Girl talk: Best Buy reaches out to women shoppers

I’m not exactly what you might call a typical denizen of the big box store. But if there’s one b-b where I actually enjoy shopping, it’s Best Buy.

Okay, enjoy may be way too strong a word, given that 90% of the time when I find myself in a Best Buy, I’m on a frantic mission from hell to repair or replace a failed or failing laptop.

But, in my experience, the folks who work there are unfailingly courteous, helpful, pleasant, informative, and -  given the frothing, frenetic state I’m typically in when I’m dealing with them -  wonderfully calming and empathetic. 

This may not be the universal Best Buy experience, but it’s mine at the outlet on the corner of Newbury Street and Mass. Ave in Boston.

Given my – dare I say – affection for Best Buy, I was interested to see an article in The Wall Street Journal on their efforts to reach out to women shoppers. While Best Buy’s overall market share of consumer electronics sales in the US is 22%, their share among women is a relatively paltry 16%.

The company decided to do something about it.

It is empowering female workers and tapping teenage girls to suggest new ways to sell to women.

The first thought that came to my mind was Helen Reddy belting out, “I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore.” (Ugh.) Perhaps it was just the use of the word “empowering.”

Then I thought, oh-oh, I feel a decision to use pink coming on.

Fortunately, that is not the case.

Instead, Best Buy has set up mini-stores, focused on mobile devices, in the malls that women shoppers frequent – and they’re meeting with success.

Of course, one of the pleasures – and disadvantages – of city life is the dearth of malls to walk in, let alone walk to, so I don’t spend a lot of time as a mall rat. Next time I go malling, however, I’ll be on the lookout for one of the Best Buy Mobile outlets.

Another initiative that Best Buy started was building communities of women shoppers and employees, around the country, to kick around ideas. Some of which Best Buy has put into play.

One impact these groups had:

[They] helped increase appliance sales by suggesting that showrooms be redesigned to resemble kitchens.

Forget Helen Reddy, this sounds positively 1950’s hen partyish, no?

Anyway, I’m more apt to want to see my kitchen redesigned to resemble a showroom than I am to want my showroom redesigned to look like a kitchen, but that’s just me. Certainly, Best Buy wouldn’t want their show rooms to look like my kitchen, which could be used by the Smithsonian as an example of the final word in condo kitchens of the 1980’s – right down to the “almond” with oak trim cabinetry.

But at least they didn’t suggest that the kitchen be pink.

Best Buy also turned to teenage “consultants” for their advice:

"BlackBerries: those just aren't cute," said Taylor Brittian, 14, who recommended spotlighting iPhones and colorful phone cases in the front of Atlanta's Best Buy Mobile stores.

Well, Taylor, I have news for youse. My Blackberry – which doesn’t have the clunky and odious typewriter attached – is just as cute as an iPhone, thank you. But I will admit that the colorful phone cases would be a come on to me. (I promise not to shove any of the coveted teen consumers out of my way in my grab for the colorful pink phone case.)

Another teen idea: sanitizer beside the videogame test kiosks.

Not that I plan on spending all that much time test-driving video games, but great idea, this.

Speaking of videogames, the women shoppers came up with the idea of having space in the stores devoted to used videogames.  Great for the moms, I’m sure, but as for the kids… Gee, mom, thanks for giving me this videogame that all the cool kids have rejected. As if I don’t feel creepy and out of it enough already.

Initially, some folks at Best Buy had their doubts about the women’s groups, characterizing them as more or less Oprah-ish. (Actually, that’s the point, isn’t it?)

But their success, so far, speaks to the merits of the idea.

I have not – harrumph – been asked to participate in any of these country-wide women’s groups. (Perhaps they’ve seen my kitchen.)  Still, I’m happy to offer my advice to them, with nary a coupon in return:

Keep hiring the kinds of kids you have working at “my” Best Buy on Newbury.

I’ve yet to have to fight to make eye contact while two “associates” gab on about like, this guy, they, like know.

I’ve never seen their sales folks jaded, slacked jawed, with eyes glazed over with boredom. Having worked retail, I don’t get how this happens. (What, no boredom? No standing around trying to extract the square root of your Social Security number in your head while trying to look busy and engaged?  Retail sure has changed….)

Is there some special Kool-Aid in the break room?  Is it just the Recession, when any job is a good job. Are these kids working retail to pay the bills while waiting for their “real life” to begin?

Maybe they’re kind to me because I remind them of their (grand)mother.

Whatever it is, in the heart of Boston, Best Buy has managed to create a little island of Midwest nice.

The floor sales folks and the Geek Squadders I’ve met have been interested, enthusiastic, and helpful. Either that or they’re all Method Actors.

Want to keep this woman shopper happy?

Forget the showroom that looks like a kitchen. Forget the colorful smart-phone covers.

Just keep employing these Midwest nice kids. (Give ‘em all a bonus while you’re at it. You’ve certainly made enough off of me in the last couple of years to afford it.)

Self-awareness. Toreador, olé!

Many years ago, I read an excellent book, How Men Think, by Adrienne Mendell. My purchase price was more than paid back when I was able to negotiate a 20% raise by putting into action some of the suggestions I found in it.

The one point that stands out for me still – a dozen years after the fact – was one in which Mendell writes about how women are typically more willing to speak candidly and openly about their weaknesses and deficiencies. This, Mendell argues, may seem like a good idea, but, to the ears of most men, this will come across not as candor and openness, but as WEAKNESS AND DEFICIENCY.

So, I stopped ever admitting that there were things I sucked at, or had screwed up, and just did what the boys were doing: huffing and puffing about their strengths and accomplishments and ignoring their obvious (to me, anyway) screw ups and weaknesses.  (I will note that, at this stage in my career, I was the only woman on the management team of a small software company. Definitely an experience worth having.)

I thought of Mendell’s book for the first time in years when I read an article last week on HuffPo about a novice Mexican bullfighter who decided to call it quits.

Christian Hernandez apparently did the toreadoric unforgiveable when he:

… decided to bolt across the ring and leap headfirst over a wall as the bull charged forward.

Hey, I can’t blame the guy one little bit. It’s nothing that I, personally, wouldn’t do if confronted by a snorting, two-ton decidedly not Ferdinand-type of bull bearing down on me, horns aiming at my vital organs.

Talk about no way, José.

Olé? NO-lé!

Truly, the only way I’d ever be gored was in the backside, while trying to escape.

But I’ve never actually been a toreadora wannabe. Hernandez, by virtue of being in the ring in fancy costume and snappy cape, obviously was.

Needless to say, the crowd wasn’t exactly thrilled with Hernandez’ performance, and he was mightily jeered and booed. Even worse, after a quick re-appearance in the ring:

… a humiliated Hernandez was later arrested for breach of contract. According to local media reports, he was released by police after paying a fine.

(Can you imagine if folks could get arrested for doing a bad job? There wouldn’t be enough jail to hold all the criminals. I was going to say all us criminals, but then I remembered that I must never admit to any professional weakness…)

Anyway, in a later interview, in which he said he was hanging up his cape and getting out of the ring, Hernandez said:

"There are some things you must be aware of about yourself…I didn't have the ability, I didn't have the balls ... this is not my thing."

I guess Señor Hernandez is the exception that proves the Mendell how men think rule.

So I say to Señor Hernandez: bravo, bravo, bravissimo!

Buena suerte as you look for a new career.

Tally-ho, Tony Hayward

Okay, the guy’s entitled to take a day off, especially with the last couple of months he’s been through.

And, no, this is not the type of crisis where we can rightfully expect those involved should never, ever take a break from. This is not a five-hour, five-day, or even five-week kind of crisis, during which the guys in charge might be working a bleary-eyed 24/7, showing up on the news in the same damned shirt for days on end looking gaunt and unshaven, sending us the clear message that they’re doing everything they can do to set things right.

This crisis was engineered to last a while longer, I’m afraid.

Does the crisis mean that every BP executive (not to mention every elected politician) needs to cease and desist from every bit of pleasure until the hole is plugged, the waters clear, and the last Louisiana shrimp boat back in business?

I don’t think so. And I don’t think I’d feel any differently if this was all taking place in my back yard.

After all, Abraham Lincoln took in an occasional play during the Civil War, most of which – up until the last one – probably made for a nice diversion. FDR took breaks in Warm Springs, Georgia throughout the Depression and World War II, most of which – up until the last one – probably made for a nice diversion.

Somebody should probably be doing something about the Gulf Gusher at every waking hour of the day. But everybody doesn’t have to be on perpetual watch.

And I really don’t expect BP’s chief exec, Tony Hayward, to be swabbing the nostrils of pelicans with q-tips.

But is there anything more quintessentially, to the hounds, let them eat-cake-ally Brit – or is it rich exec-ally, in general -  than going off yachting while the broekn BP well keeps on bubblin’ up crude.

Talk about tin-ear wrong, wrong, wrong from a PR perspective. Hayward would have been better off if his day off had been spent punting on the Thames, or with champagne and strawberries at Wimbledon.

Come on, what were you thinking, Tony – other than poor me, and I deserve a break, and I’ve been so taking it in the neck, and (sniff, sniff) I really do rather enjoy sailing - getting on your million dollar yacht for a race in clean, ocean water, while your company’s negligence has resulted in despoiling a lot of what just a few short months ago was clean water and pristine shoreline.  Just like the type of clean and pristine that Hayward enjoyed racing around the Isle of Wight – not with Vera, Chuck, and Dave, but with the other swells taking part in the JP Morgan Asset Management Around the Island Race.

It’s not quite clear whether Hayward was sailing or spectating, but he really should have chosen a different weekend getaway – one that wouldn’t have brought up the stark comparisons between expensive pleasure boats, gloriously a-sail, and working boats, ingloriously awash in oil. Couldn’t he have just stayed home with friends and family, pounding down Hendricks and cucumbers, and railing about how greedy grubbing Americans are?

