Plant stylist? Oh, why not.

My mother was a plant lady. We always had plants in the house, and part of the routine Saturday chore list (which included dusting, mopping, vacuuming, waste-basket-emptying, and bathroom scrubbing) for me and my sister Kath was watering the plants. Sansevieria. Coleus. Cactus. Pothos. Christmas Cactus. Geraniums. Spider plants. Ficus.

But it was only after she made her way into empty-nester that my mother really went to town. 

Half the back wall in the family room was taken up by a bay window. It got a lot of sun, so it became Plant Central. I don't know how many plants there were there, but Lizzie eventually had staging built in front of the window to hold more of her plants. She also got some sort of long plant hose attached to the kitchen sink so she didn't have to keep going back and forth with the watering can. In her later years, she spent a month each winter visiting a friend in Florida, and she had to hire someone to come in and water her plants.

I didn't inherit my mother's interest in plants, or her green thumb. I'm not a black thumb exactly -  and as I write this I'm getting the urge to do a bit of plant shopping - but I'm just not much into plants. I have plants off and on - mostly off (if you don't count pointsettias, which I usually hang onto after Christmas and give up on in July; for some reason, this year, I gave mine the boot right after the new year). 

At present, I have one plant. A geranium that's kind of stalky and which currently has no flowers, no buds. I'm on the fence between aggressively pinching it back to see if I can get another flower or two out of it, or just tossing it out. I'll probably do a bit of pinching and hang on to it for a while longer - flowered or flowerless - because I love that geranium smell. 

But I wouldn't mind having a few more plants around. So maybe I should consider hiring a plant stylist.

Plant stylist? Yes, plant stylist. And I hadn't heard of it, either, until my sister Kath sent me a link to an article in the NY Times on the subject.

Brooklyn-based Lisa Muñoz is a plant stylist/designer/caretaker who runs Leaf and June. Starting at $2,000, she'll swing by your home and strategically and aesthetically place plants in it. I looked at her website, and it's all very beautiful. But $2K? Seems like a lot to pay someone to perch a plant in a terracotta pot on your windowsill. But this is New York we're talking about.  

Not that NYC is alone here. I googled "plant stylist Boston" and it turns out there's a plant stylist just a couple of blocks from where I live. Her "gallery" is in the basement of the Restoration Hardware store, which is all in keeping with her look and feel. She doesn't advertise her prices, but I'm guessing a lot but not $2K for starters.

In some ways, plant styling is nothing new.

Nurseries and flower shops have long provided professional plant care for offices and homes. Most billionaires of Park Avenue, one assumes, don’t water their ficus trees. Ms. Muñoz offers such maintenance services to her clients, too.

But her real role is in performing the job that a fashion stylist or art consultant might — to make aesthetic choices and sound investments on someone’s behalf. Just … about plants.

There's more to plants than just the plants. Plant stylists are not just about the pothos. They're about the pots.

For one Brooklyn homeowner, Ms. Muñoz put a schefflera tree in the kids’ room, with rich, green foliage that droops like an umbrella. She paired it with a showstopper pot — a $1,500 ceramic planter from Bzippy & Co.

That "drooping like an umbrella" sounds cool, but who puts a $1,500 planter in a kids' room? 

Anyway, plant stylist is a more interesting gig than a lot of the non-do-it-yourselfer gigs that have sprung up from the gig economy. I remember reading about someone who contacted Task Rabbit after he stepped in dog crap and "needed" someone to go out and buy him a new pair of Tom's so he could continue on his way. And plant stylist pays better than Task Rabbit-ing. (C.f., $2,000 minimum.)

Me? I have definitely convinced myself that, when the weather gets a bit nicer, I'm going to go out and get me a plant. I'm thinking a nice variegated coleus for starters.  Or maybe something in the sansevieria family. And pot shopping will be fun, even though I won't be forking over $1,500 for a planter. 

Style on!

Oh those poor Wayfair-ing ex-employees

Having spent my career in an industry - high tech - notorious for lay-offs, I decided years ago that there really is no good way to conduct one. And plenty of bad ones.

I had a friend whose small tech company called everyone into a large meeting room. At the door, when they checked in, each employee was handed a colored card. Blue cards got to keep their jobs; the folks holding the pink cards were told they were being laid off. So long, it's been good to know you.

