I'm taking my Benin Bronzes back, so there!

You've heard the old saw before. There are variants, but it's something along the lines of the first generation works in the factory, so the second generation can be doctors, so the third generation can be artists. Or something like that. 

So I give you Robert "Robin" Lehman, Junior.

Admittedly, when I'm talking about Robin Lehman, I'm off by a generation. It was his great-grandfather who founded Lehman Brothers, the late (and maybe lamented by some folks) investment banking firm that gulped its last in 2008. And Robin was the first gen not to run Lehman Bros, which had been head by his grandfather and father. Those gents, while running the family biz, had also been avid art collectors. So Robin clearly inherited the art jones, as well as the fortune that enabled him to collect art, make art (e.g., glass paperweights in the likenesses of great composers), and make documentary films. It's the art collecting, and the art donating, and the art un-donating that Robin Lehman's been in the recent news for. 

While the generation rise (fall?) from money makers to art makers - or art collectors - may be a bit off from the original proverb, it still holds that the further down in the family tree, and the more money shaking off that tree, the more likely you are going to get to do whatever you damned want without having to worry about paying the rent. (Note: Robin Lehman's four children are either artists themselves, or art-adjacent: as far as I can tell, two are artists, one runs an art gallery, and one runs Robin Lehman's glass gallery, where I guess he sells those famous composer paperweights. Of course I'm a tad bit jelly? Who wouldnt be?)

Anyway, Robin Lehman was in the news in late April because of a kertuffle over some art work - the Benin Bronzes, artifacts from what is now Nigeria - which he pledged to Boston's Museum of Fine Art (MFA) a decade ago. 

...and they have been displayed ever since in a dedicated gallery just off the museum’s central rotunda. But the provenance of the work has always been a problem: It’s well known that many of the sculptures were plundered during a raid of the West African Kingdom of Benin by British troops in 1897. (Source: The Boston Globe) 

Oops.

None of this is to say that Robin Lehman had anything to do with the plundering. He acquired the bronzes legitimately, presumably back in the day when the provenance of a work of art didn't worry about whether the art had been legitimately acquired to begin with. Museums and private collections are chocked full of antiquities that were spoils that went to the victors. And in recent decades, there have been moves - some successful, others dragging on - to return the works to their ur sources. Perhaps the most famous looted art pieces are the Elgin Marbles, stripped from the Parthenon in Athens in the early 19th century, and on display in the British Museum now for over 200 years. Who rightly owns them? Greece or England?

More recent controversies are over art stolen from European Jews in the 1930's and 1940's. (Last year, an Egon Schiele portrait which had been legitimately purchased - at the time, and so he thought - by Robin Lehman's father, was awarded to the heirs of the German Jewish family it had been stolen from.)

Anyway, the MFA has been upfront from the jump where the bronzes (some 30 artifacts) came from:

To exhibit the works the museum created a gallery that included information about the looting and invited the kingdom’s royal leader, the oba, to the opening. (Source: NY Times)

Well, obas come and obas go, and the new oba in town wanted the bronzes to be repatriated. So the MFA, which considers itself a leader when it comes to figuring out the right thing to do with its looted treasures (of which the MFA has plenty), entered into discussion with Lehman and representatives of the new oba. 

Those discussions ended this week with an announcement by the museum that almost all of the items would be going back to Lehman.

The gallery is now closed. The five bronzes where ownership had been transfered to the MFA are on exhibit in the museum's regular collection, and they're still working to finding "a resolution regarding the ownership and display." The warrior on horseback, shown above, was one that's been reclaimed by Lehman. 

Again, Lehman purchased the bronzes legitimately. And god knows there may be tax implications with respect to this donation. But it's all plenty messy.

Reflecting on efforts by the three parties — the Kingdom of Benin, the Museum of Fine Arts and Lehman — to find a mutual resolution regarding the bronzes, [MFA Director Matthew] Teitelbaum said in an interview, “We were constantly trying to align the various interests to achieve an outcome that honored history as well as the museum’s ability to display the works.”

“This was not the outcome anyone wanted,” he said.

Sadly, while I'm sure he has his reasons - financial and other - for rescinding the original donation (and I'm not saying that donation wasn't generous and civic-minded) - the story sure makes it look that Robin Lehman (a rich man with a boy's name) didn't just poutily pick up his marbles...errr, bronzes...and go home. 

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Today is my beloved sister Trish's birthday. Happy Birthday, Po. If I had a Benin Bronze, I'd give it to you - as long as it was okay with the oba.

The anti-mall rats

I haven't been there in years, but when my Providence friend Marie was still alive, we'd sometimes head over to the Providence Place Mall, poke around, and have lunch. The in-mall restaurant was pretty good, and there was a pretty good Nordstrom's there as well. When we were there, Marie and I would usually pop into the Nordstrom shoe department because they carried Munros in our hard-to-find size, which was 10.5 - 11 Narrow or Slim. 