I just don’t understand how it is that accomplished executives, working for sophisticated enterprises with communications and PR experts on staff and on hire, can’t seem to figure out what you can do and what you can’t do when the old shit-er-ina hits the old fan-er-oo.

You’d think, wouldn’t you…..

But, no. (Or is it, hell, no.)

Even the Brits have raised their eyebrows on this latest:

The British press, much more sympathetic than the American media to BP's plight, has expressed disbelief at the company's strategy.

"It is hard to recall a more catastrophically mishandled public relations response to a crisis than the one we are witnessing," the Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner wrote Friday. (Source: AP article in the Boston Globe.)

If it’s any comfort, I went over to the race site and checked things out.  Hayward’s boat, Bob, came in fourth in its class, behind Desperado, but ahead of Baraka (phew! thank god for the difference between an “a” and a “c”), Venomous, and Oyster Catcher – the latter, indeed, a fitting name, given the devastation that the BP blowout has wrought upon the Gulf oystering business.

Anyway, I’m sure we’ll see poor Tony back on the job this week, refreshed and energized by his bracing sail and fourth place finish. Perhaps he’ll even be ready to do battle with the extra criticism that will be raining down on his head, given that he didn’t have the good sense to do something else on his precious little time off.

My World Cup, it take me hearing, that damned vuvuzela*

I’m not what you would call a colossal soccer fan.

As a general-purpose sports fan, I enjoy watching an occasional game. I’ll be keeping a semi-close eye on the progress of the U.S. team’s World Cup fortunes. And I’ll likely watch the final game – make that definitely watch the final - if by some Miracle Off Ice “we’re” in it.

But I won’t be keeping a semi-close ear on it, thank you.

No sporting event is worth going deaf for – or catching your death from rhinovirus.

Which is apparently what health officials are warning can happen to fans exposed to a match-full of blaring vuvuzelas.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, the vuvuzela is the long plastic horn - they look a lot like the blarers that folks blow on New Year’s Eve – that South African soccer fans blast away on. Apparently they do so continuously during matches – much to the annoyance of non-vuvuzela aficionados, not to mention the players who can’t hear themselves think. Here’s picture of one in use from Vivienne Mackie’s travel blog.

Viv apparently had her ear to the ground early on with respect to the vuvuzela. Historically banned from World Cup, an exception was made this year because this instrument is so much a part of South African football culture.

Now, of course, with the World Cup on, vuvuzela chatter has been all over the blogosphere, with lots of pro and con back and forthing.  I’ve seen cries of racism, countered by cries of “this will make South Africans look rude”.  Prince William, in South Africa on a royal field trip with one of the Jonas Brothers (huh?), had a vuvuzela blown full force in his heir’s ear by a kid, after he was unable to master the art of noisemaking on his own.

Fans who like the traditional soccer fan chanting, singing, and drumming have found themselves drowned out. And they’re understandably pissed.

There are even calls to FIFA to forbid use of the vuvuzelas in the final match – but FIFA has no plans to do so at this juncture.

Meanwhile, TV broadcasters have been toning the blare down so that watchers can hear the announcers. (This hasn’t been enough for some:  they find the vuvuzela noise so overwhelming, they turn the sound off entirely. There’s even an app on the market that can shut the vuvu noise down.)

Fear is spreading that, now that the vuvus have been on such a center stage, their use will sweep through the soccer universe. (All those hundreds of thousands of souvenir vuvuzelas packed home in the suitcase.)

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal weighed in on the matter, with an article on the dangers that too much trumpeting can bring on when vuvuzela madness is loosed upon the land:

Beyond the stadiums, the horns can be heard from early morning to late at night on South Africa's streets during the World Cup. South African newspapers have reported workplace clashes involving employees blowing the horn. They have caused conflict among bus and train passengers as well.

More important, it seems that all that noise, in addition to being an out and out, head-splitting annoyance to so many, and the cause of off-the-pitch strife:

…can cause hearing loss and possibly spread colds, the flu and other infectious diseases to spectators in stadiums.

A hearing foundation claims that, at 127 decibels, exposure for even a few minutes to vuvuzela noise can cause hearing loss, let alone for the full 90 minutes of a match. (Plus whatever, seemingly arbitrary to the casual observer, over-time gets tacked on the end of a game.)

In an indication of how loud the horns are, the nonprofit Deaf Federation of South Africa has offered sign-language training to coaches and players to help them communicate on a noisy soccer field.

I think I’d be okay with an occasional tootle from a vuvuzela, but I don’t think I’d want to go an entire match with 100,000 in my ear. I find it annoying enough with an occasionally cat-calling jerk sits behind me at a Red Sox game.  (The worst: the guy who kept shouting at the White Sox – who that season sported some goof-ball, soft-ball looking uniforms - “put on your John Wayne trick-or-treat suits.” (Say the f what?)

But the claims of the anti-vuvuzela brigade may be overstated:

The organization hasn't been approached yet by a team, according to Bruno Druchen, its national director [Deaf Federation of South Africa]. No cases of hearing loss from the vuvuzelas have been reported to his organization, he said in an email.

But the biggest problem with the vuvuzela may be those pesky germs:

Blowing hard into vuvuzelas may spray droplets of spittle onto nearby spectators, and with it the flu and other diseases. "We measured what happens when healthy people blow the vuvuzela and were astonished at the number of aerosols formed," said Ruth McNerney of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "If someone with a chest or throat infection uses the vuvuzela in a crowded place then they could spread the infection to people around them."

If nothing else, you don’t want to wrap your mouth around a strange vuvuzela. You don’t know where it’s been, and it may well be infected.

All told, it does sound like you could go to the World Cup and come home deaf, with a bad cold, chicken pox, or even:

…more threatening diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, tuberculosis and the H1N1 swine flu, according to Dr. McNerney."Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, and so might the vuvuzela," she said.

This and the fact that you could have purchased tickets a year ago, only to have your team knocked out in the first round.

Meanwhile, Team USA plays its second match today.

Don’t let those vuvuzelas get to you, boys!

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Today’s post is dedicated to my soccer-loving brother-in-law John, who is taking the day off of work to watch the US – Slovenia match. Easy on the vuvuzela, John.

*For those of you too young to remember Harry Belafonte, this is a take off on the song, “Mathilda, she took me money, and run a-Venezuela”, which he publicized in a long ago time, when no one in America had even heard of soccer.

The princess and the pea. (Resting easy on a $69.5K mattress.)

Personally, I’m a believer in a good, solid, comfy mattress.

About 10 years ago, I took a bad fall down a flight of icy steps, which resulted in a bit of minor embarrassment – nothing like being sprawled on the brick sidewalk in front of your house at 7 a.m. – and more than a bit of major backache.

I decided that our crappy old mattress wasn’t doing my aching back any good, so we went out and bought a TempurPedic.

Now, I know that TP’s aren’t to everyone’s liking, but they are to mine – and my back’s. (Zzzzzzzzz.)  We paid plenty for that mattress – at least by our standards. But apparently, when it comes to things-mattress-y, our standards are pretty darned low.

As part of what appears to be a regular us vs. them bit of reportage, The Wall Street Journal the other day had a piece about stratospherically upper-end mattresses that make the TempurPedic look like an army cot. (Access to this article may require a subscription. I believe online comes with a paper subscription, if you’re thinking about creating your own mattress by stuffing ticking with a bunch of old newspapers.)

You don’t have to spend $69.5K, by the way, to get something decent.

For a mere $33K you can get:

E.S. Kluft & Co.'s hand-tufted, king-size Palais Royale mattress and box spring, currently the most expensive American-made mattress set on the market. The company says it has sold about 100 since introducing it in 2008…it takes 10 craftsmen about three days to make the Palais Royale, which contains 10 layers and more than 10 pounds of cashmere, mohair, silk and New Zealand wool that has been washed, dried and crimped

Or you can hold out for the Kluft Sublime model at $44K, scheduled for release by end of year.

(In addition to all the other goodies, the Sublime contains some “horsehair for resiliency.” Hey, they’re the mattress boffins, but the one and only time I slept on a horsehair mattress it was as hard as a rock saddle.)

By the way, I don’t want to quibble about the name Palais Royale, but I’m a-guessin’ that in the real Palais Royale the mattresses were featherbeds. But that’s quibble – and what red-blooded American democracy-lover doesn’t believe that he or she occasionally deserves the royal treatment. (Apparently the red-blooded Americans at E.S. Kluft hold this truth to be self evident. Their motto is “The Royal Standard.” Let’s forget for a mo’ that sometimes the royal standard means getting shoved into a tumbrel and rolled off to the guillotine, after which the royal head-y will never again go beddy-bye.)

As for the Sublime model, at $44K it better be.

Of course, if you’re a Europhile, where they really get royalty and sublimity, you can get yourself a Vividus king for $69.5K from Hästens Sängar of Sweden.

Just what is it with royalty and mattresses? Hästens’ motto is “sleep like a princess”, and they claim to be “purveyors to the Royal Court.” Of what, it’s not clear.

Hästens has all kinds of dandy stuff on their site – like ten sleep tips (e.g., “If you can’t sleep get up…when you’re tired go back to bed,” and other breathless hints about sleeping in the dark, etc.). The picture that goes along with the tips shows a woman in full make-up and a pair of what appears to be 4 carat diamond earrings. If I’d written those ten tips, I’d have put one in that said “Don’t get into bed wearing something that could hurt you if you roll over on it.”

There’s also an iPhone app from the Hästens “mind spa”.

