Hellscape of the week: West Palm Beach, Florida

The Ibis Golf and Country Club is an upscale gated community in West Palm Beach, Florida. When New Yorkers Anthony and Siobhan Casimano were looking for a getaway home, it probably looked pretty good to them. Sun. Sea. Sand traps. A straight shot from NY.

What they didn’t see when they passed papers earlier this year was that there would be oodles of vultures puking and crapping all over their property.

Siobhan Casimano described the smell as “like a thousand rotting corpses.” The vultures have destroyed screen enclosures, and have overtaken the pool and barbeque. The few times the family has visited, they’ve had to park their car in the garage or the birds peck at them with their beaks.

A “thousand rotting corpses”? Welcome to the Sunshine State!

The Casimanos aren’t the only ones in the hood with this plague being visited upon them. Cheryl Katz had a bunch of vultures find their way into her pool enclosure. Smart enough to get in, the birdbrains couldn’t figure out how to get out.

“Imagine 20 vultures trapped, biting each other — and they can bite through bones,” she said. “They would bang against my windows running away from a bird that was attacking them. Blood was everywhere. It was a vile, vicious, traumatic event. And it was Memorial Day, so no company I called would come out to help me.” (Source: HuffPo)

I have a pretty good imagination. But, regrets to Cheryl, I’m not willing to use any of that pretty good imagination picturing a bunch of trapped vultures biting “through bones.” I’ll take her word that “it was a vile, vicious, traumatic event,” even as vile, vicious and traumatic events go.

Fortunately, West Palm’s finest came  to the rescue and moved the vultures along.

I’m guessing that this gated community was built along the migratory path of vultures. And you kinda/sorta can’t blame a vulture for doing what vultures do. But a big part of the reason that the Ibis neighborhood is under siege is thanks to one of their fellow homeowners.

Katz said she has seen the neighbor give bags of dog food and even a roasted chicken to the vultures.

There’s only so much the homeowners association can do, as the vultures are a protected species. (Maybe not for long. Wildlife protections are being tossed out right and left. This one might be a righteous hit.) And it doesn’t sound as if appeals to human decency are working with this neighbor from hell. Nor have fines and a cease-and-desist letter.

A few years ago, there was a problem in neighboring Brookline. An escaped pet cockatoo was pecking through the wood work on an upscale house (the birthplace of RFK) owned by a retired federal judge. Efforts to capture the bird were thwarted by a couple who were feeding Dino but refused to help capture him because they felt the bird should be free. But that was just one rogue bird hellbent on destruction, not a flock of them.

Speaking of flocks, I was curious just what you would call a flock of vultures. A puke? A crap? A nuisance?

Turns out, there are a few possibilties:

A group of vultures is called a committee, venue or volt. In flight, a flock of vultures is a kettle, and when the birds are feeding together at a carcass, the group is called a wake.

Committee sounds too peaceable. Venue doesn’t do justice to their West Palm behavior. Volt might work, since it could be construed as shorthand for revolting.

I also like kettle, as in this is a fine kettle of vultures.

As for wake, well, I’ve been to plenty of wakes and while there’s generally plenty of chewing the fat, I’ve yet to see anyone feeding on the carcass. At least not literally.

Folks have tried a lot of things to keep the vultures off their property – fireworks, balloons, fake owls, blasting music.

Katz tried the owl approach.

“The vultures chewed the owls apart,” she said. “They ripped the heads off.”

I’m not sure what the distinction is between vultures and buzzards, but the only place I’ve seen vultures/buzzards was on the grounds of USAA in San Antonio, Texas. USAA was a client of the company I was working for, and I went down for some sort of meeting. I remember two things about USAA. It was an immense facility, and employees rode bikes (indoors) to get from one section to another. And when we sat in our client’s office, looking out the window, we could see trees populated by vultures/buzzards. Needless to say, it’s hard to concentrate on matters to do with application software when a bunch of buzzards are staring you in the face.

Meanwhile, Anthony Casimano seems to be maintaining his sense of humor.

It’s a disaster,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a laughable disaster. You can’t make this up. That’s why it’s laughable.” (Source: WPBF)

Still, until the problem is resolved, the Casimanos are staying put in New York. With luck, the vultures will be gone by winter, when you really need to exit New York and enter Florida.

Too bad there’s not a way of funneling the puking, crapping vultures into the yard and lanai of the a-hole who’s feeding them.

And, come to think of it, Mar-A-Lago is just a couple of miles away, as the vulture flies. Perhaps there’s a way a kettle of vultures could be redirected there…

Guess I won’t be retiring to Maine after all

I’ve always enjoyed visiting the state of Maine.

My husband and I used to head Down East a couple of times a year. A few days in Perkins Cover (Ogunquit), where we’d walk the Marginal Way and then sit out on the porch at Barnacle Billy’s eating way overpriced lobster rolls and drinking way too strong G&T’s. We’d hit Portland for a long weekend or two and try out some of the always great new restaurants there.

For a number of years, I spent a wonderful week with my friend Shelly and the in-and-out company my husband and some overlap with my sister Trish and her family in a rundown lobsterman’s house on Christmas Cove near Damariscotta. The spot couldn’t have been more glorious; the house couldn’t have been dumpier.

It had been in the same family since the 1920’s and, other than a modest update to the tiny kitchen redone in the 1960’s, nothing had been touched. The tennis trophies won by the long-gone kids, the colored pencil drawings that had been tacked to the bedroom walls since 1932 were one thing. The pillows and mattresses from the 1920’s, leaden with dust mites, were quite another.

After our first adventure there, my sister Kath (who overlapped with Trish and family on the other end of our two week joint rental) figured out that bringing our own air mattresses, pillows and reading lights would greatly improve the experience. So that’s what we did.

I love Maine.

Maine is beautiful. Maine is nearby. Maine has lotsa lobstas. And lotsa outlets. Plus the whoopie pie is the state treat. What is not to like?

Sure, they tend to elect some terrible and/or useless politicos (their recent governor, Paul LePage; their current senior senator, Susan Collins) but it has always seemed to me that it would be a reasonable place to retire to. And their second senator, Angus King, almost but not quite makes up for Collins.

Of course, when I think “reasonable place to retire to”, I’m thinking Portland, a charming small city with decent medical care. Not up in the sticks in abandoned papermill country. Which is a good thing, given that in the poorer, more remote quarters of Maine – which means most of Maine – there is a colossal shortfall when it comes to people to care for the olds. And Maine, which may not have much by way of natural resources when you get beyond pine trees, lobsters, and water, definitely does not lack for old folks.

In fact, Maine is the oldiest state in the US.

Last year, Maine crossed a crucial aging milestone: A fifth of its population is older than 65, which meets the definition of “super-aged,” according to the World Bank. (Source: WaPo)

Other states will be joining Maine soon – including New Hampshire and Vermont – and, given demographic trends, most will pretty much end up there as well – but for now Maine is one of the worst places for elder care.

People aren’t able to get home health care aides to help keep aging parents in their homes. Skilled care facilities have long waiting lists. Openings (i.e., deaths) don’t come fast enough, and there are too many waiting to occupy a freed up bed before it’s gone cold.

Families in Maine:

….are being hammered by two slow-moving demographic forces — the growth of the retirement population and a simultaneous decline in young workers — that have been exacerbated by a national worker shortage pushing up the cost of labor. The unemployment rate in Maine is 3.2 percent, below the national average of 3.7 percent.

Maine’s problem is exacerbated by its lack of immigrants. They do have some pockets where immigrants have found their way – most notably from Africa, for some reason – but immigrants have clustered in the state’s larger cities and towns, not necessarily where the need is greatest.

As I mentioned, Maine’s by no means alone:

Across the country, the number of seniors will grow by more than 40 million, approximately doubling between 2015 and 2050, while the population older than 85 will come close to tripling.

Experts say the nation will have to refashion its workforce, overhaul its old-age programs and learn how to care for tens of millions of elderly people without ruining their families’ financial lives.

The workforce refashioning isn’t happening fast enough for Maine.

One fellow interviewed for the WaPo article is only 63, but has muscular dystrophy. For over a year, he’s been trying to find a nursing home that can provide the 24/7 care he needs. But nursing homes are not just overtaxed, they’re closing “at an unprecedented rate.” While Mark Honey waits for a spot to open up, he gets by on home healthcare. But the service he works with can’t provide him with the 70 hours a week he’s entitled to.

Honey said he lives in fear of one of the caretakers getting sick and quitting or finding another job. “When you’re confined to a bed, there’s not much you can work with,” Honey said. “It only takes one or two of the girls being sick, or one of the two of them quitting, for me to not be covered. And then you’re up the creek without a paddle.”

It’s not just home healthcare workers.

About one-third of Maine’s physicians are older than 60. In several rural counties in the state, close to half of the registered nurses are 55 or older and expected to retire or cut back their hours within a decade.

Add to this problem the fact that by 2026, the 65 and up population of the state is forecast to increase by 55%. (For the country overall, growth in the old-olds - 85 on up - population is expected to exceed 200%, while “those ages 75 to 84 will rise by more than 100 percent…By contrast, the number of Americans younger than 65 will increase by about 12 percent.”

