity got a donation of very high end fleeces in 3x and 4x. So we trade back and forth. 

The shelter will give it out to those of our guests who are in permanent housing. (Homeless people aren't going to drag around an 18 oz. bottle of body wash, even if they like the smell of it.) And the holiday-related charity, which mostly gives out toys, always gives out hygiene products as well. (When families come in to sign up, a lot of them will be happy to have it.)

The Girl Scouts aren't the only outfit that NATIVE is in a collab with. There are Dunkin' versions as well: Blueberry Cobbler, Strawberry Frosted, Boston Kreme.

Both the Dunkin' and the Girl Scout NATIVE products sound awful to me. Way too sweet smelling, I'm guessing - even the Thin Mint ones. 

Give me a Dunkin' chocolate honey dip donut p, a Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie (mine are on order) any old day.

But, hey, we never look a gift horse in the mouth. (Unless the gift horse is donating a trash bag full of clean but used thongs.) Someone will be happy to have that body wash.

Thanks for thinking of us!

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Honestly, I can almost, kinda sorta understand people who enjoy hunting. I'm by no means a vegetarian. It may not be my cup of tea, but if someone wants to shoot deer and ducks for home consumption, have at it. And if a hunter wants to go out and cull the herd, killing a few whatevers - deer, wild pigs - to help with wildlife managment. Well, that's fine, too. 

I'm less tolerant when it comes to big game hunting and/or those who go to those big game farms where they put the animal in front of the "hunter" and line up the shot for them, akin to shooting fish in a barrel. 

And when I see one of those big game hunters - looking at you, Don Jr. - sitting there grinning, resting on the carcass of a magnificent animal, maybe holding a tusk or tail, I'm truly nauseated. 

Those dens with the mounted heads of animals gracing the walls, a bear- or leopard-skin rug on the floor? Let's just say I' pretty sure I know who you voted for. Unless, of course, you've had them for, like, forever. After all, in my living room, I proudly display the steer horns that were once over the bar of Worcester's Rogers Brothers Saloon, which went out of biz with Prohibition. (I think that steer horns might have been something of a decorative thing back in the day. While Charles and James Rogers were originally farm boys, when they reached the age of reason they fled the farm town of Barre for the big city lights in Worcester. I don't imagine they roped the steer those horns came from themselves.)

The worst are those who illegally hunt for protected species. When it comes to them, I can't help but thinking WTF is wrong with you.  

Which leads me to a story I saw a few weeks back about a young couple who got nabbed for illegal hunting when, on a flight, they bragged to a couple of fellow passengers about their illegal hunting exploits. And those fellow passengers turned out to be wildlife officers. The officers weren't in uniform, but they did tell Byron Lee Fitzpatrick (24) and Shannon Lee Price (28) what their jobs were. 

Fitzpatrick and Price were apparently not aware that loose lips sink ships, so they kept yacking away about their hobbies.

Specifically, [they revealed] how they had once illegally hunted a mountain lion, and how they were smuggling the skull of an endangered turtle in their carry-on bag. (Source: NY Times)

Not content to brag about their own illegal hunting exploits, the couple went on to implicate the family member who'd gifted them with the sea turtle skull.

And they [also] showed the officers a video of a trophy room that belonged to Mr. Fitzpatrick’s uncle, Harry Vern Fitzpatrick, that had stuffed mountain lions, wolves and a wolverine on display.

When they got off the plane, the couple - after looking around to make sure there were no nosy TSA officers nearby - showed the wildlife officers their sea turtle skull. The sea turtle is:

...a federally listed endangered species that is illegal to possess and transport, according to the agency.

The officers figured that they had probable cause that there was some wildlife criming going on. Enough probably cause to look further into the hunting practices of Fitzpatrick and Price. So they got a search warrant, and: 

The day after the flight, officers arrived to execute a search warrant at the couple’s home in Chico, Calif., and found Mr. Fitzpatrick and Ms. Price processing a deer they had hunted illegally that day, the agency said...

Officers also found mountain lion claws, taxidermied animals including a ringtail cat and a barn owl, an illegally hunted spike buck and several illegally hunted deer with tagging violations, the agency said. Ringtail cats are a protected species in California, and mounted raptors like the barn owl are illegal to possess without state and federal permits. 