Of course, you’d expect a company from Sweden, where it’s night six months out of the year, to know beaucoup about sleeping. Certainly more than the folks at Kluft, which is located in Southern California, where there are all kinds of other things to do – like play beach volleyball – rather than sleep. (Years ago, I had a colleague in California who told me that he thought it was kind of pathetic that people on the East Coast were interested in politics, read books, and watched professional sports. People in his ‘hood, he explained, had better things to do with their time – namely, playing beach volleyball.)

I’m a bit disappointed that there’s no Hästens store around here. But my Chicago relatives are in luck: you can get one downtown, on N. Wells, or in Winnetka.

While they haven’t climbed anywhere near Kluft territory- let alone into the terra incognita (by me, at least) occupied by Hästens - good old Sealy (of Posturepedic fame) has come out with a new high-end offering to their higher-end Stearns & Foster line. The Golden Elegance goes for about $5K, and I am pleased to report that a cursory look at the Sealy site reveals nary a royal utterance. (Born in the USA! Born in the USA!)

And I will say that while Sealy doesn’t quite have the modern touch of Hästens, what with the iPhone app and what-not, they do have ZZ as their ticker symbol – a bit of clever marketing, that.

The WSJ article catalogs some other pricey mattresses, including one “covered with fabric containing 22-karat gold.” (Why?)

Speaking of why:

Exactly how much better will a person sleep on a super-expensive mattress, a shopper might ask. Not much, according to one sleep expert, Clete Kushida, medical director of the Stanford University Sleep Medicine Center. "For the vast majority of people who are generally healthy, bed surface won't make much of a difference in terms of their sleep," Dr. Kushida says.

Of course, as with oh so many other luxury goods, there’s a lot of “because I can” that likely goes into the purchase decision.

I can believe that a $5K mattress is better than a $500 mattress, and that there’s a difference between a $10K mattress and a $1K mattress. But I’m guessing that people are dreaming if they think that having 22-karat gold infused fabric is going to get them an objectively better night’s sleep. (I will concede that there may be a comfort factor of knowing you’re rich as Croesus that lets some high end mattressers sleep better at night.)

Anyway, one thing we’re sure of, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we’ll continue to see more and more “stuff” from the luxe end of the market – and probably from the dead end, as well. (Mattresses stuffed with corn husks, anyone?)

Meanwhile, for those of you poor slobs who don’t have $69.5K to drop on a mattress, remember you can always:

Take Sominex tonight and sleep, safe and restful, sleep, sleep, sleep.

I’m your puppet

It’s no secret that I love a good obituary.  And The NY Times is a reasonably good source of interesting ones.

The other day, what with the death of Jimmy Dean of pork sausage and country music fame, I thought I had found my topic: hambone/cornpone entertainer turns business shrewdy and builds up a lucrative food business, which he sells out to Sara Lee for big bucks.

But even while Jimmy Dean’s super hit - “Big Bad John” – was stomping around in my brain:

…..and everybody knew ya didn’t give no lip to Big John…

My eye drifted down to the obit below his:

Frank W. Ballard, Who Trained Puppeteers at UConn, Dies at 80

Say what?

Trained puppeteers at UConn?

Now there was a story out of Storrs.

Nearly 50 years ago, Ballard founded the puppetry program at UConn.

It is beyond rare for an institution of higher learning to grant degrees in puppetry. Connecticut is one of only a few in the world to do so, offering B.F.A., M.A. and M.F.A. degrees through the program, which is part of the dramatic arts department. Despite the program’s renown, however, its students have grown used to hearing astonished classmates ask, “You can major in that?”

I’ll bet there are even more astonished parents uttering those very words.

Still, in a world of accounting and computer science majors, there is something refreshing about someone who wants to give puppetry a whirl. And:

Today the program’s graduates, who come from all over the world, are sought-after masters who ply their trade in film, theater and television.

Which is more than you can say for the average French lit major, I’m afraid. (“You can major in that?”)

Still, I wouldn’t say that I am now or ever have been a particularly avid puppet fan. Personally, I’m afraid that I found the signature puppet of my generation – that would be Howdy Doody – out and out creepy. The word “perv” was not in my kindergarten vocabulary, but there was always something a bit unsettling to me about old Howdy. Maybe it was the little scarf he wore, or those folded up blue jeans, or the way he walked, but Howdy was a little “off”. (I felt the same way about his sidekick, Buffalo Bob Smith, and about the Lone Ranger, so I didn’t reserve this particular sense of ick factor for those made out of wood and string.)

My feelings about Howdy Doody were such that I will have to confess that one of the few times I’ve been scared on a plane flight was when the pilot introduced himself as Howdy Doody. (Make that two nips of Beefeaters and a parachute, please.)  I was so very happy when the wheels touched down in Des Moines.

I didn’t feel particularly creeped out by Howdy’s pals, however.

Not that I would have wanted to hang out with Mr. Bluster – the old grouch – but, if I had to be stranded on a desert island with someone from the Howdy Doody Show, it would have been Dilly Dally (even though he was none too bright), or Flubadub.

Better yet, I would be dee-lighted to be marooned with any number of the Muppets, including but not limited to Miss Piggy, Kermie, Statler and Waldorf, Bunsen and Beaker, and Elmo.

So, Howdy aside, I’m generally down with puppets. For the most part, they don’t hold anywhere near the same scariness factor as their first cousin, the ventriloquist dummy, or their second cousin, twice-removed, the clown.

And – again, Howdy Doody aside – there can be something exceedingly beautiful and artistic about puppets. (This is unlike the ventriloquist dummy, all of which (whom?) look alike.)

Anyway, Frank Ballard made a life out of puppets.

There’s even the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at UConn.

So, he left his mark, and it’s likely indelible in a way that, say, Jimmy Dean pork sausages aren’t. (Ever notice how “indelible” and “inedible” are almost the same word?)

I was going to write something snarky about “The Attack of the Puppet People,” but, hey, it seems like Frank Ballard led quite a life, doing what he wanted to do from the moment – age 5 – when he made his first puppet.

…..and everybody knows ya don’t give no lip to those lucky and determined enough to forge that kind of a career.

So, no attack of or on the puppet people here, thank you.

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Just about a year ago, Pink Slip had plenty to say about ventriloquist dummies.

Small is beautiful

My first week on the job at Wang, where I was the senior product manager for their investment-related products, I decided to go on a trip to New York.  I was, after all, the liaison with the group (part of a Wang acquisition) that was the source of the data for our investment related products. Plus, I figured I was going to be doing a lot with the NYC sales team, since most of the customers and prospects for “my” products were on Wall Street.

I came to Wang from a much smaller firm. When I needed to go somewhere – to visit customers, go on sales calls, participate in some event – I pretty much decided on my own, and let my boss know where and when I was going. We had a group (outsourced, as I recall) that made our arrangements. A call to them, and I was on my way.

I figured the same would happen at Wang.

After all, I was a senior product manager, and wouldn’t just be flying around willy-nilly, wasting time and money picking up frequent flyer miles.

Anyway, since my boss wasn’t there to inform – he was off on a business trip the week I started – I mentioned to the group secretary that I was planning on going to New York later in the week.

“Did you get your forms signed yet?” she asked.

“What forms,” I responded.

Well, it seems that, in order to get permission to go on a trip – even a day trip on the shuttle to NYC – you needed a form signed by your boss, his boss, his boss, and his boss – who was an EVP of the organization.

I was stunned.

Horace Tsiang, and EVP of a 30,000 employee company had to sign off on a trip that was going to cost the company about $200?

This being Wang, it got even better.

The travel policy was such that you didn’t learn you had permission (and tickets) to go on your trip until 5 p.m. the night before.

Anyway, this was my first experience in a Big Company, and it quickly reinforced my preconception that, when it comes to the workplace, Small is Beautiful, and Big is U-G-L-Y. (And it ain’t got no alibi.)

This all came to mind when I saw a Q&A in the Career Journal section of the WSJ Online in which someone asked whether it was risky, in terms of future opportunities with big companies, to take a job with smaller firm.

The answer was fine: it shouldn’t hurt you, just make sure the job is what you want, etc.

But it did get me thinking about the differences between small and large firms and why I, almost invariably, come down on the side of small. I also recognize that there are certainly ways in which Bigger is Better.

So here goes my two cents:

Small Is Beautiful:

Less bureaucracy: In smaller companies, there is usually no place for the insane bureaucracy that was in evidence everywhere you looked at a place like Wang. It wasn’t just the travel policy. When I ordered a bookcase and file cabinet for my cubicle, the request was bounced back because I hadn’t filled in the reasons. I entered “book case to put books in,” “file cabinet to put files in” and the request sailed through.   Wang was inordinately bureaucratic and, while I recognize that a larger organization will need to have more processes in place and just more bureaucracy in general, bureaucracies can become monster creatures that can grind a place down and stifle any initiative.

Lots of job latitude: I spent many years at a software company called Softbridge. When I joined – blissfully leaving Wang – the company’s informal motto was “the next billion dollar software company.”  To say that this never happened understates the case by several orders of magnitude. The company waxed and waned in terms of number of employees (from 300 down to 17 – in that order – then up again to 50). We had our ups and downs around how much money we could gull out of our ‘what were they thinking?’ investors in any given month.  (I believe the down-the-drain ended up being about $40M, which looks like nothing now, but this was pre-dot.com run-up). Revenues, the year I left, hovered around $7M).  While the founds may have been thinking big, we were doing small.

What we used to say at Softbridge was “if you can think of it, you better be able to do it.” This translates into what’s best about small companies: you really do get to try on a lot of hats, and there’s not usually anyone to tell you that you can’t. In small companies, there’s generally an awful lot to do, and too few people to get it done. So you get a lot of do-it-yourself opportunities – which definitely expands your résumé, plus helps you figure out what you like to do and what you don’t like to do.