And you can only raise wages so fast and so furious if there are just not enough people to earn those wages.

“The U.S. is just starting this journey, and Maine is at the leading edge,” said Jess Maurer, executive director of the Maine Council on Aging. “As we are living longer, all the systems that have always worked for us may have to be changed.”

Sounds like a reasonably good argument for immigration. Or robots. In the current political climate, it will probably be the robots rather than any of the huddled masses types who might be willing to work as home healthcare workers.

“Left unaddressed, this will be catastrophic. We as a country have not wrapped our heads around what it’s going to take to pay for long-term care,” [Bruce] Chernof [CEO of the SCAN Foundation, which advocates on long-term-care issues] said.

Wrapping our heads around any problem doesn’t seem to be America’s strong suit, especially in these times. In order to wrap our heads around something, we’d need to unwedge them first, no?

Meanwhile, Maine’s off the old retirement list.

Hey, NRA, is this what you call hitting ‘em with your best shot?

Honestly, in the Age of Trump, it’s sometimes difficult to discern between real news and The Onion.

Can it be possible that the lobbyist for the Florida NRA – an 80 year-old woman named Marion Hammer – actually made this argument against a proposed ban on assault rifles?

“How do you tell a 10-year-old little girl who got a Ruger 10/22 with a pink stock for her birthday that her rifle is an assault weapon and she has to turn it over to government or be arrested for felony possession?” (Source: Tampa Bay Times)

Since I don’t know a ton of 1-year-old little girls to begin with, and the ones I do know aren’t clamoring for pink ARs, I haven’t given these types of question much thought if any.

But now that Ms. Hammer mentions it…

My first thought would be to ask that 10 year-old what she needed a Ruger 10/22 for to begin with.

If she explained that she needed it for sport hunting, I might ask why she needed a rifle that could hold more than 10 rounds, or that allowed you to add-on a much larger ammo magazine. Because isn’t sport hunting supposed to be something of a fair fight, in which the doe or bear or duck or panther or alligator or whatever else Florida sport hunters like to kill, pit their instincts, their native wiles, their keen awareness of the terrain, against a human with a gun. But the human with a gun should be a good shot, no? Not someone who needs a weapon of mass destruction to mow down their prey.

After covering this ground, I might want to note that a pink gun is sort of babyish. But that would be a bit insulting, so I’d go with something along the lines of a pink rifle looking like a toy. And no self- or other-respecting 10-year-old girl would want a younger child - one without the advantage of having been raised in a home where guns are oh so respected, a young child lacking the vast knowledge, superb skills, and inerrant judgment of a 10-year-old – to grab that pink rifle – looking oh so much like a toy – and blow an even younger child’s brains out.

I might give the 10-year-old, Ruger-toting little girl an out, gently asking whether she really wanted that rifle for her birthday, or was she just doing it to please her gun-loving family. I might probe a bit. Would you want a bicycle? An electric scooter? An art set? A jewelry-making kit? A nail kit? The complete Harry Potter?

I mean, that pretty in pink Ruger cost several hundred bucks. That’s an awful lot of other stuff that could be had instead.

Hammer had plenty of other arguments against the (unlikely-to-pass) Florida assault rifle ban.

After all, Florida has worked long and hard to woo the gun industry to locate to that state.

“Gov. Rick Scott and Enterprise Florida solicited and offered significant financial incentives to gun manufacturers to come to Florida to bring more jobs,” she said…

The amendment would ban the future sale of assault rifles in the Sunshine State and force current owners to either register them with the state or give them up.

But Hammer said the proposed amendment doesn’t protect the more than 150 major gun manufacturers in the state, of which many produce weapons that would be outlawed by the ban. Those companies would be forced to move because they couldn’t possess any new assault weapons, she said.

Those gun manufacturers, by the way, churn out as many as three-quarter-of-a-million guns each year. That’s a lot of nifty gifties for 10- year-olds.

“If I were the owner of one of these firearm manufacturing companies, I wouldn’t wait to see what voters do,” she said. “If this were allowed to go on the ballot, I’d say, ‘I’m outta here.’”

Actually, what I’d say is ‘you’re outta your mind.” But that’s me doing me. To the NRA: you do you.

In any case, the measure is unlikely to pass. Even with the assault rifle murders of the students at Marjorie Stoneham Douglas High School still relatively fresh in everyone’s mind, Republicans/the NRA pretty much hold sway in Florida. And those kids at MDS High? Yesterday’s news. Dead and gone. Now there’s that 10-year-old girl with the pink Ruger rifle to worry about. Guess the NRA thinks she might be their best shot at a stay of execution for any gun control measures in the state of Florida.

GE’s not wild about Harry

You remember Harry Markopolos, don’t you?

He was the forensic accounting sleuth who figured out what Bernie Madoff was up to well before anyone bothered to act on it. He reported his suspicions about Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme to the SEC in 2000. It wasn’t until late in 2008 that the Feds came knocking at Bernie’s swank door. And everything came tumbling down around his ears – and the ears of everyone who’d ever been associated with him.

Well, Harry has spoken again, and this time he’s not taking on a flimflam man. He’s going after General Electric which, although it’s fallen from the top 10 standing it held for years, remains one of the world’s largest companies.

To put it mildly, Harry is not wild about GE.

In fact, in a report issued last week, he accused the company “of massive fraud,” and:

… is warning that the company could be in serious financial trouble -- and even go bankrupt -- if the economy turns south.

"GE is one recession away from Chapter 11. Their balance sheet is in tatters," Markopolos told Julia Chatterley on CNNi's "First Move" show Friday.

"We'll see how solvent they are at year end, and we'll see if they make it into 2020," he added. (Source: CNN)

Yowza. No more GE? No more bringing good things to life?

Predictably, once the wise man who was way ahead of the curve on Madoff spoke ill of GE, the market did its thing. In the wake of the Markopolos pronouncement last Thursday, the company’s share price plummeted. GE stock bounced back on Friday, nearly regaining what had been lost. We’ll see what today brings. (The market has, of course, been generally crazy, what with trade wars, recession fears, and the inverted yield curve…)

At the center of the whistleblower’s blown whistle is a claim that GE has $40B worth of accounting fraud hovering around its insurance business, as well as some problems “with how it accounts for its stake in oil services firm Baker Hughes.” One might say that Markopolos is pretty sure that GE is trying to live up to its “imagination at work” tagline in all the wrong places.

In the report, Markopolos claims that GE (GE) is a bigger fraud than Enron and WorldCom, which both went bankrupt following accounting scandals in the early 2000s.

Enron and WorldCom. Now there are a pair of doozies. A company I worked for during the dot.com boom was in talks with Enron around doing some sort of partnership, and at one point I had to review some sort of account plan. Despite my genius boss explaining how brilliant Enron’s business was – and that boss had actually been a rocket scientist – I never quite got what they did and how they made their money. I chalked it up to my own stupidity when it came to intricate financial situations. But maybe, just maybe, I could have been a Harry Markopolos if I’d played my cards right.

There has been plenty of pushback against Markopolos, both from GE and from others in the industry (researchers and short sellers), which claim that Markopolos is being somewhat duplicitous, in that he works for an investment company that is short selling GE and, thus, has every incentive to trash GE. In the tweeted words of a  Citron Research, a “firm that specializes in exposing problems”, Markopolos’ report:

…"was the worst that activist short selling has to offer. Aggressive accounting is not fraud." Citron added that the Markopolos report was "disingenuous all the way through."

GE’s CEO, Larry Culp, made a show of faith by buying $2M worth of GE stock. Old Lar has a lot to gain if GE stock price gets and stays up there, as most of his compensation package is tied to market performance. He stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars if the price is right.

Meanwhile, Markopolos pushed back on the pushbacks, insisting on his purity, proclaiming himself as “a seeker of truth.”

"If I see accounting fraud, I go after it," he said.

Sort of like an inverted Willie Sutton, who famously replied to a question of why he robbed banks by saying “because that’s where the money was.”

Both Markopolos and GE are cooperating with the SEC and DOJ on the matter. (GE has also been working with regulators reviewing its accounting practices for more than two years now.) We’ll see what kind of love the market gives GE today.

Suffice it to say, ain’t no one at GE who’s wild about Harry just about now.

Oh Lordy, Miss Scarlett

I’m just finishing up Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad.This novel– which won a Pulitzer and the National Book Award – is absolutely brilliant. It’s a type of fiction – magical realism – that I don’t typically enjoy, but in this case the writing is so beautiful and powerful, and the story – and its metaphors – so true, the magical realism is bothering me not.

The story follows a young slave, Cora, as she makes her escape from a plantation in Georgia via the Underground Railroad.

As Whitehead tells Cora’s story, the Underground Railroad is an actual train that runs through tunnels, and many of the stops along the way are similarly imagined. In one place, Cora works in a museum, where freed slaves (which she is passing herself off as) pose behind glass in slavery- and Africa-related tableaus so that the white folks can gawk at them.

Then there’s the town where they hang runaway slaves every Friday night, and leave their bodies hanging on the road into town.

I first began reading the book right around the time of the 2016 election, and found it so harrowing that I had to put it down. It took me well over two years to pick it back up.