Fast forward a year, and Fitzpatrick and Price reached a plea agreement and were assessed fines and "put on one year of probation that bars them from hunting."

The fines were pretty modest - state fines of $1,865 for Fitzpatrick, $1,015 for Price, and $1,000 federal fines for each - but things didn't end with the loose-lipped couple. 

Remember the uncle whose trophy room video they'd shown to the officers?

Uncle Harry's home was searched and he ended up being fined $605 for violating state regulations and put on 6-month probation. 

Bet he was just thrilled that his nephew had ratted him out.

As part of the plea deals, all the contraband animals were forfeited by the defendants, the agency said.

Hah! 

Hah for now, anyway.

What do you want to bet that federal wildlife regulations will get DOGEd away, and that states with protections in place will be threatened with things like, say, the refusal of federal disaster aid, unless they shape up and do what Don Trumpleone wants them to do.

In the meantime, one can only hope that the young folks here - and maybe even near-geezer Uncle Harry - come to their senses and realize that hunting and otherwise messing with endangered species is a pretty low-life way to go.

On the other hand, I hope that these lunkheads don't ever wise up to the fact that sometimes loose lips do sink ships. If they've got more stupid and stupidly illegal things up their sleeves, that is...

LVMH? Quelle horreur!

Last summer, I watched a bit of the Paris Olympics. I wasn't wild about the opening and closing ceremonies, which are normally my favorite parts. I really missed the teams all marching in, as I like to look at (and critique) their costumes. It was hard to see them, given that the teams paraded in via boat, and a lot of them were wearing rain ponchos over their costumes. Quel dommage!

Anyway, I'm enough of a homer - USA! USA! - to keep tabs on the medal counts, and was happy that the US won the most. USA! USA!

What I wasn't aware of was that the medals were designed by Chaumet, a company that's part of LVMH, the French luxury goods group that owns brands like Moët Hennessy and Louis Vuitton. In fact, if I'd been asked, I would have said that the medals were the responsibility of the International Olympic Committee, and that they're the same every time. 

Well, silly unobservant me.

I guess I wasn't paying all that much attention, but:

...in the buildup to the Games, and during the event itself, LVMH was showing off the roles of its expert artisans in crafting the medals. On the second floor of a club it created, just a few yards from the Élysée Palace, the residence of the French president, designers from Chaumet proudly explained the yearlong project to design the medals in secrecy. At the heart of each was a piece of the Eiffel Tower.

Chaumet had never previously designed a sporting medal, and of the three they were asked to make, the bronze was the trickiest.

“It’s the most difficult because it’s the most delicate,” Philippe Bergamini, one of Chaumet’s longest serving jewelry designers, told The New York Times at the time.

The company tweaked the designs hundreds of times until a special committee of athletes and Olympic officials were in agreement. Designers then joined forces with the mint, a French institution that has produced money and other precious objects since the Middle Ages. 

Each medal took 15 days to complete, from stamping out the design to dipping it in gold, bronze and silver and then finishing it with a coat of varnish.(Source: NY Times)

All well and good until it wasn't so well and good.  

Within days after the completion of the Olympics, a number of the athletes started reporting that their medals were flaking and crumbling. The athletes began asking for replacements.

The problem was largely with the bronze medals. Figures, no? Not that it's not plenty impressive to win a bronze medal at the Olympics, but doesn't it just figure that the least of the medals would be the junkiest. Bronze to begin with, and now this...

Monnaie de Paris, the French mint which collaborated with Chaumet/LVMH on the medal - Chaumet doing the designing, the mint doing the manufacturing - has taken full reponsibility for the fiasco. Seems like the deterioration is due to a problem with the varnish, which had recently been changed to comply with EU "regulations banning the use of chromium trioxide, a toxic chemical used to prevent metal from rusting." The mint has now modified the varnish recipe, which will be used for the replacement medals. 