Little room for politics: Let’s face it, wherever two or more employees are gathered, there’s going to be some political action. But with fewer people, you do tend to find that there aren’t as many factions. (At least this was so in the small places I worked, where the unifying theme was the will to survive.)  In my experience, in small companies less time, in general, is spent on politicking, posturing, and trying to undermine the other guys. It’s not that it doesn’t happen. There’s just less of it. (I did consult to one small company, however, where the politics were relentless and extraordinarily backbiting and vicious. That little outfit ending up breaking in to two pieces, which definitely relieved things on the political end. I, of course, went with the good guys…)

When I joined Genuity – other than Wang, the only large company I’ve worked for – I was stunned by the quantity and quality of the politics that played out. I came to believe that, at the Director level, politics was in the job description at 25%; at the VP level, 50%; and at the EVP level, 99.99%.  (This all, of course, got Genuity no further than the largest failed IPO in history and, eventually, dissolution.)

We are family: This may be exactly why some people would hate, hate, hate working in a small firm, but I always enjoyed knowing everyone and a bit about their lives. I liked traditions like Friday Party (Dynamics and Softbridge) at which everyone got together, had a beer or a glass of wine (or a toke – those were the days), munched on junk food, and let the week wind down. (I also have to admit that these work families were always dysfunctional. Small may be beautiful, but it can also be supremely nutty. )

Big Is Better (in some respects)

More resources: While learning how to do everything yourself is a good learning experience, once you’ve done it, well, the charm wears off. What’s nice about a large company is that there are resources to tap. In marketing, that meant I didn’t have to design collateral, stuff envelopes, put up trade show booths and all sorts of other things that weren’t all that interesting.

Better opportunities:  I can actually argue this one either way, since small companies tend to provide excellent opportunities to learn on the job. In some cases, small companies can provide a Build-a-Bear experience, in which you get to create your own job. In a smaller company, it may also be easier to get (ahem) “executive” experience. (A mixed blessing, I assure you.) On balance, however, once you’ve gotten to a certain point in a small company, the opportunities for advancement tend to be fewer, and the only way to get more responsibility, a bigger job, and maybe just a change of scenery often means leaving the company. Plus larger companies are where you’re more apt to find formal mentoring, clear career tracks, etc. 

Stronger network:  I’ve been fortunate to have made life friends at work – many from my years in small companies. But in terms of building a professional network, nothing beats the time I spent at Genuity. Either directly or indirectly, about 90% of my consulting work comes from people I worked with there. Part of this is because my Genuity experience was just prior to my starting out in consulting. With the exception of a brief stint at another firm (where I worked for my former boss at Genuity), I’ve been freelancing since Genu days. But in smaller companies, there were times when I was marketing, so there were just plain fewer people to network with.  And, I’ve got to say, most of the people in my professional network who have provided me with consulting work are also folks that I consider friends. Still, in terms of building a network, there’s obviously more network-building potential where there are more nodes.

Small doesn’t last: God knows I don’t have a good track record with any size company lasting, but for the most part, the rule of thumb “grow or die” turns out to be true. (What is there about rules of thumb that this happens?)

If you’re a small tech company with a good idea, you need to grow or get acquired. Let’s face it, if you have a good = profitable idea, someone else will want in. Small may be beautiful, but – in terms of tech company (other than consulting) it’s just not that sustainable.

Still and all, I’d take small over large any day.

But that’s me.

When I started out, I wouldn’t have accepted any argument that there were benefits to working large.

Now I can appreciate that there are.

Ah, the wisdom of age.

Still, if I had to pick what size company to get marooned on a desert island with, it’d be small. (Although, come to think of it, that large company I scorned might have the capacity to  figure out how to get us off. Hmmmmm….. Still, if we were going to be stuck-stuck there forever – and I had to work – well, it’s hard for me to get by my gut feeling that small is beautiful.)

Hey, Dad, do you miss us, too?

Well, if ever there were a headline that didn’t deliver, it’s this one from The NY Times last Friday:

A Well-Wired Hong Kong Offers a Link to the Dead

Here I was thinking that our friends in the East had – Hello, Central -  gone Mary Baker Eddy one better*, and had come up with the killer app.

But – disappointingly – NO.

It’s just another online memorial site, more or less.

This one’s set up by the nicely-named Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government– and available for free to those who use government facilities to bury or cremate their loved ones.  Specifically, the About Us says that the site is open to those:

• cremated at public crematoria
• cremains scattered in Gardens of Remembrance/ designated Hong Kong waters
• cremains kept in public columbaria
• buried at public cemeteries
• buried at the Gallant Garden/ Tribute Garden

The site is all very current, with an FAQ, and a notice regarding intellectual property rights:

Unless the materials are uploaded by users themselves or explicitly specified, the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (the Government) is the owner of intellectual property rights in all contents, including but not limited to all texts, graphics, charts, drawings, diagrams, photographs, icons, reports, statistical data or any other format of data or materials ("Work") available on this website.

Well, that takes a bit of the condolence fun out of it for me, but, in this day and age, you really do need to worry about where your IP’s at.

It’s sounds like kind of a Facebook. Folks set up a profile for their beloved, and can vary up how public or restricted they want it to be.

Users have a choice among preset layouts and background music and can upload photos and videos to complement the profiles.

People can leave messages – Wazzup? – and can also set up reminders to alert them when the deceased’s birthday is coming up (note to self: remember to get card for Great Aunt Roseanne), or when the anniversary of someone’s death is approaching. (Do people really need reminders of this? I, like, do know when my parents died. And if  - as the years sail by, and I get older and nearer to my day of departure – if January 25th or August 14th slips by without my thinking about Al and Liz, I don’t believe that I’ll feel one scintilla of guilt.)

The Hong Kong Memorial home page is soothing and welcoming, in a TeleTubbies kind of way – green fields, blue skies, and gently wafting dandelion puffs. Like everyone who steps toe on this earth, gone, gone with the wind…

I availed myself of the search to check out an actual page.

And, while I’m nosy enough to do so, I’m not going to violate the privacy of Ms. L, even if her page is public. If you’d like, you can search on a common Chinese surname and find your own public page to gawk at. Anyway, Ms. L’s is sparsely populated, and most of what’s in there is in Chinese. (The overall site is in Chinese or English.) There’s a very nice picture of Ms. L, as well as a very nice picture (I’m guessing from one of the available templates) of a woman and child walking with umbrellas down a tree-flanked path.

Move along folks, there’s nothing here you haven’t seen on one of the many U.S. based memorial sites. And I never would have tripped over there to begin with if it hadn’t been for that come-on title in The Times article.

Still, maybe The Times, and the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, know something we don’t know.

After all, the home page says:

Leave a message for your Beloved One with Memories.

Well, just in case they’re right and I’m wrong:

Dad, I was just thinking about the time you took the Big Three (Kath, me, and Tom) on a Sunday walk, and took us through the shell of an abandoned house that had been gutted by fire. I still remember when you opened one of those inner doors and the floor had fallen through to the cellar. You saved us from a plunge into oblivion! But what were you thinking? Your wife (that would be our mother) would have killed you if she knew that you were poking around a hazard zone with 3 kids under the age of 6.

Ma, remember the time I helped you paint the kitchen cabinets with paint that was supposed to produce a nice wood-grain looking finish, and we both awoke in the middle of the night and found our way into the kitchen, where we collapsed with laughter (which didn’t happen on too many occasions with you, I’ve got to admit) at how hideous it looked: a grotesque reddish-brown the color of Spanish peanut skins. The next day, we repainted those cabinets an olive-y green, which wasn’t all that great but did represent a marked improvement. (Should have stuck with the original yellow.)

Plenty more memories where those came from. If you’d like to hear more from me, just let me know.

Unlike Mary Baker Eddy, I have two working phones. Give me a holler.

___________________________________________

*Eddy was long rumored to have a telephone in her mausoleum but  Snopes has debunked this one. (Hiss, boo. Some rumors are just too good to be debunked, thank you. Here I was, all these years, thinking that maybe she really was a Christian Scientist who’d figured out a way to use modern technology to communicate to and from the great beyond.

Jeez Louise. What next?

I realize that I’m a far piece from Lusk, Wyoming.

Still, it’s unsettling to hear that Melanoplus sanguinipes, a.k.a., the same migratory grasshoppers that wreaked havoc on the land during the Dust Bowl, are back again.

These high plains drifters – they can  fly hundreds of miles (which I calculate puts them about a week away from here) – are starting to chomp their way through alfalfa, hay, and wheat. Wide swaths of land in Wyoming, Montana, and South Dakota are at risk of attack by these winged vegans.

Why this year?

With low farm prices last year, many ranchers decided to forgo the $1-an-acre spraying fee for prophylactic grasshopper control. And the ample spring rains this year and last fell with a timing that failed to control the egg numbers, leaving more adults to lay more eggs. (Source: NY Times.)

The result of this perfect storm: there may be 1 trillion of these little sucker gettin’ ready to pounce. (Better prophylactic than sorry, I’d say.)

What a year it’s been!

Bad enough we have to worry about underwear bombers and Times Square terrorists. North Korean madmen and Orly Taitz (who, thankfully, lost her bid for nomination for political office in California).  The sad ending to various Gore marriages, and poor Sandra Bullock. Fergie pimping the royals, and the reported Bernie Madoff tough guy prison message to his victims. (F-you!)

Unemployment. Underemployment. The repossessed, the depossessed, and the endless spout of aggravating, let-the-eat-cake utterance out of the mouths of tone-deaf Wall Streeters. (Talk about F-you!)