It is a compelling (and important) read, speaking not only to the experience of slaves, but to the impact that white supremacy and slavery continue to have on our nation.

There are some people I’m guessing who just won’t like this book, and it won’t be because of the magical realism.

They’re the same people who want their history, their vision of the noble South, prettified and whitewashed.

I read about this a week or so ago in the Washington Post, which had an article on the negative online reviews that have been popping up about Southern plantation tours.

Here’s a smattering of what some of the low-raters had to say:

“It was just not what we expected.”

“I was depressed by the time I left.”

“ … the tour was more of a scolding of the old South.”

“The brief mentions of the former owners were defamatory.”

…“Would not recommend. Tour was all about how hard it was for the slaves.” (Source: WaPo)

“How hard it was for the slave”? Duh?

One reviewer wrote that “the tour guide was so radical about slave treatment that we felt we were being lectured and bashed about the slavery.” After mentioning her non-slave-owning Sicilian heritage, and bitching about her ruined vacation, this woman wrote that she did hope to come back “to see some real plantations that are so much more enjoyable to tour.”

Oh Lordy, Miss Scarlett…

What were they expecting? Southern belles flouncing around in hoop skirts? Noble young men sipping mint juleps and going on about honor? Period furniture shined to a mirror finish? (Shined by whom???)

If people want a cleaned up version of what plantation life – which rested on slavery, thrived on the backs of those treated inhumanely at best – they should just watch Gone With The Wind on pay per view.

Then they’ll be able to see those beautiful women in their beautiful gowns, the noble young men giving their lives for “The Cause,” the kindly house slaves so loyal to Scarlett O’Hara and her ilk. Sure, there’s fire and death and destruction (as those marauding Yankees burned everything down), but – fiddle-dee-dee – they will hear nary a word about slaves being whipped, families being split up and sold off.

Or they can rent The Birth of a Nation, to learn how the noble KKK was founded to save those hoop-skirted maidens from the depredations of you know who.

Seriously, isn’t expecting your plantation tour to be all magnolias and graciousness kind of like going to Auschwitz to admire the barracks where the SS lived?

It’s not as if slavery were incidental to plantation life. It was fundamental.

There are some hard truths out there in hard truth land, and one of them is the abhorrent truth about slavery, and how it continues to impact our nation to this day.

These reviewers don’t need a plantation tour. They need to read The Underground Railroad.

“By the time [they] got to Woodstock…”

Where was I on August 14, 1969?

Putting in a shift as a waitress at the Webster Square Big Boy’s in Worcester, that’s where.

I hadn’t been scheduled, but I took the hours for one of my fellow waitresses so that she could go to Woodstock.

I had been casually invited to come along, but took a pass. A hard pass. No desire to be there. None at all.

Not that I didn’t like most of the performers who were on the Woodstock program – Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Creedence Clearwater, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Tim Hardin,The Band, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, John Sebastian… I even liked Sha Na Na (which seemed like the odd man out group at Woodstock no?). I wouldn’t have gone out of my way for The Dead or Jimi Hendrix, but most of the acts were musicians that I listened to.

Anyway, I had no interest in going.

I was a music fan, and always had the radio on or an album spinning on the turntable, but wasn’t a huge concert goer.

Not that I was averse to crowds. But most of my crowd-time was spent demonstrating against the war in Viet Nam. (Demonstrations, on occasion, turned into concerts of sorts. Later in 1969, I heard Peter, Paul and Mary and John Lennon perform at the Moratorium in Washington DC.) But I had no desire to spend a couple of days hanging out on Yasgur’s Farm, even if no one knew ahead of time that it was going to turn out to be as much an uncomfortable, rained-on hellfest as it was a had-to-be-there concert. 

Interesting that the attempts to mount a 50th anniversary concert failed. Guess the boomers are too into creature comforts, these days. No hanging around in the mud, trying to stay warm in a sodden sleeping bag while catching a contact high.

The cancellation of the memorial concert does not mean that Woodstock’s Golden Anniversary won’t be observed. And one way it’s being observed is the release of “Woodstock—Back to the Garden: The Definitive 50th Anniversary Archive.”

This is a thirty-eight-CD set – yes, you read that correctly: 38 -

…that includes nearly every moment of recorded sound from the festival, spanning thirty-six hours of audio. (Disk 38 consists largely of crowd noise and announcements from the stage.) By this point, the listener has heard thirty-two performances, a treatise on “celestial sound” from Sri Swami Satchindananda, and countless calls from the stage for concertgoers to climb down from the sound towers.  (Source: The New Yorker)

By this point, I would have been diving off a sound tower, head first, hoping to put myself quickly out of my misery. Probably after listening to Sri Swami S’s “treatise on ‘celestial sound’”.

M.C.s deliver announcements about a lost three-year-old girl with blond hair and about people locked out of their cars, or missing their duffel bags, or in desperate need of their insulin.

A three-year old? Even as a 19 year old Big Boy waitress I would have known better than to bring a three-year-old to a sprawling outdoors middle of nowhere music festival. And I’m pretty sure that if I were a diabetic, I’d have known enough to pack enough insulin.

Guess I just wasn’t cut out for Woodstock.

One aggrieved Mets fan keeps asking for the result of the game, while anyone who was in contact with someone named Fritz is advised to “please go to the infirmary, identify yourself, and get a hepatitis shot.”

Well, 1969 was the year when the Amazin’ Mets won the World Series, so you can’t blame the fan. And I’m wondering whether Fritz has heeded today’s ads for those with Hep-C and asked his doctor about Harvoni. That’s assuming he survived Woodstock.

You’d have to be a survivor, or a cultural anthropologist, to subject yourself to listening to 38 CD’s full of Woodstock. At least IMHO.

But if you fill either of those bills, the producers have made a limited number – 1,969 to be precise – of the boxed sets. And they’re available for $799.98. Or, as we’d say in marketing-speak, “under $800.” Or, as we’d say in the real world, 800 bucks.

Or you could just read what Abbie Hoffman had to say about it.

“I took a trip to our future. That’s how I saw it. Functional anarchy, primitive tribalism, gathering of the tribes. Right on! What did it all mean? Sheet, what can I say, brother, it blew my mind out.”

A gathering of the primitive tribalists? Oy, Abbie. Ow wow.

Abbie, by the way, was a Worcester boy. His connection to Woodstock was two-fold. He wrote the book Woodstock Nation, from whence cometh the excerpt above. And, while on acid, interrupted The Who’s performance to make a political statement. Pete Townshend chased Abbie off, yelling "Fuck off! Fuck off my fucking stage!" Would that incident have made a trip to Woodstock worth it? Tempting, but nah…)

John Sebastian – a man after my own heart (and someone I saw in concert twice: once with the Lovin’ Spoonful and once, a decade or so ago, solo. (Or was it with Maria Muldaur?) – urged concert-goers to pick up after themselves so that the olds couldn’t accuse them of being fuckups.

Fifty years on, I still think I made the right decision to take a pass on Woodstock. I’m pretty sure that I would have loathed every last minute I was there – heat (Canned and otherwise), mud, too many people, poor sanitation…That said, I wouldn’t have minded if I could say I heard Janis belt out “Piece of My Heart.”

Anyway, Happy Anniversary to the Woodstockians. Enjoy listening to that 38-CD boxed set!

Back to school shopping…

Some of the folks killed in the El Paso Walmart massacre were parents doing some back to school shopping for their kids.

I can imagine they were filling their carts with new outfits for the first day of school, markers, folders, notebooks, lunchboxes, and backpacks.

What did they look for? Elsa or Dora the Explorer? Spiderman or Woody? For the junior high brigade, maybe a Fjällräven like the high school and college kids carry. (Which Walmart probably probably wouldn’t stock, but whatever…)

After El Paso, and with Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech on their minds, many parents are looking beyond the cute themes, the superheroes, the brands the kids like. They’re more concerned about whether their kids will get out of the school day alive than they are about whether the kids will get a backpack with the cartoon character they wanted. And the market has responded.

Companies like Guard Dog Security, Bullet Blocker and TuffyPacks designed bulletproof backpacks to quell those concerns.

The retailers said backpack sales spike during the back-to-school season, and all three said they they saw a significant uptick in the aftermath of mass shootings. (Source: CNN)

Sales are up 200% to 300% since the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings.

Some of the packs available are familiar brands – “JanSport or High Sierra backpacks retrofitted with ballistic panels sewn into the back.” Others are newer brands. They go from anywhere to a bit over a hundred bucks to nearly $500. You can get them online or at Bed Bath & Beyond and other retailers. And they’re available in sizes from preschool to adult. Preschool. Let that sink in.

And I’m pretty sure that, if some maniac decides to shoot up a school, they’re not going to do a damned bit of good. For starters:

Most bulletproof backpacks for children can withstand 9-mm and .44 magnum ammunition but not that of a rifle.

(Some backpacks and inserts do withstand [some] rifle shots.)

Admittedly, the Virginia Tech killer used handguns. But Sandy Hook used a rifle (and a Glock, which was what he used to belatedly off himself). The weapon of choice in Parkland was a rifle. I’d forgotten all about the May 2018 massacre at Santa Fe, Texas, high school. Eight killed; the killer used a shotgun and a handgun. And if we go back to the granddaddy of school shootings, at Columbine the weapons of choice were shotguns, rifles, and a handgun.