Hopefully, the new varnish will work. Sure, if the worst thing to happen to an Olympic athlete is that their medal crumbles in their hands, they'll have led a pretty charmed life. Still, who wants to see the symbol of their accomplishment in ruins, especially when I'm sure that for plenty of these athletes - especially the ones whose careers are more amateur than monetized - showing off their prizes to friends and family is a big part of the Olympic payoff.

Anyway, LVMH has been just fine with the Monnaie de Paris taking the blame.  

For LVMH, the Olympics were a coming-out party. It was a major foray into sports, and a moment to promote the company in a way that it had previously avoided, preferring instead to showcase its individual brands.

“Obviously because it’s the medal, it’s super high profile and everyone is asking the question how does this happen and especially coming from LVMH, whose raison d’être is quality and precision,” said Michael Payne, who devised the I.O.C.’s original marketing strategy.

If your "raison d’être is quality and precision," then you'd think that LVMH would have insisted on more oversight throughout the process. Imagine if your Louis Vuitton bag fell apart, and LVMH pointed its finger to an outsourced manufacturer? (I have no idea whether Vuitton bags are produced in-house or not.) Imagine if you popped your bottle of Moët and a mouse head popped out with the bubbles, and LVMH blamed the bottler?

I'm pretty sure that Moët is bottled by Moët; just making a point here. And the point is that the LVMH brand is pretty darned precious to them. Not that the Monnaie de Paris is blameless - you'd think they would have time-tested the new varnish formula a bit - but you'd also think LVMH would have paid a bit more attention to something as visible as an Olympic medal.

Sacre bleu! (Sacre bronze?) Quelle horreur!

Un-fill 'er up!

When I was in high school, I remember two girls in my school having "nose jobs." Both of them did have rather large noses, and both were from "monied" families. Or at least my definition of being "monied," which basically meant you lived in a parish with colonial and tudor homes, and no mingy little ranch or puny Cape Cod homes, let alone three deckers.

They had their surgeries during school vacation weeks, and came back with large bandages across their noses and the remnants of black eyes.

At the time, I thought the idea of having a nose job was weird. Sure, both S and P had large noses (what would have been referred to as "schnozzes," but I never could understand why it mattered all that much. Their noses weren't disfiguring. They were just, well, large.

But I always was slow on the uptake when it came to understanding all the judgement calls about certain physical attributes (mostly of women).

Having big feet? Huh? A big knock on Jackie Kennedy was that she wore a size 10 shoe. Sure, the fact that her foot was narrow - 2A  -  somewhat mitigated the insult to mankind that was a size 10. But big feet: heavens forbid! (By the time I was in eighth grade, I also wore a size 10. 4A. Even narrower than Jackie's! Even harder to find shoes that fit. Still: big feet! What a terrible curse, even if cool shoes were available in your size. 

But big feet were the least of my sins against beauty.

It was bad to be short-waisted. And I was short-waisted. I was an adult before I realized that short-waisted pretty much equalled long-legged, which was a good thing. (Cue up the wolf-whistles.) And even though this revelation got me off the hook as far as beeing a lesser woman because I was short-waisted, I never truly got what the big deal was.

Wearing glasses? Men seldom make passes, etc. Glasses were for the best friend of the pretty girl, not for the pretty girl who was going to get the cute fella. (Needless to say, I wore glasses, and did so until I was 17 and spent a lot of my summer earnings from the shoe factory on contact lenses.) 

And thin lips? Forget about it? You are just so not invited to the beauty club! I've never been all that much of a makeup wearer, but - other when it was required when I was a Big Boy waitress, I've never worn lipstick. Spend time trying to draw an upper lip? What a waste of time!

At least I didn't wear braces which, in my circle were only for those who had some sort of dental deformity that was going to impede you from eating normally My brother Tom had a front tooth that came in almost perpendicular to the rest of his teeth. He was the only one in our family who wore braces. Today, we all would have been likely candidates due to crowded lower teeth and oddly spaced top front teeth. 

Anyway, when I was growing up, it almost seemed as if not being conventionally pretty (and petite, and dainty, and had perfect eyesight and perfect lips, and average sized feet) was an offense against nature. Or at least the swath of nature that men comprised.