Forget global warming and our hormoned-up, fructosed-out, addicting food supply. Those frets are so back-burnered by this point, they’re almost yesterday.

Now we have to worry about 1 trillion hell-bent on crop devastation grasshoppers revving their engines out west.

In one sense, it’s too bad, because grasshoppers – if you live in a city, anyway – have a nice, benevolent image, pretty much.

Okay, so they’re not your go-to guys – that would be the ants.

But they’re kind of fun and frolicky, no?

Out west, they’re the enemy. So we need those crop dusters to – ah, young grasshopper – get kung fu fighting.

Although I’m a city girl, I do have a tad bit of experience with insect plagues. (And I’m not even counting the cockroaches in the toaster when I was in college.)

Years ago, gypsy moths took to the skies of New England.

They nested in trees, and spread some type of netting that looked like the spun-glass angel hair my mother used to put on our Christmas trees. Having nested and infested, the gypsy moths proceeded to pretty much destroy the trees they lived in.

They also left their slick and slimy larvae under the shingles at my mother’s house.

So she enlisted some of us to scrape them out from under.

Par-tay at Ma’s this weekend, boys and girls!

Talk about never ending battle. Talk about dis-gusting.

As I stood there prying out gypsy moth larvae with a screwdriver, I would have given anything for one of those old timey, pump action sprayers full of DDT.

So I have a little up close and personal experience with what our neighbors to the west are going through.

Westward, ho, ye crop dusters! America stands behind you. Dust away!

N.U.N.A. (No Unemployed Need Apply)

As if it isn’t crappy enough being out of work, some of the companies that are hiring are limiting their recruitment to those who are already working.

Case in point, a job posting referenced in a recent HuffPo article that listed the usual job qualifications, plus:

…red print at the bottom of the ad says, "Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason."

Those lucky choosers! Never having to deal with beggars.

The company with this less than enlightened (IMHO, anyway) HR policy, by the way, is not some piddling little local outfit that makes an occasional hire. It’s Benchmark Electronics, a NYSE-traded multi-national that provides high-end electronics manufacturing service.

Benchmark has a nifty (if slightly mysterious) motto:

We’re where you want us to be.

Oh, no, you’re not.

Because if you' were where I wanted you to be, you wouldn’t have a wet blanket policy on not hiring those who aren’t currently working.

"It's our preference that they currently be employed," [the Benchmark HR rep] said. "We typically go after people that are happy where they are and then tell them about the opportunities here. We do get a lot of applications blindly from people who are currently unemployed -- with the economy being what it is, we've had a lot of people contact us that don't have the skill sets we want, so we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on that and try to rifle-shoot the folks we're interested in."

Forget the unfortunate choice of the term “rifle-shoot the folks we’re interested in.” (“I was happily working away and, bang, I felt this stinging sensation in my arm. Fortunately, the bullet just nicked me and, as it turned out, the people who were shooting at me offered me a swell new job!”)

The Benchmark HR person makes a reasonable point about hearing from desperate job seekers who will take – I’m getting into the spirit of things here – a scatter shot approach to job hunt, sending out resumes to anyplace that’s hiring, even if they are only tangentially (at best) qualified for a position. I’m sure it’s painful and boring to have to open up 100 resumes from people who were grill cooks who want to make the transition to electronics engineer.

And I’m really not meaning to pick on Benchmark, here. Bully for them that they’re hiring. Plus they’re not alone in refusing to consider candidates who are not currently working.

But  there is something unsettling (especially, no doubt to the unemployed), and a bit off, about this policy.

I’ve been on the giving and receiving ends of lay-offs, so I know that absolutely drop-dead brilliant employees do get pink slipped.

I also know that underperformers have a way of making their way to the top of the layoff list – especially in first rounds, and when the layoff is subjective (as in, ‘We have reduce headcount by 10%. Who do we want to get rid of?) rather than methodical (‘We’re shutting down the plant in East Oshkosh.’)

99.99% – make that 6-nines -  of managers will, if given the opportunity to do their own picking and choosing, take advantage of a layoff opportunity to get rid of deadwood. Managers have also been known to sandbag a couple of underperformers, holding them in reserve if they anticipate a lay-off. This may not be shining star managerial practice, but if there’s a layoff looming, you may not be able to do any hiring. So why get rid of deadwood if you can’t replace them. Especially when you know, know, know that, even if you just sacrificed headcount for the good of the company, you will, will, will be asked to keep sacrificing.

So you prop up your deadwood with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other so that people will think they’re alive and, when you’re asked to toss a few heads on the platter, you’ve got yours.

So, yes, some employees who are laid off may not be stellar performers.

But there are a lot of other reasons you could find yourself on a lay-off list.

Politics is one – and it may not even be politics that you play.  Someone wants to take down your manager, or their manager, for some reason, you may be vulnerable.

You might get the pink slip because you haven’t been around long enough to build up relationships, good will, and a performance record.

Maybe you get picked, even though you’re great at your job, because there’s someone who can do your job well enough, but is great at something else you can’t do – a two-fer, as it were.

Sometimes you hit the lay off list because, for whatever reason, you don’t fit in with the group or company culture. Maybe that shouldn’t matter as much as it does, but it does, indeed matter. Maybe you’ll fit in better somewhere else.

Maybe your product or project got canceled. Maybe your division got shut down. Maybe your industry went bust. Maybe you took a chance with a small company that withered away and died.

Lot’s o’ good reasons why lots o’ good people are unemployed.

Frankly, I really don’t believe that any company would absolutely, positively, categorically refuse to consider hiring ALL the prospective applicants who happen to be out of a job at the mo.

Surely, if one of your best-y workers recommended and vouched for a former colleague, you’d give them a tumble.

I don’t imagine that the No Unemployed Need Apply practice – at least overtly – is all that widespread.

But surely there are hiring managers and HR groups winnowing down their piles full of cover letters and resumes by separating out the perceived chaff of those without jobs.

Personally, I don’t believe that just because someone’s currently employed they’re a better bet than someone “collecting.”

Sure, if someone had a big, gaping hole in their resume, I would want to know why.  But there’s quite a long list of “why’s” that I could look beyond, including, but not limited to:

• At home with the baby
• Illness
• Sick family member
• Back to school
• Went out for the Olympic luge team
• Took time out to write a novel
• Paddled across the Pacific in a kayak
• Always wanted to see if they could make a living crocheting (answer: no)
• Laid off in a bad economy
• Faced age discrimination

From my own experience, I think it’s kind of nuts to assume that just because someone’s employed they’re any good (even in this dire economy).

I made some major hiring mistakes in my career – and I’m talking Capital L, Capital U, Capital LU LULUs.

Guess what?

They were all in jobs when I hired them.

Maybe their managers were sandbagging them for a layoff. Maybe their managers were chicken shits – I know the feeling – who were just hoping and praying that their misfit would land somewhere else before they had to have “the conversation” with them. Maybe (although, in the case of my Capital L, Capital U, Capital LU LULUs I doubt it) they were actually performing well in their company of origin. Maybe I was just a gasoline-and-match manager for them. (I doubt that, too.)

In any case, they became my problem.

One I sandbagged for a lay-off. One we had to fire – this person had really gone around the old performance bend. One I put on performance notice, and two weeks later she quit. (Yahoo…..I can still remember the feeling of elation. When I told my friend Kevin that “E” was leaving, he high-fived me and said, “That’s addition by subtraction.”)

I don’t know what happened to the one I sandbagged, other than that she moved to California. I actually think she had a lot of raw potential, and I hope things worked out for her.

Number two on that list – the one even soft-hearted I couldn’t sandbag for the next layoff – landed somewhere fast, as the job hunt was already in process, and so far along that the hiring company probably didn’t even realize that the person they were so deliriously happy to get had been let go. For cause. I did hear through the grapevine that this company came to regret it.

The third one didn’t last long at her new job, either.

So bad things can happen to good people if they are deluded enough to think that the fact that someone’s working is a sign from the gods.

Look, there are enough unhappy ending stories in this economy already:

• Aging boomers who need to work but are slamming up against age discrimination. (Boy, is that don’t trust anyone over thirty coming back to haunt us.)
• Kids just coming out of school and looking for a springboard first job. (Special sympathy to those with hefty loans.)
• Folks in industries that have gone permanent bye-bye, and who are extremely unlikely to have jobs at the same skill level that pay as well ever ever again.
• Et al.

Do hiring companies really have to add to the misery and debilitating angst by making a fetish out of N.U.N.A.?

Why don’t they just specify that they will not look at resumes that don’t 100% fit their qualification list – and be ruthless about it.

The only good thing I can say for them (other than that they’re hiring) is that, when they woo someone who was contented-cow happy at their prior job, that leaves an opening in a company that may be able to look beyond an employment gap on a resume.

Don’t cry for me, Perón’s bathrobe

I will admit that I have plenty of odd-ball junk hanging around.  I have the collar (with tags) of a my late, lamented pooch Grimbald – dead, now, for nearly 30 years. Squirreled away in my mother’s hope chest, I have my father’s bathrobe and the Pendleton shirt I gave him for Christmas right before he died. I have one grandmother’s cookie jar, and the other grandmother’s sampler (which she did as a 12 year old, so there’s really no excuse why the alphabet is in a weird order, is there?) I have the steer horns that hung in my grandfather Rogers’ saloon, which went out with Prohibition. I still have my beloved stuffed dog, Sniffy, who I got for my 4th birthday. (My husband recently offered Sniffy to our dog-nephew as a plaything, before I snatched him – Sniffy, not my husband -  from Jack’s jaws. Sniffy? A plaything for a toy-gnawing lab? I. DON’T. THINK. SO.)

Just looking around me, I can spy with my little eye all sorts of weird little things.