(Funny about foot size. Marie, who was tall and willowy, came by her long narrow foot naturally. Me, not so much. I once said that if the rest of my body matched my foot, I'd be 6 feet tall and weigh 120 pounds. Neither, I promise you, is the case.)

Anyway, Marie's been gone now for over a decade, and I'm rarely in Providence, so knew nothing about the fortunes of the Providence Place Mall. 

When it was first opened in 1999, it was heralded as yet another sign of Providence's transition from down-at-the-heels New England city - albeit one with "good bones:" it's the state capital, and home to two renowned schools (Brown University and RISD) both located near the downtown area - to a destination, full of destination-y things like cool shops and foodie restaurants. But Providence Place Mall has fallen on hard times and last fall went into receivership. It's still limping along, and that Nordstrom's is long gone.

But come to find out, during some of those years when I was visiting the Mall with Marie, an artist named Michael Townsend and some friends were squatting in a secret apartment they'd created for themselves in some tucked away free space there that they'd stumbled upon. 

Those years of living behind the Providence Place scenes were 2003-2007, but the story's coming out again now because of the release of “Secret Mall Apartment," a documentary by filmmaker Jeremy Workman. 

When the mall was being built, Townsend noticed what he called a “nowhere space,” an “anomaly in the architecture” that served no purpose. So when Townsend and his friends decided to camp out at the mall after seeing an ad teasing that the place was so well stocked that it had everything a person needed to live, he sought out that corner as a place to sleep. How did Townsend clock it in the first place? He credited that to a fixation with the notion of space that arose as the mall was going up, part of the gentrification of his Providence, R.I., neighborhood that also resulted in the artists’ space where he lived being demolished.

“It’s not just losing the home, it’s also losing historical vertebrae of the neighborhood,” Townsend said. As for the mall, “You couldn’t help but internalize that there was a lot of dead space in that structure,” he said. And thus, the notion of an apartment was born. (Source: NY Times)

The apartment was anchored by a couch where the denizens - who popped in an out and didn't live there full time - could hang out, play video games, watch TV, talk about art projects, and get some shut eye. Townsend sometimes lived there for a few weeks at at time. “'If you can pick one thing you’re going to move into a space, I’d pick a couch over a mattress, any day,' Michael Townsend said."

I'll keep that in mind, come the day when I'm moving into an alt space. 

The space was not perfect, and Townsend and his buds needed to build a door. Which required their building a wall to locate the door in. Which required them lugging two-tons worth of cinder blocks. They used a back stairway and were able to get away with all that cinder-block lugging unobserved. The crew also had to schlepp in cement. 

The residents slipped in and out through an outside extrance and through emergency exits. They also used a tunnel "hidden above a toilet" to get to their home. Their "apartment" didn't have facilities of their own, so they used public restrooms. 

For food, they had the cooking essentials: waffle iron and hot plate. They also "shopped" in the food court. And there was always movie theater popcorn. 

The artists also did plenty of videoing of their exploits, and those films (grainy and low quality as they are) form the basis of the documentary.

For a few years, the eight artist pals were able to hang in their mall refuge on the QT. But all good things...

Mall cops figured out something was up, and the secret apartment was shut down. The place in the Place was raided, Townsend was slapped in cuffs, the the apartment was dismantled. Townsend was placed on probation, but received a lifetime ban (LOL) from Providence Place Mall. 

The ban has now been lifted, but Michael Townsend doesn't sound like a mall-rat kind of guy. He's an artist (MFA from RISD) who's too busy making art, specializing in tape art, a technique he initiated. Here's from his website, Tape Art. 

WE MAKE MURALS.

ON WALLS.

WITH TAPE.

​

We are the original tape artists. Since the late 80s we have been traveling around the world drawing on all the walls, from graffiti-filled alleyways to prestigious museums.

​

Over 500 BIG murals.

Thousands of smaller tape drawings.

Still loving tape.

And still loving collaborative art projects. Like the Providence Place Mall apartment. 

Sure wish Marie were still around to watch the film with... 

Is private equity good for anyone other than the PE gods themselves?

I know, I know. As economist Paul Krugman has it, "Not all private equity people are evil. Only some."

But I'm scratching my head here, trying to think of the last time I read anything about a time when private equity stepped in and took over that has had a positive outcome: Jobs saved! The town prospers! Everybody's happy!

Instead, the story pretty much always goes like this:

Private equity spots a business or industry where they can swoop in, play around with the financials, destroy the capacity of a business to survive (e.g., set up a separate real estate entity that now "owns" the company's property; the company has to rent from the entity and goes broke while their PE masters rake in big money). The PE gods are masters of the spot an opportunity and sharpen the pencil approach that has crippled/destroyed plenty of companies.

Hospitals? Steward Healthcare, come on down. Retail? Sears, anybody? Neiman-Marcus, anybody higher up the retail foodchain? Restaurant chains? We're not quite at "Last Night at the Red Lobster," but almost. Mobile home parks, grocery stores, prison services? 