To be considered the perfect embodiment of womenhood you had to be pretty. Even as a kid, I thought it was dumb that pretty always seemed to trump intelligence, kindness, and good humor when women were beeing weighe and found wanting.

Then there was plastic surgery, which was something you heard about occasionally. Something rich folk. Something Hollywood. Mostly it meant a face lift, something that aging actresses had when they got a bit jowly and/or wrinkly. 

Who could blame movie stars for wanting to stay pretty? But normal, everyday people didn't get any plastic surgery beyond a nose job. 

Then fast forward a few decades and all sorts of people were having all sorts of work done. Sometimes a face lift to get rid of the saggy-baggy look, sometimes a boob job in which sacks of goop that turned out to be not so great for you were inserted in your breats to augment them.

A lot what was going on, cosmetic enhancment-wise, didn't mean going under the knife. It meant getting jabbed by a needle and having something that wasn't there before get stuff injected in. 

Botox freezes your skin so that your frown lines and crows' feet don't show. 

And then fillers became the thing. Lips, cheeks, hands, noses...Whever it looked like you could use some sculpting, some plumper-upping, some boost. Fillers have been around for quite a while. In the late 1800's there were paraffin was injected. (Didn't work very well.) And each decade seemed to bring with it a new advance. But it was when hyaluronic acid became the filler around the turn of this century, fillers really took off. And took off among the younger set who wanted the sort of facial perfection they saw from beauty influencers online.

So the fill 'er up culture took off.

But now what's increasingly in demand are filler rerversals. 

Seems that while fillers were supposed to disolve, they didn't always do so, or did so only partially. After years of getting fillers, and having them repeatedly topped off, folks were noticing that they had all that gel-like crud accumulating in their noses, lips, chins, or wherevers. And it didn't look all that good.

Ashely Stobart is a beauty influence. (Sorry, Ashley, but it's absurd enough typing the words beauty influcence, let alone actually being one.) After years of fillers, her face was looking puffy and "off." 

She decided to get her fillers reversed, but dissolving more than a decade's worth of substances she had in her face left her with sagging skin. So she opted to get a face-lift at age 34.

She's not alone. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons said that while the overwhelming majority of facelifts are still among people over 50, their members have observed an increase among people in their 40s and younger. (Source: ABC News)

Here was someone who started playing around with getting injected with foreign substances in her 20's - when she probably looked perfectly fine, or imperfectly fine anyway -  looking for a reversal in her 30's. Which turned out to be something of a nightmare.

Even though Stobart had some of her fillers removed already, she said the face-lift surgery was grueling.

"They found a lot of hyaluronic acid, or remnants of some injectable at some point that I had had. They were pushing it out for hours," she told ABC News. "I was in surgery for 9.5 hours in total. That wasn't anticipated because when he opened everything up, it turned out there was still a lot left in there."

But, just like fillers turned out to be, facelifts are there own sort of slippery slope. They only last about 7-10 years or so, 15 years max, and you need to keep having them to keep natural aging at bay. And so you can end up with a frozen face where you don't have any normal expression, and can't even crack a smile. Or, worse, end up like the "Catwoman" Jocelyn Wildenstein (shown in the pictures above) who went from a beautiful young woman to a creature from the beyond who looked god-awful.

I feel bad for these young women who feel like they have to be perpetually pursuing some (false) notion of beauty perfection. Maybe there'll be all sorts of "new and improved" by the time they get older, so they won't end up looking like the Catwoman.

What's wrong with a big nose? Thin lips? Laugh lines? 

Is it such a crime to not be beautiful? (Is it such a crime to just let yourself get old?)

Ever more walkable cities? I'm there for it!

O.

When I travel, my favorite trips are always to cities that are walkable.

In the states, New York, Washington DC, and Chicago are all great walking cities. As is my hometown of Boston. In Europe, Dublin is surprisingly good for walking. Berlin is another walkable city. As is Paris, which combines walkability with what to me is just breathtaking beauty. (Come to think of it, all of these walkable cities are pretty damned attractive, at least if you're in the center-city parts.)

Anyway, it's been a while since I've been to Paris, but on my trips there, I've easily logged 10 miles a day just strolling around soaking it all in.