On one book shelf alone, there’s a bit of pre-Columbian stone carving sitting in front of a bendable Bullwinkle, that’s leaning up against a clay pig one of my sister Trish’s college roommates sculpted. The pig appears to be charging a nice little sandalwood box on which a mini-sock monkey is perched.

I forgot to mention the tiny Cloisonné vase, the toy London bus, and the praying hands pencil sharpener that are also on this particular shelf.  Plus a couple of family pictures. (And a bunch of knickknackery left out for the sake of brevity. You’re welcome.)

All arrayed in front of the Irish lit section of my library.

The whole thing looks like it sprung from the mind of James Joyce, so I’m sure the old Jimbo wouldn’t mind the rubber squirt turtle in front of Ulysses.

Okay, okay.

I could sorely use a dumpster. And I’m quite certain that a lot of my stuff will end up there, tossed in what I hope is the distant future by my nieces, who will be asking each other ‘what was she thinking?’

But all of the junk I have is, more of less, personal. It all came from and/or is related to my life, my family, my friends, my travels, my jobs.

Sure, there are a few antiquish things that I picked up in junk antique stores, but, once I paid for them, they became my personal junk.

Anyway, I get why people accumulate “stuff.”

But I really don’t understand the thrill of accumulating stuff that belonged to “famous” people, unless, of course, they gave it to you as a gift. (The closest I come to near greatness is an autographed photo-portrait of Cardinal Richard Cushing that The Cush gave to my father.)

And I really don’t get the thrill of accumulating stuff that belonged to infamous people.

Yet it doesn’t take much sleuthing to find all sorts of things for sale. A few years ago, you could bid for Hitler’s typewriter on eBay.

And now, if you’re looking for objects that belonged to Juan Perón, you may be in luck. (I know, I know. Juan P is not exactly in the same league as Hitler, however many Nazis he welcomed to his country after WWII.)

I saw an article in a recent Economist about one Mario Rotundo, a friend of the late Argentine strongman, who was left Perón’s personal belongings. He’s already offloaded some of what he was left, and used the $500K he’s raised to  - via Perón’s instructions - “fund good works.” Which is I guess what Juan and Evita were known for. Or am I confusing them with good workin’ Madonna? Not that I ever saw the movie, mind you. Still, the tune rattles around in my fevered little brain….

Anyway, 14,000 items are on the block.

They include the green silk dressing ground that Juan donned the day he died. (Shudder, shudder.) The gravestone of his dog, Canela. (“The best and most faithful of friends.” True dat, I’m sure.) And a Limoges box that Josephine Baker had given Juan. (Do all famous people know each other or what?)

The auction hopes to raise $20M for worthy causes.

No mention of the one item – or two, depending how you count – that might be of the most interest.

Apparently in1987, when I must have been paying attention to other things:

… his tomb was desecrated, and his hands and some personal effects, including his sword, were stolen. Perón's hands were cut off with a chainsaw. A ransom letter asking for $8 million dollars was sent to some Peronist members of Congress. (Source: Wikipedia.)

Live by the sword, perish by the chainsaw, I guess.

Think I’d rather have the dog gravestone, by the way. Although I probably won’t be bidding on anything.

I’ve got plenty enough junk around here already.

Time to retire (Helen Thomas, not me)

By now, even the most casual of news readers has no doubt heard about Helen Thomas’ unfortunate comment about Jews “get[ting] the hell out of Palestine” and heading back to Germany or Poland.

Well, you don’t have to be a member of AIPAC to find yourself having a wee bit of a problem with that comment.

Come on, Helen, if you’d said “maybe we’d all be better off if Israel had re-lo’d somewhere else” -  as in Michael Chabon’s wonderful novel, “The Yiddish Police Force,” which is set in the Jewish protectorate of Sitka Alaska – that would have been one thing.

But the suggestion that Israeli Jews head on back to Germany and Poland.

Distasteful doesn’t begin to describe this tainted remark.

Especially from someone who was a news reporter during WW II. Although as a “news gal” of that era, she no doubt covered as much fluff as substance, she was certainly in a better position than most to learn early rather than later exactly what being a Jew in Germany or Poland meant. You don’t have to have sonar for anti-Semitic remarks to extend the ellipsis on hers to “and don’t let the door of the gas chamber hit your ass on the way in.”

Anyway, in the wake of her remark, Helen was dumped by her speakers’ bureau (a.m.), and decided to resign from her position as a reporter for Hearst News (p.m.). And from the front-row perch she’s sat in for years at presidential news conferences. She’s been covering those press conferences since Kennedy was elected – nearly 50 years.

I’m actually not here to vilify Helen Thomas, or to heap any more opprobrium on her weary and ancient shoulders.

In fact, I’d rather focus on the good long run she had as a working journalist since the early 1940’s.  She’ll be 90 in a couple of months, and, while I’m quite sure she’d prefer to have died with her pumps on, and her notebook and pen in hand, she certainly enjoyed a lengthier tenure than most of us.

But when is enough enough?

It’s conceivable that I’ll live to be 90. And I hope to be, like Helen, still going strong and, even, shooting my mouth off (although not so outrageously).

But do I want to be working?

And at what?

I suppose if you love, love, LOVE, what you do, you might as well keep on keepin’ on.

I don’t exactly love, love, LOVE my work. Rather, I like, like, LIKE it. Or even love, love, LIKE it. Or some combo of love-like that varies over time, depending on the mix of clients and projects.

Still, I like-love it well enough to keep at it for the foreseeable future. And, if and when my career earth turns out to be flat, and I sail over the edge – or, better yet, when I win big bucks in Powerball – I will find something else to do.

I will pay more attention to rewriting Pink Slip (the book).  I’ll pay more attention to growing Pink Slip (the blog). I’ll work on one of the novels that’s been rattling around in my head for the last couple of years. I’ll restart the writers group I ran a while back at St. Francis House (New England’s largest day shelter for the poor and homeless).

I’ll figure something out.

Because, I’m guessing that I’ve got a bit of Helen Thomas in me, in that while I may not always be enamored of the work I do, I actually like to work. 

Even when I was waiting tables and working in a boot factory, my work has always provided challenge, interest, companionship, and, of course, income (oh, that).

I probably need it more than it needs me.

As for Helen Thomas, I wouldn’t want to be her when she wakes up tomorrow morning with no place to go for the first time in nearly 70 years.  Which may be a counter-argument to making work so central to your life.

Still, it got me thinking about whether I’d want to be working at the age of 90.

My immediate response is, “of course not.”

But come to think about it, that response kinda-sorta turns into “why not?”

Sure, there’ll be days when I look out the ice-encrusted window, feel an ache in my hip and a crick in my neck, and decide to get back into bed and pull the covers up over my head. (Come to think of it, I’ve been having days like that for years.)

And, sure, there’s the need for us oldsters to get out of the way so the young folk can have our jobs. (Not that there’ll be all that many of them clamoring for mine. The marketing folks will want to focus on more hip and happenin’ work than market research  - other than via Tweet-examination – and product positioning. The writers will want to be doing the creative, feed-the-soul writing that got them into their MFA program, not the not-so-creative, feed-the-body writing that us MBA-types do.)

Anyway, so long, Helen Thomas. It really was time for you to go.

Pass the basket: just remember that you’re supposed to be putting in, not taking out

One of the many jobs I had along the way was counting the collection money at church, which I did every Sunday throughout high school.

I say “job”, even though we weren’t paid very much. I think by my senior year, we were making about $3 for about 5 - 6 hours of work – even in those long-gone days, this was substantially under minimum wage. But the job had a lot of side benefits, most notably a number of my friends were in the “counting house” with me – all gabbing away. Plus, in addition to getting paid, we got breakfast – either at the White House Restaurant in Webster Square, or with junk food bought at Cumberland Farms. 

Other than having to get up for the 6:30 a.m. Mass so we could be at our post when the 7 a.m. take came in, the job was pretty easy-peasy. For one thing, there was a lot of downtime between when the ushers delivered the collection proceeds, and when we finished processing them. In nice weather, we could sit out on the porch in rocking chairs. In not so nice weather, we could watch TV (not that there was much on on a Sunday morning in those b&w days).  Or – if all the priests, plus the housekeeper were away – we could nose around in the rectory –someone keeping watch so we wouldn’t get nabbed. (We didn’t do this very often: it was just too scary.)

Mid-way through my career as a counter, the pastor of our church died. The priest who replaced him brought with him two elderly spinster sisters – Rose and Ida – as his housekeepers. Rose and Ida were pack rats, and they took over our counting room with boxes full of floor to ceiling junk that would have done the Collyer brothers proud.

Although we were relegated to a smaller ante-room in which to do our work, we could poke around the stacks of Rose and Ida junk, which included all kinds of ancient gifts. My favorite was cartons full of what appeared to be 20 year old, still-in-cellophane, holiday boxes of chocolates.

The actual task of counting was hardly onerous. We opened the kiddy envelopes, using a paper cutter; shook out the coins; and discarded the little envies. We kept the fact that kids donations weren’t recorded from the kiddies – why not let them think that Sister Superior knew whether they’d put an empty envelope in the collection basket, rather than spending the dime on penny candy at Carrera’s Spa.

For the adult envelopes, we opened them up, wrote down the donation amount (this was pretty much all cash), and sorted the envelopes by number. The actual transcription of who-gave-what was left to a pair of elderly spinster sisters (not Rose and Ida), who matched the numbers printed on the envelopes to the names or parishioners that they kept in their secret books.

At the end of the day, we put the bills, sorted by denomination, in packs of twenty-five; threw all the change in the coin counter; and toted everything up.