Increasingly, PE's got their eye on businesses that cater to the elderly. There are plenty of us, and our ranks, while thinning on one end, are growing on the other. So PE firms are grabbing up nursing homes and, for the old folks who aren't yet ready for nursing homes (or fortunately won't ever need them), senior living communities.

River Glen of St. Charles is an attractive, pleasant senior community outside of Chicago. When Martha Bray and her husband Richard Ryjacek moved there in 2013, they figured this was their last move. They paid an entry fee ($314)K and a monthly "maintenance" fee. 

They didn’t own the property, but if they decided to leave, their contract promised they’d receive 85% of the current value determined by a local realtor. (Source: NBC News)

Well, for Richard it was his last move. He died in 2016. But Martha stayed on, "thriving" in the community. 

But all that changed with a knock at Bray’s door in late June 2023. River Glen had been sold to a private equity firm and real estate investment group, she was told, and her financial contract was changing.

River Glen’s new owners, Jaybird Capital of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Citrine Investment Group of Chicago, were jacking up Bray’s monthly maintenance from $1,395 to $6,500, a 365% increase, Bray said. And if she didn’t like the deal and left the community, she would receive only 75% of the entry fee she’d paid more than a decade earlier.“We had to agree to their conditions by Sept. 1 or move,” Bray recalled.

She decided to move. But she estimates that she lost out on at least $100,000 because even though her home had risen in value, she only received 75% of the original entry fee.

I just want people to know not to believe a damn word anybody says,” Bray said, referring to senior living contracts. “Your money is not safe.”

But the money PE makes seems to be.

To quote Serene Highness Donald J. Trump, "All very legal..."

But it doesn't seem "all very cool." In fact, it seems pretty damned lousy. And is it just me or does the name "Jaybird" sound a lot like "Jailbird?" Which a lot PE people aren't but maybe ought to be. 

Oh, yeah. I get it.  Market based...increasing demand...fair market value...blah-di-blah... 

But there's plenty of downside when it comes to unfettered capitalism, where all that matters is profit making/profit taking. For the owners, of course, it's half the meat and all the gravy. And just the leavings for the little guy, who - in the case of senior living communities - sees their nut (their buy-in costs) dwindle while their monthly fees increase. Rock, meet hard place. 

Lucas Hammonds, a specialist in senior living facility financing, said changes like those seen at River Glen are increasingly common and driven by investors in search of profits, with residents often ending up as casualties.

“For the people affected by this, these are big issues,” added Hammonds, who is a senior legal analyst at Octus, a provider of in-depth credit analysis. “The bargain has changed. It’s destabilizing.”

As if getting old isn't destabilizing enough. Health issues. Wealth (or lack thereof) issues. And it, of course, promises to get worse. 

(MAGAs may think that croaking Medicaid is just going to kick all those non-deserving poor/near-poor in the head, the rear, the pocketbook - wherever the non-deserving poor/near poor deserve to be kicked. But somewhere between half and two-thirds of long-term nursing home care is paid for by Medicaid. That's a lot of old folks.)

Kevin Russell is the founder of Jaybird, named for his mother, whose nickname it was. 

“For me, the Jaybird brand is a reminder that we are taking care of someone’s mother or father,” Russell says in a quote on the site.

But sometimes it's not much of a reminder. 

There's Martha Bray et al. being screwed out of a good part of their nest eggs, and forced out of their homes in their old age.

And then there's the fact that:

In 2021 and 2022, two residents of Jaybird communities in Iowa froze to death when they wandered away from their memory care facilities, state regulatory records show. A 95-year-old woman at Keelson Harbour in Spirit Lake died in December 2021. The following month, a 77-year-old woman died at Courtyard Estates at Hawthorne Crossing in Bondurant.

Maybe neither was anyone's mother, but they still didn't deserve to die because of shoddy care at a Jaybird facility. (The company has been hit with several civil penalties over the last few years.) 

I don't hate capitalism. Mostly, I believe the old epigram that capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

Still, capitalism these days is sorely trying my patience. And a lot of my antipathy is due to the rise of private equity. Seriously, is private equity good for anyone other than the PE gods themselves?

Portrait of the President as an Old Ahole

In truth, it's not a great likeness. The artist got the mouth wrong, and it actually makes the subject more normal looking than he is IRL. It doesn't have the orange-tinged makeup, the white circles around they eyes where the subject was wearing eye protectors while on his tanning bed, the crazy comb-over hair pelt. 

So I don't blame him for not liking it. 

And, frankly, if he spent more time on petty matters like the portrait of himself that has hung in the Colorado state capitol building for six years now, maybe he would spend less time destroying democracy, violating due process, trashing the economy with his irrational stupidity (or is it stupid irrationality?), hiring incompetents, sucking up to autocrats, grifting with his meme coin, and shaking down law firms, universities, and corporations. 