One of my cousins was laid off at a group meeting, when his boss announced that he and another colleauge no longer had their jobs. Thanks for letting us know!

During a major RIF at Wang, when thousands of folks were losing their jobs, employees were told to stay at their desks on a Friday. A team of executioneers HR people then went around and individually tapped those about to be let go on the shoulder, brought them into a private room, and handed them their package. (One techie in my group who lost his job was a Russian immigrant. He said when they came to his cubicle to tap his shoulder, it felt like the KGB was coming for him) While it was good to see that each person was treated as an individual entitled to privacy during a tough time (most rank and file Wang employees worked in cubicles), the company ran out of Friday. 

So late in the afternoon, they announced that they hadn't completed the layoffs yet, and everyone had to come back on Monday, sit in their office, and wait to see if they had a job. My group was given the all clear for some reason, so we all us survivors went home knowing we had jobs. Everyone else spent an agonizing weekend. (This was my 40th birthday - a real cheery one! When the grim HR reapers were on my floor, there were people standing on the desks, yelling out the names of those who were being laid off. "The've just taken Alice." "They're coming for Jay." A spectacle beyond belief.)

One of the most despicable human beings I've ever known laid off an employee while that employee was in the NICU with his newborn son, waiting to see whether the baby was going to live. Couldn't have waited a day or two to give my colleague the news. Shortly after this incident, I was in a meeting with Mr. Despicable, and he told us that he had really enjoyed laying off this person. (It goes without saying that the fellow that was fired was a) a good employee; b) a great guy.)

Years ago, I read that some company - was in Radio Shack? - laid folks off via text message.

Last Thursday, it was Wayfair's turn to figure out the "right" way to lay off 350 people who were working in their downtown Boston headquarters.

There had been rumors. (There are always rumors.) Last November, Wayfair had implemented a "headcount review process," which is always ominous. They'd started rating employees on a stricter curve, which is always ominous. (Grading on the curve: now there's a post for another day...)

And then:

At 2 a.m. Thursday morning, employees got a Slack message that said some internal systems were being locked so that engineers would not able to deploy code or make significant data changes. Also on Tuesday, an IT team in the Berlin office was laid off, according to an employee who was among those who lost their jobs. The former employee, who asked to remain anonymous, said more layoffs were to come in Boston.

Around 10 a.m. in the Copley Place mall, scores of employees began to descend the escalator from Wayfair’s offices. Many were visibly upset and declined to comment about the layoffs.

One employee, who was not laid off and declined to give their name, said hundreds of employees were called to a general meeting this morning, and all of them were laid off. The employee said those who were not called to the meeting still had to talk with their direct supervisors, and were told they needed to be more efficient.  (Source: Boston Globe)

Ah, the mass layoff. My first thought was, this is appalling. And then I reconsidered. Is it any more appalling than sitting around on a Friday, frozen to your office chair, all day, waiting to know if you have a job - only to be told to come back in on Monday to find out? Yes, being laid off is upsetting - there are tears, there's anger, there's fear - and a lot of people prefer to vent their emotions in a private setting. But in many ways, it's preferable to hear all at once, rather than agonize over if and when "it" is going to happen. And misery does love company.

Anyway, Wayfair has been - in terms of hiring - a real high flyer, growing aggressively, and renting top-of-the-line office space in downtown Boston. They've grown their revenues, too, but they've yet to make a profit. And Amazon has apparently set their sites on them. If I were Wayfair, I wouldn't bet my supply chain against anything that Amazon can do. So the handwriting's been on the wall.

Still, I hate to see a local company in distress. And I know it sucks to lose your job.

I was laid off 3 times. Once, I volunteered for separation, so my only agony was waiting to find out whether my offer to part company would be accepted. (I had been one of 50 midmanagers who a few months earlier had been selected to spend a week at Babson College trying to figure out how to turn the company around, and the company president didn't want anyone on his golden 50 list to leave.) 

Another time, I was collateral damage in a battle between the Tall Guys and the Short Guys. My boss was one of the leaders of the Tall Guys faction, and when they lost to the Short Guys, those of us most closely identified with "our" Tall Guy knew that all of our days were numbered. (They were.)