At some point, the younger, “cool” priest would put in an appearance, joke around with us, and raffle off the Kennedy half-dollars that showed up. Even if the younger, “cool” priest didn’t drop by, I will confess that we began to raffle off the Kennedy half-dollars, anyway, which usually added $.50 to our take-home. (We stopped doing this when they raised our wages to $3, by the way. At first when I had the job, we were paid $1.00 for those 5-6 hours. Way worse than babysitting (even when your regular babysitting job was 7 boys), which paid $.50 hour).

Raffling off those Kennedy halfs was about as dishonest as it got, and I can honestly say that it wouldn’t have occurred to me in a billion years to pocket any of the collection money.

I hadn’t thought about that job in years. Then I read an article in The Boston Globe about a local woman, Donna Rood (surely not to be confused with Donna Reed), who was just busted for skimming over $100K from the collections at St. Mary Magdalen in Tyngsboro over the past few years.

St. Mary Magdalen! Could there have been a better church name -  other than St. Dismas, the Good Thief – for one involved in a crime? Of course, this was a crime of the pocketbook, not the flesh. Still…

Anyway, Ms. Rood was in charge of counting the collections at St. MM from 2003 until midway through last year.  By the parish reckoning, she light-fingered about $16K a year, or about $300 a week. That’s a lot of Kennedy half dollars.

The theft was uncovered after a priest got to wondering why, on the Sundays when he did the counting, the church cleared a lot more.

Ms. Rood – who is 47 – is now facing arraignment. Not to mention the colossal humiliation of being found to have cadged donation money from a church. Oh, the infamy!

My high school – Notre Dame Academy in Worcester – has a sister school in Tyngsboro.

My advice to the folks at St. Mary Magdalen is that they get a handful of NDA girls from their parish to do the counting for them.

No, it’s not a glamorous, high-paying, career-enhancing job. But my guess is that teenage girls still wouldn’t mind sitting around gossiping and eating M&M for a few hours on Sunday morning, counting the weekend’s take.

Up periscope

In general, I’m an anti-claustrophobe.

Having designed it many times in my head (since I was about 6 years old), I could probably live in reasonable comfort in a 200 square foot “home.” Maybe even 100 square feet.

Still, I don’t like the idea of being cooped up in a submarine.

Maybe it’s the lack of privacy. I’ve toured the captured U-Boat in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and as much as I admired those perky blue-checked sheets, I don’t think I would have enjoyed spending much time down U.

I don’t imagine I would like never being able to step outside and enjoy the elements. No sticking out your tongue to catch a snowflake. No spotting the first robin red-breast. No stopping to smell the roses. No window shopping. No shopping, period.

Also, there’s the thought that the air might not be the freshest of the fresh. Especially because everyone couldn’t take a nice, long shower every time they wanted to – another problem I’d have with submarine life. Not to mention that if you’re at sea, make that under sea, for long periods of time, the food might not be the freshest of the fresh. We all know from The Caine Mutiny – yes, I know, that was a ship, not a submarine – that canned strawberries can be yummy. But I bet after a month in a sub, I’d have some powerful hankering for mixed greens.

But that was then – World War II – and this is now.

The submarines – like the one in The Hunt for the Red October - are more capacious than the tin cans of WWII vintage. Plus the sailors don’t look as scruffy, so maybe the showering’s better, too. The chow’s probably okay, what with frozen food improvements. Maybe with hydroponics and grow lights, you can even get a tomato.

Submarine life, however, has been a mystery to American women – even those in the U.S. Navy.

But that’s about to change.

Eleven new Annapolis grads are going snorkeling. They’ve been commissioned, and will be serving:

…in the deeply fraternal, claustrophobic confines of a nuclear submarine.

Two of these young ensigns are from Massachusetts – Elizabeth Hudson and Rachel Lessard – and the pair was written up in The Boston Globe the other day.

For Hudson, being a submariner is “being among the elite,” and that’s what she’s looking for. But, because submarine service is one of the last, male military bastions to fall, the decision to let women in is not without controversy.

… there is also resistance among submarine veterans to allowing women in the “Silent Service,’’ where deployments can last two months or more, quarters are severely tight, and men do not see their wives or girlfriends until each long patrol is finished.

Some critics are claiming that the radiation on the submarines can pose a risk to women’s reproductive systems. (If so, it probably can’t be doing men’s systems any good, either.)

One person who opposes the new policy, Elaine Donnelly, takes it a step further:

“There are health risks to women with emergency pregnancies,’’ such as ectopic pregnancies in which a fertilized egg is attached outside the womb, Donnelly said. Medical resources on submarines would be insufficient to treat such emergencies, she said, and captains would be placed in the difficult position of altering a mission to ensure the woman received treatment elsewhere.

Now, I don’t know whether there’s a doctor in the house on an average submarine, but it seems to me that a woman having an ectopic pregnancy while at sea, while surely demanding non-routine treatment, would be as common as a male sailor finding, say, a major lump on his privates. Or any sailor suffering from some other sort of medical emergency. So this “ectopic pregnancy” argument doesn’t really hold water.

The decision to allow women to serve on submarines was made after a task force, headed by an admiral who runs a sub base, made the recommendation to do so.

Some disgruntled vets (and some currently serving) claim that it just flat out “won’t work.”

Whether it will or not remains to be seen. And, while I find the idea of wanting to serve on a submarine unfathomable, I’m betting that it will – even though there may be new tensions introduced to what is already a fairly tense environment. (Also note that these are officers. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for enlisted female sailors to hop aboard a submarine any time soon.)

If you’re wondering what the digs are like:

Initially, two female ensigns and one supply officer will be assigned to each of two alternating crews for four submarines. While on board, they will be part of the 15 officers and 140 enlisted men who serve on the 560-foot-long vessels. The three women will be berthed together, and a Velcro sign will be flipped from “Men’’ to “Women’’ when they need to use the stalls in the single officers’ head.

Thank goodness for that Velcro sign. Wouldn’t want some guy in the next stall playing footsie with me.

No significant changes were necessary to accommodate women aboard the big submarines. In the Navy’s smaller attack submarines, any introduction of women might require some structural modifications.

Attack sub. Those must be the ones like the U-Boat I toured. If that’s the case, forget about structural modifications. Unless they make them bigger, I say, abandon all hope, ye women who enter here.

Lessard and Hudson are downplaying the concerns.

“That’s really not anything I’m not used to,’’ said Lessard, who cited her experience of three weeks on the ocean aboard a mixed-gender sailboat. “That’s way, way closer quarters than any submarine.’’

They’re also pooh-poohing the notion that they’re anything special.

“We’ve been called trailblazers, but to me it’s a coincidence more than anything,’’ said Hudson.

Lessard echoed that sentiment. “I didn’t do this to be the first person,’’ she said. “It was bound to happen.’’

The two won’t be ship-ahoying until 2012, as they have additional training to go through.

Good luck to both of them.

Up periscope.  Prepare to dive. Away all boats.

You load 16 credits, what do you get? Another day older and a-deeper in debt…

Subprime lending crisis?

That is so 2008.

The next big bubble burst is supposedly going to occur when all those folks who took out mega-loans to finance their education start defaulting.

Not that it’s easy to get out of paying back those student loans. It’s not like walking out the front door, throwing away the keys, and saying ‘let the bank deal with it.’  Apparently, having student debt is like owing your soul to the company store.  You’re stuck with it until it’s paid off, or until death do you part.

Anyway, there was an interesting article in The New York Times the other day on a young woman who racked up nearly $100K in loans to finance her undergraduate education at NYU – some of it through NYU, and some of it through Citi.

Now, it might have made some financial sense if the woman profiled had majored in engineering or business or computer science or something  where one might reasonably expect to get a decent-paying job. Sure, nobody wants to write that a big fat check to payback your loan every month for a zillion years. But if you start out making a good salary, and have solid long run prospects (assuming that everything isn’t so globalized over the next 20 years that we’re all competing to make a $1 an hour to write code), it’s doable – even if it puts a crimp in things like buying a house, starting a family, buying a car, taking a vacation. (Oh, that.)

But Cortney Munna, the young woman in the article, acquired a less practical “interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies.”  She’s now working as a photographer making $22 an hour. Which is not terrible-terrible, until you translate it into $2.3K take home per month – and a looming, still-deferred $700 a month in loan repayment schedule. Which stands to increase if interest rates go up.

Grim.

Ms. Munna and her mother (both interviewed for The Times article) do not sound in the least like jerks. They sound like genuinely decent people. Just woefully naive – and swept into a system where it was, apparently, in no one’s interest to explain the facts of economic life to a teenager who was more than willing to sign on the dotted line for $40K that Citi was dangling before her so that she could stay in the school of her dreams.

Which is turning into the school of Munna’s nightmares, now that she’s staring down years of indenture.

Cortney’s mother, Cathryn, a widow who runs a B&B in upstate NY, seems to feel immense guilt over her role in not helping her child figure out that all that debt wasn’t a good idea.

“All I could see was college, and a good college and how proud I was of her,” Cathryn said. “All we needed to do was get this education and get the good job. This is the thing that eats away at me, the naïveté on my part.”

Cathryn wishes that NYU had slapped them both up and down the side of the head and told them that they just couldn’t afford the education.  But colleges aren’t in the business of telling qualified students that they can’t come, even when they don’t have the endowment chops (which only a few schools do) to offer everyone the financial assistance they need.

If you’re good enough to get into Harvard, you’re golden. If you’re not quite good enough, and you ‘only’ get into NYU, you’re fools gold, and pretty much on your own to figure out how you’re going to pay.

Sallie Mae shut the Munnas off, and, instead of taking this as a dragons-be-here warning sign, they heeded NYU’s advice that they look into a loan from Citi. Citi was happy to oblige the Munnas:

But what was Citi thinking, handing over $40,000 to an undergraduate who had already amassed debt well into the five figures? This was, in effect, a “no doc” or at least a “low doc” subprime mortgage loan.