Still, it's pretty horrifying that Trump is such a thin-skinned a-hole that he gives such a big damn about this particular portrait, let alone that he's petty and nasty enough to categorize it as "truly the worst" and imply that portraitist Sarah A. Boardman had "purposefully distorted" his image. Distorted it so that he actually looks like a more normal person than he does IRL? Or distorted in that it doesn't look like those fake MAGA renderings of Trump that show him idolized, fit, fierce.

The portrait has been there for six years now, but Trump just got wind of it, and decided to have a hissy fit over it, lashing out on social media. He claimed that the Democratic governor of Colorado deliberately put it up there to make him look bad. He said that many people from Colorado are very angry about it. (Sure many, but how many. Hmmm. Harris bested Trump in the state by more than 10%.)

And, of course, he had to attack the artist, to the extent that she believes he's hurting her business, and has issued her own statement:

“President Trump is entitled to comment freely, as we all are, but the additional allegations that I ‘purposefully distorted’ the portrait, and that I ‘must have lost my talent as I got older’ are now directly and negatively impacting my business of over 41 years which now is in danger of not recovering,” she wrote in the statement. (Source: NY Times)

Boardman, who is originally from England but who lives in Colorado, had more to say to defend her work:

“I completed the portrait accurately, without ‘purposeful distortion,’ political bias, or any attempt to caricature the subject, actual or implied,” Ms. Boardman said. “I fulfilled the task per my contract.” 

She also did the Colorado portrait of President Obama, btw. It's not the best one I've ever seen, but it's okay. The best presidential portrait she's done, IMHO, is that of W. 

Anyway, the offending portrait has been taken down, with a spokesman for that Democratic making a pretty gracious statement:

“We are always looking for any opportunity to improve our visitor experience and hope all the attention successfully attracts even more tourists to the Denver area,” he said.

Trump isn't the first president to dislike a portrait of himself. The NYT article mentioned Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ. But, naturally, Trump had to go out of his way to belittle the artist as losing her talent as she's gotten older - for the record, she's in her early 60's - and accuse her of bias.

He is such a colossally petty ahole.

Musk threatening to deport employees? Surprise, surprise.

It's kinda-sorta old news - from way back in the way back of 2014 (when the precipitating incident occurred). But interesting nonetheless. And definitely no surprise. 

The story is that one Cristina Balan - a Romanian-born engineer - was fired from Tesla in 2014 because, she claimed in a recent interview, she reported a brake safety issue, and Elon Musk didn't much like it.

She thought that the Model S’ floor mats could cause a brake safety issue, similar to a situation that Toyota had recently gone through (though that also led to a media firestorm that blew the issue out of proportion). She said that Tesla had chosen suppliers based on friendships, not quality. (Source: Electrek)

She had brought her issue directly to Musk because, the year before, he had sent an all-hands' email out telling employees that, if they had a problem, they "should email/talk to anyone else according to what they think is the fastest way to solve a problem for the benefit of the whole company." Talk to anyone. Including "me." Where "me" - Elon Musk. And, while you're at it, "you should consider yourself obligated to do so until the right thing happens."

Balan took Musk at his word - her first mistake? - and went directly to the man himself.

Turns out, the brake issue Balan may not have been that big a deal, but nontheless, she felt she was doing the right thing by going to the top. And it's not as if she were a little nobody who didn't know what she was talking about. She'd worked on the Tesla Model S.

Her contributions were significant enough that her initials appeared on the Model S’ battery pack.

Anyway, shortly after Balan hit "send" on her email to Musk, but:

...when she showed up to the meeting, it was instead attended by a lawyer and some large men in uniforms, and with Tesla forcing her to resign her position.

Okay. And bad enough that Tesla wanting to shove Balan out, there was this:

During that meeting, Balan says that Tesla’s lawyer threatened to deport many members of her team, who were currently waiting on green card applications, if she didn’t sign the resignation, seemingly in response to her team backing her up in raising these concerns. She ended up signing the resignation in protest, writing on it that “I’m resigning for the position that I was put in a month ago bc I dare to speak up to the Sr management, also bc people that had the chance to speak up were threatened…

The story took a while to get out there, but the Huff Po wrote about it in 2017, at which time: 

...Tesla sent a statement that Balan had stolen company resources to work on a “secret” personal project (Tesla emails show that Balan was told to work on this project by leadership). After this, Balan says she faced difficulty in finding work as companies feared ending up on Musk’s blacklist.

Since the Tesla statement impugned Balan's character, she sued the company for defamation. Tesla "forced her case into arbitration," and the suit got tossed. 

I don't know how this "forced arbitration" works, but it's a tactic that's pro-corporate, not pro-little guy. In any case, Blana pushed back. For a number of reasons (including treatment for breast cancer), Balan's appeal was delayed. But in April, the arbitration agreement was thrown out. 

Balan wants to square off in court over this, and is also going more public with the story, "which she says Musk has tried to stop her from doing, despite his claims of being a “free speech absolutist.”"

Oh, we know from Twitter just what a "free speech absolutist" Musk is. Free to be Elon Musk and those who foolishly worship at his altar. 