So whether they’re labeled “bullet proof” or “bullet resistant”, they aren’t going to resist a bullet from a rifle, which seems like the weapon of choice for mass murderers.

And then there’s this:

When your kiddos are in school, they’re not generally wearing their backpacks.  Junior high and high school kids may haul them from class to class, but for the little guys, those backpacks spend the day in coat closets, lockers, or cubbies. And even the older kids are sitting in class with their backpacks on. In the event of a shooting rampage, will there be time for kids to retrieve and don their backpacks? No, there won’t be.

And backpacks only protect the back. Yes, some kids will be shot at while fleeing. Others will be shot point blank while they sit at or under their desks, hovering in the back of a classroom or in a closet. Even if the backpack can withstand a high-powered rifle shot, it won’t protect a child’s front. Or arms. Or legs. Or lower body. Or head.

There are the bulletproof backpacks, and then there are the active shooter drills, in which students and teachers rehearse shooting scenarios. Forget the fire drill. Fire is no longer the fire that people are worried about.

Back to school shopping in my ancient history day meant a new pencil box, (maybe) a new bookbag, and a new pair of Stride-Rites.

Hard to imagine going bulletproof backpack shopping for your little guys.

Oh, what a world we live in.

Everyone should have at least one 'f--- this job' job in their lives

Every once in a while, there’s something on Twitter that offers us a little piece of truth. The other day, a tweet from someone named Domhnall G popped up while I was scrolling through Jeffrey Epstein related tweets.

There was a bit more to it, but the key takeaway is this:

Everyone should have at least one 'f--- this job' job in their lives.

Ain’t it the truth.

My first three “f--- this job’ jobs were waitressing.

One wasn’t because the people at Valle’s Steak House were godawful. It’s just that my friend Joyce and I knew after working one lunch shift that Valle’s Steak House on Route 9 wasn’t for us. We were arm service gals, not tray service gals. And the place just seemed like it was going to be an unholy drag. Regimented, military, no fun.

So we decamped to Friendly’s for lunch, laughed our asses of, and flipped a coin to see who was going to call the head waitress to quit. (I think I lost – or was it won -  and had to be the one to utter the two most satisfying the words in the English language: I quit. Or in this case, we quit.)

Anyway, Joyce and I were out of school, waitressing to fund our wanderlust – which you could do way back then without worrying about your future career – and had recently returned from a couple of months camping cross country.

Now we were going back to waitressing to save enough for a European adventure.

But Valle’s just didn’t cut it.

So we went back to our previous employer, Durgin-Park.

We knew that Durgin would in many ways be hellish. We’d already worked there. We knew that the owner was insane AND mean. That most of the old bag waitresses were just plain mean.

But we also knew that the money would be good, and that crazy as Durgin was, it was also good for plenty of laughs.

So off we went back to Durgin.

Only to quit in a big f-u way after a few months.

The owner was screaming at Joyce for some minor infraction – too much whipped cream on the strawberry shortcake – and she lost it. So she threw the bowl full of partially eaten and fully whipped-cream at the owner.

Quitting – before we could be fired: Joyce for the act itself, me for being an accomplice after the fact – we went over to our tables to explain that we were quitting and if people wanted to tip us, they could tip us now. Of course, our tables couldn’t have missed the shortcake toss, let alone the mayhem – think Keystone Kops chase scene – that took place throughout the restaurant in the aftermath of the shortcake toss, so it was all great fun.

Fast forward, and I was back from months hitching around Europe at odds on what to do now. (Career, what career? I don’t need no stinkin’ career.) So I went back to waitressing, at a terrible place where the waiters got to work in the part of the restaurant where they could make decent money. And the waitresses were stuck in a dark basement, short-money pub where, on top of not making any money, we had to wear polyester miniskirt sailor dresses in an electric blue.

With one of the other waitresses, I began agitating for the waitresses to get to join the union that the waiters were part of – and to get a chance to work in the real, money-making part of the enterprise.

Anyway, management wasn’t having any, and we got into a big f-u that ended up with our walking out. I can’t remember if I returned the polyester sailor minidress or burned it.

Eventually, I stumbled into business school and a career, as one does.

Quitting a job is generally quite satisfying. By the time you’ve decided to part company, you’re probably not in that happy a place. But mostly when I left a job for something better, it was on good terms. (And this included two times when I was laid off. My third layoff was more of an f-u to me, followed by an f-u to them. Another story entirely.)

But one job I didn’t quit was only made tolerable because I carried an f-u around in my pocket. (Actually in my brain.) This was a place where I worked for nearly a decade, and it was during a rough patch when I was reporting to someone truly terrible. I remember after one particularly awful and hurtful incident, I went home and told my husband that I couldn’t stand it much longer. His response: “why don’t you just quit.”

Hmmm.

It wouldn’t really have occurred to me to quit without another job, but after talking with Jim I pretty much felt “permission granted.”

Let me tell you, it made it so much easier to withstand the daily crap knowing that I could walk out without looking back.

And the upshot of this tale: I didn’t end up reporting to this person for much longer, and shortly thereafter, she was laid off – in part on my recommendation. (The president of the company asked a few of us who we thought should be on the lay-off list. I mentioned her name, and he laughed. “No one starts with her,” he told me, “But everyone gets to her.”)

Then there was the consulting client who I gloriously fired.

Now, I’ve turned down some opportunities because I had worked with the person in the past and wasn’t looking forward to doing it again. And other opportunities because I didn’t have the time and/or the interest. But most of those I’ve worked with on a freelance basis have been just fine. Some have become friends.

But this one time, I actually had to fire a client.

When I first began working with her consulting company, doing freelance writing, it looked like a dream opportunity. She wanted me to commit to writing x reports a year. The pay was good. And it looked like I might have a pretty good anchor tenant for my business.

She turned out to be irrational and nitpicky, hating everything I wrote, often claiming it was wrong and unclear – complaints I’d never heard from anyone else – and rewriting things (poorly). She’d then ask me to edit her work. I’d edit them back to the original writing I’d done and, voila, she accepted everything.

And then she made a particularly ridiculous demand. So I told her that after I completed work on the current project (which I’d committed to), we would part company.

My husband predicted that, in a few months, she would come back looking for my help. Which indeed she did, but there was, of course, no way.

Turning her down was almost as satisfying as quitting had been.

Yes, “everyone should have at least one ‘---this job’ job in their lives.”

Thanks, Walmart, this should be a real big help

There are no studies that link violent video games to violent behavior in real life.

In truth, this surprises me. It seems somewhat counter-intuitive that shooting the head’s off increasingly realistic looking video game “people” doesn’t inure a player from feeling anything when someone’s head is blown off. But studies repeated find no evidence that those who behave violently – e.g., mass murderers – decided to do so because they were egged on by video games.

Don’t know if there are any studies on whether mass murderers become more accurate shooters because of their experience with video games. But I did read somewhere that the military trains recruits in use of weaponry with video games. Sort of like flight simulator for guns.

In any case, with the types of weapons that mass shooters deploy – guns that can fire off so many rounds in seconds – you may not need much by way of pinpoint accuracy to kill a ton of people.

The one correlation that does stand starkly out is that countries with lots of guns – that would be us – tend to lead the pack when it comes to mass murder.

USA! USA! We’re number one!

Walmart was the location of the El Paso rampage aimed at Mexicans. And Walmart, as it turns out, is one of the largest gun sellers in the world. Maybe even THE worldwide leader.

Not surprising. After all, after Amazon – and they’re not a retailer in quite the same sense as Walmart – Walmart is the world’s largest retailer.

Which doesn’t mean they have to be gunslingers.

A couple of decades ago, they stopped selling handguns, other than in Alaska. (I just checked online, and the handgun-ish things available from them are air or BB guns. They sure look like the real deal, but what do I know, gun-wise?)

In New Mexico, they don’t sell any weapons, a decision made because the company didn’t want to comply with New Mexico’s law on background checks.

Anyway, in response to the El Paso murders, Walmart decided to get “remove video game displays and other signs or videos that show violence.”

The move came as Republican leaders including President Trump and Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas, have drawn a link between deadly shootings and video games, despite researchers’ conclusions that there is no strong connection.

Walmart has also faced pressure from Democratic politicians and supporters of gun control to end or limit its sale of guns. But there has been no change to the retailer’s gun sales policy, said Randy Hargrove, a spokesman for Walmart. (Source: NY Times)

Oh, I see, remove displays that illustrate video game violence, but don’t do anything that makes it harder for folks to get their itchy little trigger fingers on guns and ammos. Sure makes sense to me. Not.

Not all Walmart employees are thrilled with this tactic. One was quoted as saying:

“It’s kind of funny that we can still sell firearms but we can’t show picture of a cartoon character holding a gun.”

Is this funny peculiar or funny ha-ha, as we used to say back in the day. (Just looked up this saying. Turns out it came from the kids’ show Beanie and Cecil, which began life as a puppet show before becoming a cartoon. I was around for the puppet version. And, let me tell you, turning 70 is going to be funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.)