And now Paris is becoming even more walkable.
On March 23rd, the good citoyens of the City of Light voted to "pedestrianize" 500 city streets, which will greatly increase the Parisian total - from 200 to 700.

Only 4% of voters turned out, but the results were pretty clear: 66% for, 34% against. (Data source: Reuters)

I love this idea, as do the Paris voters - at least the ones who voted. Only one out of three city center Parisians owns a car. In the outer regions, it's two out of three, and they and the suburbanites aren't quite so enthused about the pedestrianization of Paris.

Public transpo doesn't well-serve a lot of those suburban commuters, and the referendum's passage will result in 10,000 fewer inner-city parking places. This is on top of an other 10,000 that have already been removed over the last five years.
But Paris just plain wants to become more pedestrian (and non-car) friendly.

"For the past 25 years we've gradually been reclaiming public space for pedestrian traffic, for gentle traffic, and with 'garden streets', to create lungs within neighbourhoods, the places where we live," Deputy Mayor Patrick Bloche told Reuters ahead of [the March 23rd] vote.

Paris town hall data shows car traffic in the city has more than halved since the Socialists assumed power at the turn of the century.

Mayor Anne-Hidalgo, in office since 2014, has overseen significant transformation in the city's streets. Since 2020, 84 km (52 miles) of cycle lanes have been created and bicycle usage jumped 71% between the end of the COVID-19 lockdowns and 2023, the data shows. (Source: Reuters)

I do have some sympathy for the car commuters, especially those who don't live convenient to public transportation. But car-enablement is not an unalloyed good (think pollution, congestion, etc.). And the world would be better off investing in public transportation than in more highways and parking lots.

The only pedestrianized street in Boston that comes to mind is Newbury Street on spring-summer-fall Sundays when this lively street - lots of shops and restaurants - is closed to car traffic. And the bleek Downtown Crossing district is quasi car free. Boston has also done a lot of experimenting - not always successful and not always popular - with bike lanes. (Seriously, even a non-car person like me knows that, given bike ridership, all the bike lanes they've put in seem like overkill, and some are being discontinued. While a lot folks do seem to use the Bluebikes for short hops and touring, there doesn't seem to have been any great uptick in commuters using bikes. Boston isn't exactly Amsterdam or Stockholm. There isn't a huge bike culture here, and it hasn't been a case of 'if they build it [bike lanes], they [bike commuters] will come.'

If I had a bucket list, getting back to Paris for one last time would be on it. Think I'll wait a few years and see how pedestrianized this beautiful city has become.

Event-not-so-brite. (That AI chat is quite a killer app!)

I've used the Eventbrite app plenty of times in the past to attend events, mostly fundraisers. Once or twice, I couldn't access the ticket I paid for, and I either showed up and they let me in anyway. Or I took the introvert's way out and didn't show up at all. 

But the other night, I really, really, really wanted the ticket, as it was a wonderful gift from my wonderful friend Joyce.

Joyce has always been a terrific cook, and a cooking hobbyist - following certain favorites, buying new cook books, subscribing to food mags, trying new recipes online. Me, less so. A lot less so. I've always been a pretty good baker, but just an OK cook. I'm good at what I do, but haven't tended to venture very far beyond the good at what I do.  But I've gotten more into cooking over the last couple years, becoming more adventurous, often trying out recipes that Joyce has recommended and adding them to my growing repertoire. 

Anyway, the other day, I got an email telling me that Joyce, for a belated Christmas gift, had gifted me with a cooking class this May. An Italian cooking class that sounds quite wonderful. Una classe perfetta, in fact. 

The platform used to sign people up for the class is Eventbrite. 

As I said, I've used Eventbrite plenty of times in the past.

When I got the email about the class, I immediately clicked through to "claim" my gift.

And then the trouble started.

The event, with details, showed up on the Eventbrite app, but when I clicked through to get the ticket itself, which I assumed would show the barcode or QRS needed for admission, this space mushroom was what I saw.

Eventbrite "help" is provided via AI chat. Which might have been fine it it actually was smart enough to provide help. But no...

Instead, I went through an endless doom loop of do-this-do-that chat that took me nowhere.