In a recent interview, Balan went way out there on Musk, characterizing him as a vindictive little shit who gets off on hurting people. No wonder he gets along so famously with Trump. 

The story about the deportation threats may end up a he-say-she-say situation. But I'm Team Balan. 

Musk has been all-in on Trump's illegal deporation scheme. And Musk has certainly not given us any reason not to believe that he's not a vindictive little shit who gets off on hurting people. 

Anyway, as I saw someone comment, despite Musk's pro-deportation position, which is focused (so far) primarily on sending brown-skinned men with tattoos to a concentration camp in El Salvador, he likes him some H1-B visas, which enable him to hire highly-educated techies to work at his companies. After all, if he can dangle deportation over their heads, what better way to keep them in line? 

Surprise, surprise. 

Sandbox Memories

A while back, a small, no-big-deal "news" item caught my eye.

Massachusetts will soon be home to a children’s activity center featuring the largest sandbox in New England. (Source: MassLive)

Sandmagination is set to open at the Northshore Mall in Peabody in late spring, according to a press release.

Designed for kids aged 10 and under, the facility will feature interactive exhibits, play stations as well as STEAM and STEM activities. The space will be fully accessible and designed for children of all abilities.

The goal of Sandmagination is for children to learn and explore through hands-on play in a sensory-rich environment.

Sandmagination is the brain child of a local STEAM-y STEM-y couple  -  she's a biotech PhD, he's an IT guy/writer - who created the space with their own kids in mind. 

“At Sandmagination, we are building a space where kids can unleash their creativity, explore, and learn in ways that are both fun and meaningful,” the couple said in the press release. “As parents, we know how important it is to provide a safe learning environment, and we cannot wait to open doors here in Peabody.”

It all sounds wonderful, and I love the idea of kiddos having the opportunity to have a sandbox experience, where they get to enjoy - as the Sandmagination website states - an "experience that combines STEAM-based learning, sensory exploration, and hands-on creativity. Our interactive exhibits inspire children to experiment, build, and discover through open-ended, imaginative play."

Yes indeedy. Get the kids away from the screens and into a place where they can just dig in. It all sounds great, but it did make me a bit wistful for the the days of yore when kids got to create, explore, experiment, learn, whatever - in a space that may not have been an intentional STEAM-designed, "safe learning environment" but was a fabulous, unsupervised, kids-only, outdoor place where you could have - dare I say it - just plain fun.

The sandbox of my childhood was pretty good sized - in my memory, it was huge, but I'm guessing it was only about 36 square feet. It was made up of four knocked-together boards with triangular watch-out-for-slivers seats at each corner. There was no foundation, no floor. The boards were just pushed into the ground a bit - no doubt by my father hammering or stomping on them - and the whole shebang all held together by those corner seats. It was located in a shady spot in the yard, right next to the wooded ravine that was part of our property.

My father was no carpenter, but he was handy enough to build for us what was, in those simpler times, a fantastic place for "sensory exploration," etc. 

I can't remember what the original color of the sandbox was -  green, I think - but at some point it was repainted in an ugly orchid. (For some reason, I think we used to call this color pistachio.) There was nothing in our house of that color, so it wasn't leftover from anyting. And I can't imagine that my father deliberately chose it. My guess is that he went to the hardware store and they had a quart of a color that someone had buyer's remorse about after it had been mixed. So it was available for near-free. Sold!

Color aside, our sandbox was wonderful, and I spent many hours there - with my sibs, with my friends, on my own. 

I/we made sand castles, shoveling dampish sand into buckets, pounding it down, unmolding it, and decorating the ramparts with sticks, leaves, pebbles, and scraps of paper (those were the flags). 

We made tracks through the sand and raced the boys metal Tonka trucks, and the cheesy green/silver and red/silver rubber cars with yellow wheels you could get at Woolworth's for a dime. (These days, you can get one on eBay for $12.95.) I may be crazy, but I think the heads of driver and passenger were often decapitated, bitten off by someone unleashing their inner Ozzy Osbourne, before we knew that Ozzy Osbourne even existed. 

We also brought our dolls out to the dandbox beach. And we played restaurant and picnic, making "food" out of patties of sand, twigs, weeds, leaves, pebbles, berries, acorns and pignuts. (I don't know where those red berries came from, but we knew/thought they were poisonous, so didn't eat them. We did occasionally dig the meat out of pignuts and take a bit of a taste, but that meat, while it may have been harmless, was bitter.

We celebrated spring by heading to the sand-and-gravel pit to buy a couple of bushel baskets of clean sand to restore the sandbox for the coming season.

I'm not sure when I outgrew our sandbox. Maybe age 10, the upper edge of the Sandmagination age range. But I hung on for a while, playing there with my sister Trish (a decade my junior) when she didn't have any of her buddies around. 