While the violent signs are out, this may not be a permanent situation. The Walmart spokesman stated:

“We’ve taken this action out of respect for the incidents of the past week, and it does not reflect a long-term change in our video game assortment,” he said. “We are focused on assisting our associates and their families, as well as supporting the community, as we continue a thoughtful and thorough review of our policies.”

The memo told employees to “review your store for any signing or displays that contain violent images or aggressive behavior.”

This includes showing violent movies in Electronics or hunting season videos in Sporting Goods.

But whatever you do, don’t get rid of guns.

I’m not a gun owner, and I’m more than happy to live in an area where a-holes aren’t walking around open-carrying in grocery stores and coffee shops. When I’m in places where the gun-culture has more of a hold – Arizona, Texas – I find it unsettling to go into a restaurant and see some guys who are strapped sitting at the bar. Last winter, on a hike in a (wonderful) state park in Arizona, we encountered some folks on horseback, wearing cowboy hats, holsters and guns. Yippee kay-ay-oh. Maybe they needed them to shoot varmints, rattlers, whatever.

I just plain don’t feel safer when I see “good guys with guns.” Au contraire – as us East Coast, non-gun-toting elites say. In fact, it scares the shit out of me.

A few years ago, a guy came into the ATM I was using wearing a holster and gun. The guy was in khakis and a polo shirt, but looked kind of ex-military or cop-ish. Anyway, when I left the ATM (hurriedly, I might add), I mentioned it to the cop on the corner. He told me is was probably a newly minted police officer who was just a bit excited to be on the job, even when he’s off the job.

About the same time, there was some sort of Second Amendment demonstration at the State House, and there were all sorts of yahoos waltzing around carrying rifles. I got home fast.

Massachusetts, as it turns out, is not a traditional open carry state. You’re not supposed to open carry, but it’s not a Class A violation to do so.

In any case, it’s way out of the norm to see people carrying guns here.

And, while we do have gun-related crime, it’s way out of the norm to have a lot of gun-related deaths.

Massachusetts has one of the lowest rates of gun ownership among states and, no surprise, one of the lowest rates of gun deaths. We also have an overall murder rate that is well below the national average.

Does gun ownership correlate with murder? Hmmmm.

All this said, I’m not opposed to gun ownership. Hunters gonna hunt, etc.

I just think that there ought to be a few more lids put on it. Registration. Training. Background checks. Waiting periods. Bans on the sale of things like machine guns. Devices that can turn a plain old gun into a weapon of mass destruction.

Seriously, who needs the ability to fire off 100 rounds in a nano-second to hunt a deer or protect their home from an armed intruder?

My thoughts are hardly original here, but I’ve got the right to bear words.

And I can even conceive of becoming a Second Amendment Liberal.

If there is a civil war, and the nutters come for my books and ACLU membership card, I’d just as soon go down fighting. Hopefully, I’ll stroke out before I need to take up arms.

Of course, if Walmart stops selling guns, it really won’t make all that much of a difference. They don’t sell the AK-47 “military-style” guns  favored by mass murderers to begin with. They only sell any guns at about half their stores. And they don’t sell guns to those under the age of 21.

But banning signage depicting violence seems like a hollow gesture at best. Why not make a slightly less hollow gesture – in fact one that’s pretty damned powerful symbolically - and stop selling guns period.

Ain’t gonna happen, I know.

But, dear God, Walmart’s got to know that getting rid of signage that show violence isn’t really going to do much to help us overcome our national obsessions with violence and gun ownership.

Now he tells us

As bad actors go, it’s pretty difficult to top Jeffrey Epstein. He’s definitely in the pantheon of 21st century rotters.

Of course, now that I think of it, he may well have been a pretty good actor, since he was able to convince so many (supposedly) reputable people that he was a really interesting guy: a brainy philanthropist who could talk a good intellectual game. No doubt in my mind that, as the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein proceeds, some of those (supposedly) reputable folks will no doubt be exposed as having been interested in things other than Epstein’s brilliant mind and scintillating conversation.

One of the questions hovering around Epstein is just how he acquired his fortune.

It is, of course, all wrapped up in his relationship with Leslie Wexner, “the billionaire mogul behind Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works.” Along the way, Epstein amassed both a $$$ fortune and an impressive real estate portfolio that includes a a $77 million townhouse/mansion in NYC that once was Wexner’s and was rumored to have been given over to Epstein for the slightly-below market price of $1.

Other rumors suggest that Epstein paid $20M for the home, but since whatever amount Epstein paid, it likely came from money he had ripped Wexner off for, it really doesn’t matter all that much. By the way, Wexner’s words for ripped off: “misappropriated vast sums of money.”

Mr. Wexner, the chief executive of the retail giant L Brands, included the accusation in a 564-word letter he sent Wednesday to the Wexner Foundation, giving his most detailed account yet of how his life and affairs became intertwined with Mr. Epstein, who was arrested last month and charged with sex trafficking involving girls as young as 14.

In the letter, Mr. Wexner said the misappropriation was first discovered in 2007 as he separated from Mr. Epstein. In early 2006, Florida authorities charged Mr. Epstein with multiple counts of molestation and unlawful sexual activity with a minor. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution from a minor and was required to register as a sex offender.

“It was agreed that he should step back from the management of our personal finances,” Mr. Wexner said in the letter. “In that process, we discovered that he had misappropriated vast sums of money from me and my family. This was, frankly, a tremendous shock, even though it clearly pales in comparison to the unthinkable allegations against him now.” (Source: NY Times)

Wexner may have been a genius when it came to making money, but when it came to judging character, he apparently got played. And apparently missed out on the sleaze alert factoid that, while he may have been positioning himself as a money management genius, Epstein had also been “trying to pitch himself as a recruiter for Victoria’s Secret models.” Seems like that should have set off something of a klaxon-level, high-decibel alert. Or maybe it just made Epstein seem like more of a – hubba-hubba – Victoria’s Secret kind of guy.

Wexner had pretty much gone all in with Epstein, giving him “wide powers over his finances, philanthropy and private life.” Epstein was given:

…a so-called power of attorney, which enabled Mr. Epstein to hire people, sign checks, buy and sell properties, and borrow money — all on Mr. Wexner’s behalf.

Well, that would explain the purchase of a $77M house for $1.

Anyway, Epstein was supposedly running a hedge fund. Easy enough to do if you have the ultimate hedge of stealing to keep it in clover.

Epstein also had some convoluted back and forth with Wexner’s charitable foundations and his own, the C.O.U.Q. Foundation. (I was unable to find out what the acronym stands for, but couq? Clever boy, that Jeffrey Epstein.) I tried to look the foundation up on Guidestar. No surprise that there’s no info on it, other than a note that it’s not registered with the IRS.

Not only had Wexner’s charities made donations to C.O.U.Q., C.O.U.Q. turned around and made donations to Wexner’s charities.

I guess this proves once again that you don’t need to be smart to make money. You just have to know how to make money.

Anyway, Wexner has managed to claw back some money from Epstein. But nowhere near what he lost. Live and learn.

“I am embarrassed that, like so many others, I was deceived by Mr. Epstein,” he wrote. “I know now that my trust in him was grossly misplaced, and I deeply regret having ever  crossed his path.”

All of this is dinging a brand that was already struggling:

…to find its footing as retailers move away from sexualized marketing in the era of #MeToo. This week, Mr. Wexner told employees that Ed Razek, its longtime chief marketing officer, was retiring. Mr. Razek was instrumental in developing eroticized campaigns for Victoria’s Secret, as well as its annual fashion show.

Here's my question: why did Wexner wait more than 10 years to blow the whistle on Epstein’s theft? Seems like there may have been a crime or two committed here and, although Epstein got away with his bad behavior with that sweetheart deal he brokered in Florida for his sex-related crimes, he might have ended up in prison for stealing from Wexner. After all, theft is so much worse than sex trafficking, don’t you think?

If Wexner had called in “the authorities”  back when he realized he’d been had, Epstein over the last decade if Epstein had been in the stir. Talk about a missed opportunity. Instead we’re sitting here scratching are heads. Now he tells us…

Boston Center for Adult Embezzlement

I am always astounded when I read about people who embezzle from their companies.

I know I’ve blogged about it frequently enough that I should have an “embezzlement” tag.

Most recently, just this past May, I posted about Michael Avenatti - fast-talking TV presence lawyer, defender of all things Stormy Daniels – who has been charged with swindling his clients.

Today’s tale o’ embezzlement is closer to home. Maybe a 10 minute walk away.

It seems that the executive director and the comptroller – because, of course, it helps to have one bad actor covering for another – of the Boston Center for Adult Education managed to syphon $1.7 from BCAE coffers.

Now the BCAE is an organization that I really should like and be involved with. Right around the corner. Lifelong learning. Community involvement. All sorts of good stuff.

But even though I look through their offerings on occasion, there’s never any course that I want to take. The last time I took something there was in the early 1970’s, when I took a seminar on Boston politics conducted by Barney Frank, then a state rep and later a U.S. Congressman. Basically, we sat around while Barney monologued, and it was all very entertaining. But I haven’t been back since.