I reclaimed the gift again. I downloaded an updated version of the phone app. Twice. 

No dice.

I'd click on some link provided - you can access your ticket here, you can contact the organizer (the cooking school) here - and nothing happened. At least nothing helpful happened. I'd end up on a screen and the only recourse was to hit the Ask a Question button, which got me back to the AI bot. Sometimes, the bot had told me that if I clicked on a link it sent me, there'd be a form that I could fill out that would, say, go to a human. Hah, I say hah, hah. Form? What form? A little AI prank, perhaps?

At one point, when asked to repeat some details for the nth time, I asked why they couldn't just refer to the most recent chat. But, no. Each chat was its own little useless monster.

Ingest this, you little $%@!##@&! (At least now I know what the use of symbols in place of an obsenity is called. It's grawlix or an obscenicon. Good to know!)

Anyway, I kept asking whether it was necessary to even have a ticket for such a small event, whether the listing of the event was enough. 

But AI kept insisting that I needed a ticket. 

Via text, I roped Joyce, who lives in Dallas, to step into the support hell fray. She tried a few things to help out, but none of that was working either. (Little did I know until I spoke with her the next day that she had had difficulty signing up and buying the class as a gift, and had spent an hour on her own with AI chat to try to figure out if they had charged her four times for the ticket. It finally suggested that she call her credit card company. A very nice human support rep in India helped her out. Ah, for the sweet, sweet sound of the voice of an actual flesh and blood customer service rep.)

Finally - maybe this was after I asked whether their engine was one of Elon Musk's products - AI told me that some events don't actually issue a ticket. Info which it seems to me it could have conveyed in the early stages of our encounter, not when I'd been on the phone - make that the smartphone, via text - chatting away and getting more an more annoyed.

AI engines can, of course, respond to what I was typing in, doing sentiment analysis, checking my language to determine my emotional tone.

"We know you're frustrated..."

No shit, Sherlock. Was it bringing up Elon Musk's name that did it? I swear to god, I didn't swear once when "communicating" with the AI. Not once. But I'm sure there were plenty of annoyeds and frustrateds in that natural language they could process. Clever of AI to pick up on my temperature - but not so bright to do nothing about it. Save your sympathy, I wanted to type in. Just give me an email or phone number, or even a form, that will put me in touch with a human.

Well, that never happened.

Meanwhile, Joyce, as the buyer, did have an email for the cooking school, so she wrote to them about the issue, copying me. I quickly followed up with an email describing my experience with Eventbrite non-support. The cooking school person got back within minutes, assuring me I was all set (and noting that she had also had negative experiences with what she called Eventbrite's "phony" support. She assured me that my name was on the list. I was good to go. No ticket necessary. Which is kind of what I thought it might be, given that there are only about a dozen folks in the class. But if this had been a large scale event, attended by thousands? What's the recourse then?

It is no exaggeration to say that by the end of my hour+ with Event-not-so-brite's support system, I was having heart palpatations. I almost texted my sister to let her know that if I died that night, Eventbrite's AI chat was responsible.

Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to the class. A new pasta. A new chicken dish. A new veggie dish. A new dessert. 

Mangia!

Book of the Year - Part 3

The last couple of days, I've been making my way through a list of the most popular books, by year from 1945 on. Here's the final decades on the list. (And if you're wondering why I chose to illustrate this post with the cover of a book by Heinrich Böll, from 1949, which was not the most popular book of the year, the reasons are a) year of my birth; b) my favorite writer of all the authors on the list for those 80 years worth of most popular books. Just so you know...)

In 1995, the "It" bok was Wicked: Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Never read, and no desire to. But Gregory Maguire is a local guy - lives in Concord, Mass - and has a incredibly interesting life story. So good for him! (Did enjoy the 2024 movie.) I did read Jon Krakauer's 1996 book Into the Wild. Talk about a wild story..."Enjoy" might not be the right world, but I always find the subjects that Krakauer takes on to be fascinating. 