Anyway, our sandbox was nothing fancy, but it was just plain magnificent. All it was lacking was the ability to fly - unlike the flying sandbox chronicled in one of my favorite early-childhood books, the eponymous Flying Sandbox. Or course, since our sandbox was bottomless - and completely destroyed the grass under it; it took decades after the sandbox was decommissioned for the grass to grow back in as anything other than dead yellow - if our sandbox took flight, we would have been hanging on to those corner seats for dear life.

Good luck to the Sandmagination. However brainy and planned out it is, I'm sure the kids will have fun. And I hope that some of them imagine taking off and flying around the neighborhood in it. 

Memorial Day, 2025

And another Memorial Day rolls around. The only thing special about this one is that it's the first in my long lifetime when we have to worry about whether we'll live to see another without the country having sunk into full authoritarian madness. 

As I write this, in late April, the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll was showing that:

• 23% of Republican voters said the president should defy court orders he disagrees with.
  
  28% of Republican voters said the president should withhold funding from universities he disagrees with.
  
  
  26% of Republican voters said the president should control national museums and theaters.
• 
  

As if one-quarter of Republicans welcoming this level of authoritarianism is not enough, there's the:

CBS News/YouGov poll that found 44% of Republican voters said federal judges should not be allowed to review Trump’s policies.

The article where I found this data was from MSNBC/Rachel Maddow , which also cited a YouGov poll that found that "nearly half of GOP voters said that a strongman government without a Congress was at least a 'fairly” good system of government." According to an earlier Pew Research Poll included in Maddow's roundup, "59% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say many of the country’s problems could be addressed more effectively if Trump 'didn’t need to worry so much about Congress or the courts.'"

Is this what the thousands of Massachusetts soldiers, sailors, and airmen who died while in the service of our country, the thousands who are memorialized each Memorial Day with flags set out on the Boston Common, died for? 

Maybe these numbers have changed for the better since the true nature of Trump & Co. has become increasingly revealed to us. Or maybe they've gotten worse, as people become more frightened of the future and don't give a damn about what Trump does as long as it hits those they despise, and not them and theirs. (Just you wait, oh non-students of history...)

There's always a lot to thinkg about on Memorial Day. Some years more than others.

But here's what I've written on Memorial Days past, when I typically focused on the those who served the country - the true meaning of the holiday - and didn't feel the need to focus on the colossal jeopardy that the country is in today.

Decoration Day (2007)

Today I will think of those who were not as lucky as Jake Wolf [my grandfather; saw combat on the other side in WWI] and Al Rogers [my father, four years in the Navy during WWII; never saw combat], those who did not make it home to build their lives.

Six Degrees of Separation from the Military (2008)

How much easier it is to "live" with a war that doesn't have any direct impact on you or anyone you know, or even know of, except remotely.

Just something to think about on Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2009

I've always loved Memorial Day, one of those pleasant but low-craziness holidays that we just don't get enough of.

Memorial Day 2010

After we had finished planting, we strolled around the graveyard, which is small (it’s a parish, not a diocesan, cemetery) and, in our case, quite family oriented. We walked by the graves of lots of friends and relatives – close cousins we knew, distance relations we knew of, the family who lived in my grandmother’s decker – and noted how many of the graves were – this being Decoration Day – decorated with flags, put out by the American Legion or the VFW, in holders that indicate the war that someone served in.

Memorial Day 2011

This year, Memorial Day has special resonance, in that we observe the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, which begat Decoration Day, which begat the latter day Memorial Day.

Memorial Day 2012: "It's Not About the Barbecue" (2012)

There are so many things that are bad for a country’s soul, and I’ve got to believe that having an all-volunteer military has got to be one of them – too much opportunity for sunshine patriots and chicken hawks to call the shots knowing they have no skin/no kin in the game.

Memorial Day 2013

It promises to be a brilliant spring day here in Boston, but as I write this it’s cold, dreary, drizzling – not atypical spring weather in these parts, and actually pretty fitting, when you think of it.

Sure, war is sometimes conducted on delightfully balmy days. But as often as not, those in battle are coping with terrible physical conditions.

It’s frostbitten feet at Valley Forge. It’s contending with the heat at the Battle of the Wilderness.  Muck in the trenches of Château-Thierry. Rappelling up the cliff at Pointe du Hoc during a pelting rainstorm. The cold and ice at Choisin Reservoir. Monsoon season in Vietnam. Sandstorms in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Memorial Day 2014

This Memorial Day, I’m mostly thinking about the two dear ones I have lost since last Memorial Day: my husband Jim and my golden (50 years!) friend Marie.

Neither was a veteran.

Jim spent what would have been his soldiering years working as a chemist for a series of government agencies, including the CIA, in order to get draft deferments. (Hard to think of anyone less suited to the soldier’s life than my singular and peculiar husband. I always told him he would have been Section-Eighted out in the time it took his drill sergeant to yell “ten-hut”, or whatever it is that drill sergeants yell.) Like my father, Marie’s served in World War II, Bob as a Marine MP in the South Pacific (a precursor to his job as a Worcester cop).