Still, to read that trusted, in-charge employees had had their mitts so deeply in the till…Wow. Just wow.

Susan Brown was the ED, and her skim /scam was setting up her partner (partner in the romantic, personal sense), Karen Kalfian, with payments for allegedly non-existing marketing services. This was to the tune of $565K. Nice non-work if you can get it!

Mark Mitchell was the comptroller and he was an even bigger greed head.

Almost $900,000 in checks allegedly were written by the comptroller to himself, and more than $300,000 to groups for his personal benefit, including a youth baseball team in Saugus that he managed. (Source: Boston Globe)

Nice to see that Mitchell had such community spirit!

These folks were completely brazen. Not only were the stealing away, and lying about it, they were also falsifying documents to show to their board. Among other things they faked were the 990 forms that nonprofits have to file with the IRS. Because Mitchell and Brown weren’t actually filing these forms, BCAE lost it’s nonprofit status.

Last June, the center’s board members discovered their organization had lost its tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service, court records show. Mitchell and Brown told them it was an IRS mistake and in September Brown gave the board a letter that appeared to be from the IRS saying all was well, records show.

It was dated July 25, 2018. Investigators later found the same letter in a Word document on Mitchell’s computer and believe it was falsified, [prosecutor Julien] Mundele wrote.

Mitchell told investigators he and Brown “would often fabricate the financial information” together, Mundele wrote.

We hear a lot about the importance of workplace collaboration. Guess it’s not all for the good!

Brown claims that she had no idea that Mitchell was writing weekly checks to Kalfian. (“Shocked, I’m shocked…”) Kalfian, for her part, claimed that she did strategic marketing work for BCAE, and “that it was the only client her marketing company had.” But when asked to expand on what she actually did for BCAE, all Kalfian could come up with was “marketing.”

She may have had more to say to the investigators who were interviewing her in the home she shared with Brown. But as the prosecutor reported,

“At this point in the conversation, Brown walked into the residence and ended the conversation by stating that they wanted an attorney present

Sounds like that was an excellent idea.

All three have somewhat diversified professional portfolios.

Mitchell was a member of the Saugus (town north of Boston) Board of Selectman. He’s been accused of dipping into campaign funds to cover some $15K worth of personal expenses.

Brown and Kalfian – before they lucked into the BCAE scheme – owned an embroidery business in their town, Marblehead. (Like Saugus, Marblehead is north of Boston. Unlike Saugus, Marblehead is charming, quaint, and affluent. Just the sort of place that could support an embroidery shop.)

If Brown and Kalfian end up doing time, embroidery might be a nice calming pastime to resume. That is, unless the needles are too pointed, the metal hoops are forbidden because you could turn them into a shiv, and the embroidery thread could have been hoarded until enough was saved to make a getaway ladder. (Don’t laugh. There actually was a jail break in which the escapee used a dental floss ladder to climb down to freedom.)

It’ll be interesting to see how this all turns out.

Meanwhile, I checked out the fall catalog of BCAE. Alas, still nothing I’m interested in taking. Maybe I should sign up to teach a course in interesting embezzlement cases…

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

A tip of the Pink Slip hat to my sister Kath, who pointed this story my way. Knowing my interest in embezzlement, she also sent me a link to an article on a fellow who, in his capacity as a bookkeeper, managed to steal well over $1M from a mom-and-pop soundproofing business and a pediatrician’s practice. He gambled it all away. As one does.

What is wrong with these people? I know we’re all supposed to have a bit of larceny in our hearts, but honestly…

Appropriation

Banana Republic is selling hijabs, joining a growing list of consumer goods companies coming out with products aimed at Muslim women. The headscarves are available online.

They’ve even got an influencer touting their new offerings. “excited to announce that [Banana Republic] just launched hijabs! Can you even recognize me in a print?”

Sorry, WithLoveLeena, but no, I don’t. Then again, there aren’t any influencers who I actually would recognize. So, nothing personal. (And it’s not as if there’s any influencer out there who cares to influence the likes of me, either.)

Anyway, I assume the Banana Republic did their market research and figured out that, even if Muslims make up only 1% of the U.S. population, it’s worthwhile to have products that cater to this niche. Especially when you consider that Banana Republic is a global brand, and while there aren’t a ton of Muslims here, they do make up about one-quarter of the world’s population. And with most traditional retailers feeling so much heat from online shops and insta-fashion brands, it’s natural that they’ll want to reach out to as many new consumers as possible.

The growing popularity of “modest” clothing lines and hijabs at mainstream stores signals a shift, analysts say, in retailers’ attitudes toward inclusion and diversity. The apparel industry is undergoing massive change, and analysts say companies are having to rethink their products to attract new shoppers. Many are using their websites as a way to reach groups they might have ignored in traditional stores, where the focus has long been on stocking shelves with items that will appeal to the largest swath of consumers. (Source: WaPo)

And there’s gold in them thar hijab-wearing hills. Muslim are projected to spend $373 billion in 2022.

Plus I’m guessing there will be others who adopt some of the “modest” clothing – long skirts, high-necked tunics, long cardigans – for fad/fashion reasons. Sounds perfect for us olds.

In addition to the desire to tap into a lucrative market, companies that bring out a Muslim line can (virtue) signal that they’re woke, that they value diversity and inclusivity.

Inevitably, the inevitable happened:

Some shoppers, though, said they felt conflicted about major retailers getting into the hijab business. Was it inclusion, they wondered, or the appropriation of a religious symbol for the sake of their bottom line?

WithLoveLeena is one of those who’s wondering.

“On the one hand, it does feel like they’re profiting off of us,” said Leena Snoubar, 25… “But on the other, it’s a way to normalize hijab and make us feel more included."

Well, profiting from a market is what business is all about. If a business can’t profit from you, they won’t make products to sell to you. And you’ll be out of luck. (That is, unless that business is Wayfair or Uber. For now. I assume that, at some point, even these outfits will have to start turning a profit. Or else. Which would be too bad, because it’s actually fun to get up in the middle of the night and scroll through three-thousand pages of throw pillows. And it’s wildly convenient to whistle up an Uber if you want to get somewhere without having to drive, walk, or public transpo to it.)

As for normalizing the hijab, all I can say it’s infinitely preferable to normalize an article or clothing than it is to normalize a no-nothing, violence-encouraging, deeply damaged racist. Just sayin’.

And fashion – like language, food, culture, etc. – has always been about borrowing from “the other".

Why not feel free to wear a French beret with your Aran Island sweater.

Me, I’m glad there are bon mai trucks everywhere. That pasta and red sauce is an American staple. And I feel pretty strongly that if someone wants to wear a kimono, they should go right ahead.

As long as it’s done with some modicum of respect, I say appropriate away!

It’s how cultures grow and become more interesting. If we all end up wearing something that looks like a hijab this winter, if it keeps the cold out, I’m all for it.

I see them here, I see them there. Floss picks are everywhere!

A few years back, it was the nip bottle. Raspberry Stoli. Fireball Whisky.

And it was on the Cape, in Wellfleet.

My sister Kath and her friend Deb had been the first to begin spotting them while walking in their neighborhood. There, alongside the road, were discarded nip bottles.

Once you knew they were there, it became a thing. They were always there. Mattered not how many you picked up and trashed, there were more the next day.

Were they left by kids? Tossed out the window by joyriders? Secret drinkers? Someone who worked for an airline and had access to the drink cart? Someone who worked in a packie?

After they began turning up in Wellfleet, I started seeing them in Boston.

At first, it was something of a novelty.

See a nip bottle on the sidewalk, take a picture, text Kath, ha-ha.

And then they were ubiquitous.

I couldn’t take a walk without a number of close encounters with nip bottles.

Then things really took off, and I found a couple of half-pints, including one of Bacardi on my front steps.

And then they were (mostly) gone.

Where they’ve gone, I haven’t a clue, as I’m sure there are still kids, joyriders, secret drinkers, and airline and packie employees among us.

I’m not going to say I never see a discarded nip bottle, but it’s not all that often.

Instead, for the past year or so, it’s been these angled flossers. Mostly white. Sometimes green. Occasionally purple. (A really bad plastic purple.)

I have a picture I took just yesterday while strolling through the Boston Common, but the pic is lousy and you can’t really tell what it is.

But that there green thang? They’re all over the place.

I rarely take a walk without finding one or two. But if I didn’t mind picking up an occasional empty nip, I’m 100% loath to pick up one of these suckers. Way too much ewwwww factor.

When I first began telling people about my sightings, they looked at me incredulously. Was I imagining these appearances? Some sort of too-much-walking, too-long-in-the-city dementia?

After all, swigging a tot of whisky while on the move, and then discarding the evidence, is one thing. But who flosses in public and then leaves their flosser behind?

The answer is: plenty of people.

And the floss pick toss is by no means a new phenomenon.

Why, way back in 2014, when I didn’t even know such a thing could exist, Carlo Rotella – a far keener observer of urban mores than I - was writing about it in The Boston Globe.

You see them scattered singly on sidewalks and in gutters, nestled in the grass at the park, dumped in ashtray-like batches of two or three dozen in parking lots. Each time I see one, which is often, some part of me pauses to appreciate the advance they represent in the art of doing one small thing to make the world just a little bit worse for everyone.