Things have now tightened up a bit, and today the Munnas might not qualify for a loan of this magnitude.

But that’s a day late, and about a dollar – actually forty-thousand dollars – long.

There are hundreds of thousands of young folks like Cortney Munna who’ve taking on heavy debt to finance their education.

For a lot of them (especially, I suspect the religious and women’s studies majors), it just won’t be worth it. And we’ll all have to deal with the repercussions of having those hundreds of thousands of young folks start out life – already one full of professional and economic insecurity beyond anything that us Baby Boomers faced at that age – with a college loan millstone around their necks.

Depressing.

(‘Saint Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go. I owe my soul to the company store.’)

It’s only natural: the National Wildlife Property Repository auction

Looking for a coat made out of Siberian weasel?

Sure, weasel doesn’t sound as warm and inviting as ermine, but on a cold winter’s night, a fur coat’s a fur coat, no?

Anyway, sorry to have gotten your hopes up, but the Siberian weasel coats are gone, to the highest bidder, who picked up the lot (12 coats) for $4,450.  Thus reporteth the Wall Street Journal, in an article on the U.S. Wildlife Service’s rolling auction, in which they’re selling off hundreds of thousands of articles of clothing, furniture, and knick-knacks that were confiscated because they violate regulations governing international trade in things wildlife.

They’re running the auction to make some room in their warehouse, and to raise some money to fund conservation programs.

The “goods” in the warehouse include a “beribboned walrus penis.”

Frankly, I’m surprised there’s a market for that item. Come on, who doesn’t already have a beribboned walrus penis? (Well, maybe not beribboned…)

And just because it’s in the warehouse, doesn’t mean it’s going to make it to the auction block.

Much of the booty is sent  “to schools, zoos and museums for exhibits.” Some of it gets junked (medicinal potions, which may suggest the fate of the beribboned walrus penis).  If something contains an endangered species, it can’t go on the auction block. And some of it is deemed too “crass” for sale:

That includes a belt made from the spotted fur of a Margay, a South American jungle cat. The unlucky creature's head, stuffed and glassy-eyed, is still attached, whiskers and all. It serves as the buckle.

Also on the crass list:

…a handbag made from a whole toad—tanned and shellacked, with a zipper down its belly. And … a knickknack made from a crocodilian reptile known as a caiman, posed with a pipe in its mouth and an ashtray in its claws.

Gosh, whatever happened to a monkey made out of coconut shell? (Oh, I remember, someone ‘won’ it at Christmas Eve Yankee swap a few years ago. They probably tossed it out.)

The sale is in the hands of Lone Star Auction, and, sorely disappointed at the thought of missing out on a Siberian weasel coat, I headed on over to see whether there’s any good stuff for sale.

Mostly it’s python pocketbooks and ostrich boots.

There are lots of lots of 10 of Marc Jacobs snake-skin handbags, and the bidding’s up over $1K. (These, and other lots, typically make their way on to eBay.)

A Ballantyne men’s striped shirt had been confiscated because it had shell buttons. Mother of pearl, that’s harsh.

I mean, a shell?

Wasn’t the clam, like, eaten? Chopped up and put in a can of Snow’s chowder?

There were other shell-based goods for sale, including a set of 459, 3-inch shell curios. 

I get the ostrich-lizard-python-cobra bans. But what am I missing with the shells? Are they supposed to stay in-country to prevent beach erosion? Do we want to protect our home-grown shell-curio industry? Or do we need to keep shells in their country of origin so that natives can use them to “pave” their driveways, as they do on The Cape. (By the way, those driveways are ouchy to walk on if you’re barefoot. Better to crunch down on those shells in a pair of ostrich boots. If you were so lucky as to purchase them at auction.)

Is there are People for the Ethical Treatment of Shells group that I don’t know about?

Perhaps they could explain why shell curios are unwanted on our shores.

And too bad the bidding’s gone wild – up to $135 when I checked – those 459 shell curios would make a mighty fine Yankee swap gift.

Meanwhile, if you’re still annoyed that you missed out on the Siberian weasel coat, you can try for a Siberian weasel hat.

Supposedly Chanel, but the Wildlife folks can’t vet the authenticity of the brand. Sure looks like the real deal to me. 

Castle keep. (Hey, it’s a job.)

I’ve been in a few castles in my day, and, for the most part, found them damp and drafty. I don’t imagine they would have been much fun to live in. Sure, it probably beat living in the alternative – a mud and wattle hut - and the improvements were more than marginal.

If nothing else, if you were in a castle there was less chance that a horde of invaders would stomp on your head in the middle of the night. No, you would have seen them coming, and had plenty of time to watch them rev up the old catapult and battering ram. On second thought, it might have been easier to just have them stomp on your head in the middle of the night and put you out of your misery. 

In any case, I have no doubt that I would have been living in the mud and wattle hut, and not in the crenellated, moted castle – other than as a servant girl.

Still, who doesn’t like the idea of a castle?

Not Michel Guyot, that’s for sure.

And M. Guyot is not just your every day idea man, dreaming of castles in the sky. (Source: Wall Street Journal.)

Nope.

He started building a repro castle in the Guédelon forest in France a while back, and to finance construction, he opened it up as a tourist site.

The Guédelon castle, which is about halfway built, has drawn visitors from around the world, including Jean-Marc Miret, a French expatriate living in the Ozarks. He was so taken with the concept, he urged Mr. Guyot to build an American version on his estate in Boone County, Ark.

Okay.

The first question is just how Jean-Marc Miret found his way to an estate in Boone County, Arkansas.

I suspect the trek to Arkansas isn’t the norm for most French ex-pats. (Hmmmmm. I could live in France, home of the baguette, champagne, and the Musée D’Orsay. Or I could move to Boone County, Arkansas, where I’m an hour’s drive from Branson, Missouri. So much for the myth of the culturally imperious French, non?) Maybe M. Miret came for the quiet and the fishing. Boone County is in the Ozarks, which is a very pretty area. Just not all that, well, cosmopolitan. (Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with not being all that cosmo…)

Anyway, a medieval castle’s now going up in Lead Hill, Boone County, Arkansas, and M. Cuyot is hoping to follow the same path as he took for his castle in France by having tourists fund the development. These tourists would come not just to check out another construction site. But to see something authentic in action. As you approach the site:

You can hear the plink of chisels, the creak of wooden carts, and the grunts of local laborers who are building the massive fortress by hand, using only tools available in the 13th century.

While M. Guyot and his wife weren’t all that familiar with Arkansas when M. Miret floated his idea to them:

"We went on the Internet to check, where was this Arkansas?" says Noémi Brunet, Mr. Guyot's wife and business partner. Her conclusion? "It was the middle of nowhere."

It was also irresistible. Mr. Guyot and Ms. Brunet visited and fell in love with the remote county, best known for its annual crawdad festival. "It's green and lovely, very authentic, very pure," Ms. Brunet says.

Very authentic, very pure.

Well worth the $1.5M that M. Guyot raised to buy the property (presumably from M. Miret) on which to build his second castle.

And, while I’m sure that the area is pristine (i.e., underdeveloped), I’m also sure it’s not exactly crawling with authentic, 13-century artisans. Is it just me, or is it more likely that the average hammer-swinger in Arkansas drives a Ford F-150 to Home Depot for a new chain saw, wears jeans and work boots, and watches NASCAR on a flat screen on weekends?

Still, a job’s a job – especially in this economy.

Not only do the folks doing the construction have to rely on 13th- century tools, they have to work in 13th-century garb (other than workplace safety requirements for steel-toed boots and safety goggles. Oh, those regulating-happy feds: they ruin everything.)

I was going to speculate how these costumes go over in the local tavern, only to find out that Boone County’s dry.

However they have to costumer themselves, I’m sure that these folks are happy to have the work, which pays $12 – 20 an hour. (By the way, there’s an opening for a basket weaver. Recent college grads with BA’s in art history, take heed.)

Muscles straining as he hoists and splits 50-pound stones to set into the castle's outer wall, mason Brad Fire Cloud says he dreams of power tools with shock-absorbent grips. "That crosses my mind all day long," he says.

The workers aren’t allowed to listen to music on the site, either, although I suppose it would be okay to hum a madrigal or bust out in some Gregorian chant. They also have to hide their modern food and bev – for Mr. Fire Cloud, that means Dr. Pepper – in burlap sacks. No BPJ or Yodels back in days of yore.

But those who can make it are happy for the stead work. Work on the castle is expected to take 20 years.

To cover its costs, the castle needs to bring in 150,000 paying visitors each year. The draw, so far, is a lot less. But they only need a small percent of Branson visitors to head down to Lead Hill, in between shows yucking it up with the Baldknobbers. (Come to think of it, those Baldknobbers look a tad bit medieval, no? Click through on the link for a clearer, and far scarier look. And while they may look medieval, they sure have enough techno-savvy to keep me from cutting and pasting the image I wanted off of their site. Maybe if I’d made a purchase in their online gift store…)

While the castle is attracting some Branson tourists, it’s running into a bit of resistance, as some of the visitors have found that getting around the castle site on shank’s mare is too onerous.

…several tourists have suggested a golf cart be deployed to haul the tired and the sweaty to their cars.

Well, maybe not a golf cart. But perhaps a sedan chair. Of some type of stone-wheeled dray. Carrying the sedan chair, hauling the dray: more jobs for the locals. (I wonder whether they tipped in the 13th century?)

Hey, it beats the faux “castle” experience at Disneyland.

And you can bet that, eight centuries from now, no one will be replicating (most) 21st century construction in authentic garb. (“Here’s how we staple-gunned the sheetrock…”)