Up the Republic! (2015) 

This year, while I will keep up the tradition of thinking about veterans in general, and my dead loved ones in particular, my shout out this Memorial Day goes to The Republic of Ireland, which last Friday became the first country to approve gay marriage by popular vote. And that popular vote wasn’t close at all: 62.1% voted a resounding YES!

Memorial Day 2016 

Tough to think of all those lives – mostly young men – lost to war. And I guess it doesn’t much matter whether it was a good war or a not so good war. (“My war’s better than your war!”) And it doesn’t much matter, either, whether you were a gung-ho patriot or a reluctant recruit, grousing all the way. At the end of the day, you didn’t get to live the full life you would have had if not for that good or not so good war. Sigh…

Broken Record and Then Some (2017) 

Back in Boston, the flags are up on the Common,

commemorating all of those from Massachusetts who
died in the service of our country, from the Revolutionary War on. A stirring sight, for sure. But I like this shot because it shows the carousel. Life goes on!

Memorial Day 2018

On this Memorial Day, here’s hoping that no one as crazy and amped up as the Robert Duvall character in Apocalypse Now amps us into yet another war.

Memorial Day 2019

...unlike 45% of Americans, at least I know that today is a holiday to commemorate our war dead. I don’t actually find that figure all that shocking. There are so many things that Americans are ignorant about, awareness of the purpose of Memorial Day is the least of it.

Memorial Day 2020

This year, there's another kind of war on. Maybe next year, we'll have flags for the coronavirus deaths.

Memorial Day 2021 

I don't know that the words of the Roman poet Horace are necessarily always true. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. (It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.) There are plenty of bad causes that soldiers have died for. But the Civil War - so bloody, so ghastly - was, for the Union soldiers, a righteous one. The cynical may discount the role it played, but ending slavery was a noble purpose. And if we're still fighting that war today - and regrettably we are - then shame on us.

Happy Memorial Day, anyway. 

"The world’s greatest online impersonator of professional basketball players." Talk about a niche profession.

As AI takes over more and more jobs, people are going to have to get more and more creative when it comes to making a living. 

And it looks like one Maxim Peranidze - "who may be the world’s greatest online impersonator of professional basketball players " -  has gotten a jump on the game. Or is it a jump ball?

Whatever. Peranidze, an LA guy originally from Moldova, has certainly carved out an interesting professional niche for himself. And I guess it's working out for him, as his Insta account has one million followers, a cadre that I've read he has figured out how to monetize quite nicely.

Who does he "do?"

The greats. The near greats. The current. The former.

Peranidze impersonates Larry Bird. Shaquille O'Neil. LeBron James. He's gotten a request from Dennis Rodman to do him. (No surprise that showboater would want in on this.)

The New Yorker reporter caught up with Peranidze when he was praciticing his Ivica Zubac moves. 

“Zubac easy,” Peranidze said, referring to Ivica Zubac, the seven-foot Croatian center. “I’m good with slow white guys.” He noted his mastery of the reigning M.V.P., Nikola Jokić, and of the likely future M.V.P. Luka Dončić. He noted his mastery of the reigning M.V.P., Nikola Jokić, and of the likely future M.V.P. Luka Dončić. Peranidze pulled on his Zubac jersey and a white sleeve. (Source: The New Yorker)

He'd also been working on his James Harden. (That's who's in the picture.) 

For one thing, Harden is left-handed and Peranidze is better with his right. For another, it’s difficult to grow a beard like Harden’s, which overtakes the face. Peranidze had ordered a fake one from Amazon. “Like, nine dollars,” he said. Soon, he’d put up a new post on his Instagram account, @MaxIsNicee (a million followers), captioned “Harden Floaters Be Like.” Peranidze nailed Harden’s loping and off-kilter lethality, which he described as “He nice.”

As an aside: Peranidze may be good with slow white guys, but Harden is not exactly a speed demon but, rather, a slow Black guy. Having successfully captured Harden in motion, he can add that to his repertoire. 

He also remembers the ladies, and has done impersonations of some WNBA superstars. Chicago Sky's Angel Reese was apparently not amused - wearing a wig, he had her in heels and a skirt - but Breanna Stewart of the NY Liberty got a kick out of his impersonation of her. 

For the NBAers, he buys knockoff jerseys:

....which he alters with scissors and safety pins if needed. “When guys are traded, I arts-and-crafts their names onto the new team’s jersey,” he said. 

Enterpising young man, that's for sure.  

I'm quite sure that as long as there have been celebrities, there have been impersonators. Elvis has been dead nearly 50 years and from AI-generated Google I saw that, worldwide, there are an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 Elvis impersonators. (They can't all be making a living, can they?)

Years ago, my husband and I were having a drink in a hotel bar when a whole slew of Chers came in. Turns out we had crashed a convention of Cher impersonators.

What Max Peranidze does is, of course, more complex in that he doesn't specialize in just one person to impersonate. And he has to rely on his movements, rather than just doing a look-and-sound alike (even if he does wear those knockoff shirts and don wigs and beards as needed).