I don’t spend much time in parking lots, so I haven’t seen batches of them. But the singletons are bad enough.

And it’s not just Boston.

Just last month, Philly Magazine asked the Big Question: Who is leaving flossers all over Philly sidewalks?

The Baker City (Oregon) Herald found it a worthy topic in 2017.

Beth Terry tries to lead a plastic-free life in Maryland, and she was writing about floss pick litter in 2010!

Then there’s this response to someone asking about them from a bulleting board (MetaFilter) in 2012:

FWIW, a friend of mine saw them so often she started a Facebook photo album and collected pictures of flossers on sidewalks. She was trying to get at least one photo from all fifty states.

If she started in 2012, I’m sure that this FB user has accomplished her goal by now.

But if you’re looking to add Massachusetts to your gallery, feel free to give me a shout.

In the meantime, eww, eww, ewwdie, eww, eww.

What I learned in kindergarten (and it wasn’t much)

Brookline is an affluent near-suburb of Boston. If you look at it on the map, it looks more like a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by Boston. When, in in the late 1800’s, they had their chance to become part of Boston, the residents of Brookline voted overwhelmingly to remain independent. So instead of being the wealthiest section of Boston, Brookline is one of the wealthiest communities in Massachusetts. And – no surprise: they usually go hand in hand – the possessor of one of the best school systems in the state.

But these days, having one of those top performing school systems means the pressure is on. Kids coming up through the system are expected to go to college, and to a good college at that. And the pressure starts young.

Kindergarten has traditionally been a time for storybooks and building blocks. But in Brookline, teachers and parents are complaining that students spend far too much of their day at their desks like office workers — and not enough time learning through play.

Amanda Livengood said she was floored by the pressure-cooker environment her 5-year-old daughter encountered in kindergarten this past school year in Brookline, one of the state’s highest-performing school systems.

“It totally knocked her self-esteem down,” she said. “She would come home and say she hates school or she hates reading. She didn’t want to go to school. She was calling herself stupid. If I tried to quiz her on things, she would shut down.” (Boston Globe)

Okay, I’m probably not the only one thinking that Amanda Livengood regrets her choice of the word “quiz” here, but I get the point. No one should come home from kindergarten rattled by the academics. Hurt feelings. Bruised knees. Tattling on the kid who wet their pants. But anxiety about the workload? Feeling stressed out about underperforming? Not good.

For the past month, Brookline has been embroiled in an emotional debate over whether kindergarten has become too academically demanding, causing anxiety levels of 5- and 6-year-olds to climb.

And now, a couple dozen Brookline kindergarten teachers are asking the schools “to bring more joy and play back to the program.”

Good for them.

I have a pretty good memory, but I only recall a few episodes from kindergarten.

On day one, I marched boldly in, but I was immediately cowed. A December baby, I was still 4 and one of the youngest kids in the class. (My crush was on a kid named Ronnie whose birthday was the day after mine, which was enough for me to crush on him.) I remember sitting at the edge of things, watchfully. (On my first report card, Mrs. Julia B. Hackett – who was born to teach kindergarten – wrote that I was “shy and cried easily.”)

That first day, the patrol line walked out a different entry way than the one my mother and brother Tom had used to escort me on my big first day. They were going to meet me after class and walk home with me. (After that, I was going to be on my own, as free range kids were in those long-ago days.) When I realized we were going out a different doorway, I panicked that they wouldn’t find me. Fortunately, our neighbor Yvonne, who was in 8th grade, grabbed me as I tried to run back into the school, and made sure I found my mother and Tom.

After that, my memories are episodic, and none of them involve anything that even remotely resembled an academic challenge.

We colored. We drew. We counted out numbers using red, yellow and blue pegs. We clapped rhythm sticks together. We made paper chains for Christmas decorations. We made hideous pencil holders (Christmas gifts for our fathers) out of soup cans – the only color available was a mucky, ghastly blue. We drew flowers on construction paper to make Valentine’s and Mother’s Day cards. We learned how to use brass fasteners to make an open and close Easter egg that a chick popped out of.

I learned that you can draw an Eskimo on a paper plate, using the fluted rim for the fur around an Eskimo’s hood.

I learned that if you shake milk long enough, it turns into butter.

And I learned to be one of the two trusted envoys empowered to take our class’s jar of butter to the principal’s office, where we presented it to Gates Lane’s principal, Mr. Francis Hickey.

I remember the excitement of handing out (and receiving) Valentines. That it’s fun to twirl around the Maypole. And that people sometimes do stinky things. As when, on a nice spring afternoon, when our windows were wide open, some “big boys” passing by – I’m guessing they were college/young soldier age – tossed a smoldering cigar through the window, where it landed in the midst of our reading circle.

After a bit, I was no longer shy and crying easily. (Although I’m still an introvert who’s quick to tears. It’s just that I’m an extremely well-compensated one.)

But I never remembered feeling stupid.

It helped that I was naturally bright. I came from a house full of books. My parents were both readers, as was my grandmother, who lived downstairs from us. So we all became readers, too. My sister Kath – two years older – read to me all the time, and taught me some rudiments or reading. (That or I memorized the books she read to me.) We were all storytellers.

Numbers came easily to me, as well.

Perhaps there were kids who were challenged by the Worcester Public Schools kindergarten curriculum of 1954-1955, but I don’t remember thinking that there were any kids in my kindergarten class who were dumb. Who feels stupid at Maypole?

Things changed when I switched over to parochial school in first grade.

Not that I was one of the kids made to feel stupid.

But from the get-go, first grade was about separating kids out. The academic haves and the have nots. I was one of a handful of kids in Our Lady’s reading group. We were seated by academic ability. I sat in the “smart row girls”. Report cards (throughout grammar school) were read out loud by the pastor of the church. Grades 1 through 8 seemed designed to humiliate and belittle kids who didn’t learn all that easily. From Grade 5, they added on humiliating and belittling the kids who were really smart. (“Who do you think you are?” might just as well have been my school’s motto.)

But I was a bright kid, a good student.

I always had my hand up. My grades were all in the 90’s. I always knew the answer.

Except for that one time.

I rarely missed school, but I was out sick the day Sister Marie Leo – who was born to NOT teach first graders; hard to explain how cruel she was to children – taught us how to write musical notes on a staff. I’d been there for G-clef day, but missed the day when she covered notes.

There was a pop quiz: put the notes of the scale on the staff.

Why we were learning this is beyond me. Was it so we’d learn to read music? Or were the nuns anticipating some New Dark Ages, when we’d be called on to transcribe the music to “The St. Francis Xavier Hymn” or “Tis the Month of Our Mother.”

Anyway, once I got the G-clef on there, I was at a loss. I knew that notes were round, but how did they go?

I took a shot and piled them one on top of each other. It didn’t occur to me to cheat, probably due to a combination of fear-factor and pride. I was one of the smartest kids in the class. Who was I going to cheat from? The lunkhead sitting in the “average row boys” across the aisle. As if.

My paper came back marked with a big red check mark, the sign of failure.

I was red-faced, shamed, stunned. This had never happened. Sister was trying to make me feel stupid, the same way she did to plenty of other kids, all the time.

I usually brought my school papers home proudly. Not this time. I remember throwing it in the wastebasket, hoping my mother wouldn’t find it. (She probably did…)

I don’t know what they’re teaching in Brookline, but no kindergarten kid should be made to feel lacking because they’re not reading, or solving algebra equations, or whatever’s going on there.

Yes, the world is a lot more competitive and pressure cooker, and kids need to be prepared for it. And expectations run very high in Brookline.

But maybe it’s time for a little more Eskimo on the paper plate and rhythm sticks.

It’s National Ice Cream Sandwich Day. (Can’t wait to lick my fingers…)

Somehow, I missed out on National Ice Cream Day, which was celebrated on July 21st. Given that, in my view, a day without ice cream is like a day without sunshine, you’d think that I would have picked up on that one. Given that I’m fine with cloudy days, rainy days, snowy days, sleety days, it’s even worse. A day without ice cream – in my case, that’s mostly fro-yo – is like a day, well, without ice cream. Pretty much, to borrow a bit from Judith Viorst, a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

So I’m certainly not gong to let National Ice Cream Sandwich Day escape me. No siree bob, an expression more commonly used when the ice cream sandwich was invented in 1899.

I pretty much like sandwiches of all sorts: toasted cheese, PBJ, tuna, BLT. But ice cream sandwiches hold an especially sweet spot in my heart.

We always had ice cream in the freezer when I was growing up. (Some things never change.) And sometimes that ice cream came in the shape of an ice cream sandwich: two slabs of soggy, no-flavor chocolate cookie surrounding what was likely fake vanilla ice cream. Yum! Nothing compares with the delight of licking the last of that sticky, gloppy, fall-apart cookie off your fingers.

A few decades ago, the Chipwich came on the scene, a treat that combined two of my faves – a chocolate chip cookie and ice cream – in one delish little package. Nice but, as it happens, the chocolate chip cookie part was never as good as a homemade Toll House Cookie. Plus, as I recall, they contained a ton of calories.