This type of work is not usually my reading jam, but in 1997, I gobbled up Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. And all the follow on Harry Potter's as well. Surprised myself, that's for sure. Until I read Demon Copperhead last year, I'd never read any Barbara Kingsolver. But her 1998 The Poisonwood Bible is definitely on my to-read list. 1999 was apparently the year of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a book I wasn't familar with. But based on its description as a book about a high school introvert, I'd probably have enjoyed it. (Signed, a well-compensated introvert.)

In 2000, Dave Eggers was being a genius without me. Never read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But it does sound interesting. The plot, anyway. And I may check out a later Eggers work: a satirical novel about Donald Trump. Maybe. In 2001, I did try reading Life of Pi.  But years ago, when sitting in bed reading Ciderhouse Rules, I gave myself permission for the first time to stop reading a book I reallly, really, really wasn't enjoying. So much for Life of Pi. At one point, I was a Jeffrey Eugenides fan, so I remember liking his 2002 novel Middlesex. And I'll admit that, while Dan Brown's no one's definition of a good writer, in 2003, along with everyone else in the world, I was reading and enjoying The Da Vinci Code.

I think I read 2004's Gilead. If not, it is near the top of a book pile in my bedroom, and once I start in on it, I should be able to figure out whether I've already read it. And I know that, in 2005, I read The Year of Magical Thinking. But I don't remember whether I liked it or not. (A little Joan Didion, IMHO as a reader, goes a long way.) 2006: The Emperor's Children. Check! 

The next couple of years were YA ones. In 2007, it was Thirteen Reasons Why, which I've never heard of, and, thus never read. But in 2008, just as I'd gobbled up the Harry Potter series, I gobbled up The Hunger Games books, which I actually liked better than the Potters. 

I didn't quite buy it, but I definitely got a kick out of 2009's The Help. In 2010, I read about The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks in The New Yorker. But I never read the book. And I am a bit embarrassed to admit that, in 2011, I read the spectacularly cheesy and awful Fifty Shades of Grey. Once again, proof that you don't need to be a good writer to be popular. (I was visiting a friend and she handed it to me. And, yes, I did read it. But, no, I haven't seen the movie.) 

It was a corny tear-jerker, but in 2012, I liked The Fault in Our Stars. Sniff, sniff, sniff. Hand me a Kleenex, please. Higher up the literary food chain, in 2013, I was reading (and enjoying) the way overly-complex The Goldfinch. I know that in 2014, everyone was raving about All the Light We Cannot See. As someone who has been reading an awful lot of books, since I was in grammar school, about World War II, you'd think this one would have been right up my alley. But I didn't buy it for a New York, let alone a Paris, minute. 2015's most popular read, The Girl on the Train, was a book I did enjoy. Right about the time Trump was first elected in 2016, I found The Underground Railroad way too harrowing to deal with. Post the first Trump era, I picked it up again and - although I usually don't do magical realism - I LOVED IT. 

And while, in 2017, I may not have loved Little Fires Everywhere, I really liked it. 2018's An American Marriage - an Oprah Book - is a novel I've never heard of. But it sounds good and I'll put it on my look out for list. I will admit that the 2019 thriller, The Silent Patient, has an interesting premise - a woman shoots her husband in the face and her therapist tries unsuccessfully to figure out what motivated her to do the deed. But not enough that I want to read it. 

Somehow, in 2020, while every other person I know was reading, it, I somehow missed Where the Crawdads Sing. I'd watch the movie, but I think it's on Hulu, which I don't subscribe to. 2021 brought us The Four Winds, but I'm not a big Kristin Hannah fan, so I took a pass on that one. The list ends with 2022's pick, It Ends With Us, which I didn't read. I didn't read It Starts With Us, either.  

There were plenty of popular books in 2023 and 2024. Here are some of the ones I read.

2023: Tom Lake, Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, So Late in the Day. 

2024: Tell Me Everything, James, The Woman Behind the Door.

My vote for 2003 would be the Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. As I've mentioned, I'm usually not a magical realism kind of reader, but I loved this. For 2024, I've got a tie between James, the reimagined telling of Huck Finn, and The Woman Behind the Door (part of Roddy Doyle's Paula Spencer trilogy, which I thought was fabulous; or, as he Irish might say, fecking brilliant).  

That's it for my three part books report.