Anyway, whenever I read about someone like Peranidze, I'm reminded of something my father would always say when there was some circus act on Ed Sullivan. A plate spinner. A guy who juggles bowling balls. A fire eater. "How does someone figure out that they have that particular talent?" Good question then, good question now.

And a question for Max Peranidze: can you do old-school Celtics like Bill Russell and Bob Cousy?

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And speaking of my father, today is his 113th birthday. (He only made it to 58...) Still miss you, Al!

Shocking, but not surprising

The housing crisis in this country is bad and getting worse. I see it up close and personal every day I'm at my volunteer job in a day shelter, where those without permanent housing can come, get basic services (food, clothing, shower, medical) and just hang out.  

Whatever the reason behind it - mental illness, substance abuse, bad choices, bad luck, or just plain poverty - homelessness is terrible. If I ever fell into this circumstance, I think I'd have a nervous breakdown on Day One. 

But I find homelessness especially disheartening when those without a place to call home do have a place to call work. Sure, they're working, but they don't make enough to find a place to call home. And there are plenty of them. (In an expensive old city like Boston, it's not just the working poor who can't find affordable housing. There are plenty of folks - young, college-educated people in their twenties and early thirties - making salaries that, in a lot of other places, could pay for very nice homes. Not here. They just don't tend to be homeless. They're living with their parents, or sharing with roommates when they'd rather be on their own.)

Back to the working homeless, I can't tell you how many times a client of St. Francis House has excitedly told me that they got the job. Or that they can't sign up for a clothing appointment that day because they have to get to work. Just hearing the pride in their voices, I can't tell you how happy it makes me. Unless they tell me where they're living, I never have the heart to ask where they're staying these days. Because I know the answer, as often as not, is going to be a shelter. 

A recent article on a type of homeless shelter (a.k.a. an employment shelter) dedicated to those with jobs in The New York Times brought the situation of the working homeless into relief. It chronicled the lives of those with the sorts of non-glamorous jobs held by people with few other options. For whatever reason - mostly being mired in poverty from the jump - many of these folks are just trying to eke out a living, not pursue some high-end professional career. But plenty are in jobs that one would consider solid middle class, you-should-be-able-to-afford-a-place to live jobs. 

They are line cooks, librarians, home health aides, bartenders, truck drivers, janitors and nurses. They drive ambulances and Ubers and work in construction and in concessions at Yankee Stadium and Citi Field. They wheel teetering piles of Amazon packages into apartment buildings.

They work with children and adults with disabilities and often conceal their housing situation from their co-workers and clients.

Some work for the city or state: as cleaners and fare evasion beaters on the subways and buses, mental health counselors, exterminators in public housing, school teachers and police officers. (Source: NY Times)

And they're living in shelters that aren't like the shelters where you have to exit with your possessions in the morning, and queue up to get back in come evening. You can leave your stuff behind, and lock the door to your room. But they aren't exactly like home, either. 

On such shelter is the Blue Sky Residence in Queens. 

Who lives there?

A woman who works at LaGuardia, "directing travelers to their gates." She makes $22 an hour, but because of her work schedule and bus schedules, she has to walk part of the way along the side of a highway in order to get to work. She leaves for work at 4 a.m.

Another woman living there works the overnight shift at a Target for $19 an hour, with a buck extra for hours worked after midnight. 

Then there's the cab driver who picks up fares at Kennedy Airport. He's the son of immigrants - his father was a cabbie as well - who dropped out of college when his parents became ill and he became their caretaker, and the sole family breadwinner. Things fell apart, as they do, especially when you're living on the edge. His father died, covid crushed the taxi business, the family lost their home - the sort of modest home that working-class families used to be able to afford. 

About a third of the families living in New York City’s homeless shelters, not including migrants, have at least one adult who gets up and goes to work. But their salaries — some as high as $40,000 or $50,000 or more — are outmatched by the depth of the city’s affordability crisis and the severity of its housing crunch.

And, the system being the system, those salaries often mean that people make to much to be eligible for any sort of assistance: housing vouchers, public housing, food stamps. So they find themselves figuring out how to play the game. Don't take that overtime shift, don't take that promotion, because you'll lose whateer help you're getting and fall off the cliff. But you're trapped, big time. You have a couple of kids, so you need a two bedroom. But you take home $3K a month and the two BR's rent for $3K a month. You do the math. 

A no-win situation, that's for sure. 

Boston, like NY, also has a housing crisis, a shocking but not surprising situation when the working- and middle-class people who make the cities run can't afford to live there. The cities are hollowed out: the totally impoverished, through subsidies, can still hang in. And the rich, well, they'll survive. 

One thing we're sure of,
The rich gets richer and the poor get poorer.
In the meantime, in between time, ain't we got fun!

Well, true dat about the rich and the poor. But 'ain't we got fun?' Not really. 

Just depressing.