Anyway, I haven’t had one of them in years. But now that I think of it, slathering some vanilla ice cream between two almost-homemade-tasting Tate’s chocolate chip cookies might work out pretty well. Calories be damned!

But before I do that, I think I’ll poke my head into Roche Bros. this morning – after I go to the gym – and see whether they carry Hood Ice Cream Sandwiches.

And if they do, I will get me a box. And I’ll do so despite how the killjoys at Fooducate have rated the Hood Ice Cream sandwich. Which is to give it a grade of C- for containing all sorts of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad ingredients. Sugar. Trans fats. High fructose corn syrup. Artificial coloring. (What’s colored in an ice cream sandwich? Do they bleach the ice cream? Dye the cookie brownie-brown? Maybe I shouldn’t have read the review.) Plus they contain carageenan, which sounds like a town in Ireland, but which “in animal studies…  was shown to cause intestinal lacerations and tumors.” Swell!

Despite the risk of tumor, I’m leaning towards the Hood Ice Cream Sandwich because:

Here we have the classic ice cream sandwich…an oblong of vanilla ice cream between two rectangular chocolate cookies neatly stippled with holes. All is as it should be. There is tradition here. There is ritual. Are you a biter? Or do you linger, licking around the edges so the ice cream grows smaller and smaller and the cookies’ edges finally collapse around it? (Source: Boston Globe)

My approach is hybrid, a combo biting and licking.

However we choose to live our ice cream sandwich-consuming lives, we all meet the same end: sucking sticky cookie residue off our fingertips after everything else is gone. Thus it has been all of our lives — visiting the ice cream truck, at camp, on hot evenings at dusk when the fireflies start to come out. And thus it should always be.

Yes!

So I’ll definitely be on the lookout for a box of Hood’s Ice Cream Sandwiches today. I haven’t noticed – because I haven’t been on the lookout – but I’m guessing Roche Bros. will come through. They’re local. Hood is local. And Hood sold 2 million boxes last year. Surely some came out of the freezer at Roche Bros.

The Globe article mentioned some riffs on the ice cream sandwich theme, including one made with a Blackbird donut and soft serve ice cream.

I will confess to a fondness for Blackbird donuts, a fondness that I generally indulge in a couple of times a year as a reward for getting a long walk in on a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weather day, which we have plenty of around here. While I don’t mind these sorts of days – I’m a New Englander, after all – they are not great for walking, and the thought of rewarding myself with a chocolate honey dip at the end of a hike to the South End or the Fenway area is enough to keep me putting one foot in front of the other.

Ah, Blackbird. A donut that will quite literally melt in your mouth. So (almost) worth it at $3 a donut (about a buck more than a Dunk’s). But I wouldn’t care to have it made into an ice cream sandwich. Bye bye, Blackbird, on that notion. I’ll stick with the Hood version. Roche Bros., don’t fail me now!

Take my piano, please!

I’m sure  you’ve heard it said  - especially if you’re an old fogey who is actually in possession of some of it – that nobody (other than the Baby Boomers who are stuck with our own, that of our parents, or that of our grandparents) wants “brown furniture.” But last winter, those in the furniture know started putting out the word that Millennials actually might be interested in a piece or two. Just to mix things up with their IKEA.

I do hope this revival lasts a while – at least until I need to divest of my brown: a dining room set and credenza from the 1920’s or 1930’s that my husband and I bought at an antique store during the 1980’s; my grandmother’s quite nice claw foot side table; my grandmother’s not so nice desk and piano chair; my mother’s lyre-backed side chair; the glass-front (1920’s vintage) bookcase I store my CD’s in.

Now that there’s a brown furniture revival of sorts, something else needs to be on the outs. And that something is the piano.

Ah, the piano.

My grandmother had a piano in her parlor, an upright, and Nanny loved to sit there, playing away. The Blackhawk Waltz. Mockingbird Hill. I Wandered Today to the Hills, Maggie. She also played golden oldies from the American Songbook, c. 1930, as we all sang along. Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do.

And then, after we moved out of Nanny’s three-flat into a standalone house, someone gave my family a piano, an old upright that, for lack of better space, ended up in the basement. And then my sister Kath and I were taking piano lessons.

We went weekly to the home of the church’s organist, a widow with two (dreamy) teenaged sons,. Mrs. Baker gave piano lessons for a buck a lesson from her parlor on the second floor of a three-decker next to my school.

We learned from the Schaum Beginners books, A through whatever, with their color-coded covers. Book A was red.

The Schaum course included classics like Wun Long Pan, The Famous Chinese Detective.

Eventually, we graduated to real classics - Schirmer Classics - for a bit of rudimentary Chopin and Für Elise.

Wun Long Pan was, alas, more my speed. I was a terrible piano student. I didn’t practice – who wanted to practice on an out of tune piano in our unfinished basement. There was an old carpet on the floor to define the piano room, but that was about it. In truth, I don’t think I would have practiced much anyway.

The only compliment I ever got was that I had good rhythm. Maybe I should have taken up the drums.

Somewhere along the line, my parents replaced the basement upright with a Baldwin spinet in the living room. (After a large addition was bolted onto the house, we now had room in the living room for a small piano.)

Anyway, I kept at it through eighth grade and ended up being to play a few things.

During high school, I occasionally played, mostly from The Weavers’ Songbook, for fun. That or, for some reason, The Third Man Theme.

Today, I might be able to bang out Chopsticks, Heart and Soul, enough bars of Frankie and Johnny to fantasize that I could swing some boogie-woogie, and a couple of Weavers’ songs, if I had the music in front of me. (Ragupati and Die Gedanken Sind Frei come to mind.)

But I don’t have a piano. Or even a keyboard.

So in truth I might not be able to bang out anything.

If I wanted to get a piano, however, I could probably et one cheap. Maybe even free. Free except for the cost of moving it.

The piano, once the pride of many American living rooms, seems out of tune with a growing number of households...Although this will make music lovers cringe, the reality is that some pianos have become disposable. There are lots of them around, some not in great shape. Although memories of an instrument may spark joy, sometimes circumstances dictate that a piano be let go. Downsizing boomers often don’t have room for them; millennials can’t (or won’t) squeeze them into urban quarters; teens often learn to play on electric keyboards. (Source: WaPo)

I just had a little flash of Nanny playing Mockingbird Hill on an electric keyboard. Yowza.

It can be painful to see a precious family instrument relegated to a dump when all other efforts to rehome it have failed. Mark Rubin, who owns 12 franchises of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, says his employees have seen customers in tears as their pianos are hauled away. “Pianos are something very hard to get rid of. They hold a lot of memories.”

I can’t remember what happened to our old upright-in-the-cellar. Or to Nanny’s parlor upright when she closed up her house and moved in with my aunt. My family’s spinet found a home when my mother sold her house and moved into congregant living. It did feel sad to see it go. Lots of embedded memories. Of me playing poorly. Of my sisters playing somewhat better.

Kath and I both took from Mrs. Baker, but she must have practiced more. And Trish, who came around a lot later, took from the more prestigious (and now, I believe, defunct, as is Mrs. Baker) St. Gabriel’s School of Music, where she was actually taught to play the piano.  (I don’t know if she still has it, but at some point in time, Trish had an electric keyboard.)

The most skilled piano player ever to play on that spinet was my Uncle Jack. In from Chicago – it was quite exciting: Kath and I got to drive into Boston to pick Jack up at South Station – Jack spent a few days in Worcester, and my memories of that visit is that he spent the entire time on the piano.

Nanny (my grandmother Rogers) was the musician on her side of the family, but my mothers family (the Wolfs) were pretty much all musical. My mother’s instrument was the violin, but Jack could play piano, accordion, and (maybe) the guitar. He was for a time a professional musician, and had a country and western polka band called Jake Wolf and the Midwesterners. (There must be a couple of publicity stills around somewhere, the very handsome and dashing Uncle Jack in his cowboy hat, cowboy shirt, and kerchief tie.)

The one song Jack played that sticks in my mind is After You’ve Gone.

After you've gone and left me crying
After you've gone there's no denying
You'll feel blue you'll feel sad
You'll miss the dearest pal you've ever had
There'll come a time, now don't forget it
There'll come a time, when you'll regret it
Some day when you'll grow lonely
Your heart will break like mine
And you'll want me only
After you've gone after you've gone away

A hundred years ago, pianos were the middle class rage. These days,

Fewer people are buying pianos. In 2018, 30,516 new pianos were shipped to retailers in the United States, down 3.2 percent from 2017, according to Industry Census of Music Trades, a magazine that covers music products. The postwar peak for the piano industry was 1978, when 282,000 units were shipped, according to Brian T. Majeski, editor of Music Trades. “A piano was part musical instrument and part aspirational item. You can trace this back to Jane Austen novels,” Majeski says. “Now it’s just a musical instrument. The people who buy it are the people who play, and this is a smaller set of the population.”

So now it’s hard to unload one. Even the obvious places for donations – “churches, schools, and senior centers,” where soon it’ll be the Boomers, gathering around the piano while someone who actually learned to play goes through the Beatles catalog for a singalong – have all the pianos they need.

Before I plunl myself down in the senior center rec room, I’ll brush up on Ragupati. I’m sure it’ll be a big hit.