The other time, I was fired after getting into an argument with the company president on how we were going to position our looming layoff to the surviving employees. He won, I lost. Oh, well.

So when I was a layoff-ee, it wasn't done the traditional way.

But I've survived many a layoff, and I know how rotten it is in the days/weeks/months leading up to it. Talk about fear factor. When I worked at Wang, one fellow was so stressed out in the runup to a major reduction that he had a heart attack in his cubicle - which was near mine - and died. 

But I've never actually experienced how terrible it is to get tapped on the shoulder, to sit on the other side of the table and be handed the package. I do know that, as one who's done the tapping and been there for the handing, that the layoff-er side of the table is pretty awful.

And, let's face it, for most of us, our colleagues form an important part of our social circle. Even if it's temporary, it's your fellow employees who you see every day, chat with at the coffee machine, grab lunch with, etc. It's not just the loss of a paycheck, by any means.

Good luck to the newbie-ly laid off from Wayfair. May you find new work quickly, and land in a better place. 

As for the survivors, you heard your supervisor. You've just got to become more efficient. And, if experience counts for anything, I'm guessing that there will be more Wayfairing layoffs in the future. 

Holiday/Not Holiday

Well, in keeping with tradition, Pink Slip is celebrating the holiday by doing what we do best: kicking back and doing not much of anything.

In truth, with the incumbent president, it's hard these days to do an overall celebration of our leaders - especially given the ongoing and increasingly more rapid debasement of the office that Trump is demonstrating. As I wrote last year: Presidents Day? Just Not This President. 

But there are some presidents I've rather liked and admired, my top three being Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Barack Obama. Even though I recognize that all of the men who've held the office have their flaws, there are other presidents I've held in high regard as well. Just not this travesty of an edition.

Nonetheless, it is a holiday. And holidays are a good thing, especially in the middle of winter - even a winter as benign as this one has been. 

So, even though I don't work, I'm happy to have a holiday. And happy for everyone else who's celebrating today. (Just not this president.)

But February 17th means something else to me. Something not holiday. Not in the least.

Today is the sixth anniversary of the death of my husband, Jim Diggins. Even though it's been six years, there are still times when I wake up in the middle of the night and feel his presence. There are still times when I walk in the door and expect him to be sitting there. To this day, if I come across something in his handwriting - especially something written in Jim's signature red ink - I get a lump in my throat. Even before Jim's death, I already knew that when you lose someone you love, you never really stop missing them. It's just that with Jim's death, I know this more deeply than I had in the past.

As I wrote in last year's post: 

Seems like just yesterday. Seems like a million years ago. 

Sigh.

Ditto.

What the world needs now, is...

Since it's Valentine's Day - and for all the single ladies (all the single ladies), Galentine's Day - you might be thinking that what the world needs now, is love sweet love. But, nah, if you go by what KFC and Crocs are thinking, what the world needs now is Kentucky Fried Chicken Crocs.

I'm sure that KFC was inspired to act by Popeye's recent success with selling out apparel based on its UG-LY burgundy and orange employee uniform. But why Crocs, of all things? While someone might want a white suit and string tie like the Colonel's - or even a peppy red-and-white striped something based on the KFC awning - I can't imagine there's much call for a pair of these Crocs - especially as they'll be going for $59.99 (which is about twice what you'd pay for plain vanilla Crocs).

For the more daring, there's a 4.5 inch high platform version that has the Colonel himself on the sole.

Both pairs of shoes also come with two Jibbitz charms, which you can stick into the holes of your Crocs for decoration. But instead of smiley faces and rainbows, these charms, of course, are shaped like fried chicken drumsticks—and they even smell like fried chicken, too. If you don’t feel like walking around with mini faux-fried chicken on your feet, rest assured, they’re removable. (Source: Food & Wine)

You know, even if I were interested in a pair of KFC-themed Crocs, I don't think I'd want to be walkng around with a drumstick charm that smells like chicken. The squirrels in the Boston Public Garden are already pretty aggressive. Since so many people have been feeding them - there's even a woman who regularly wheels around a carton full of peanuts, calling the squirrles by name (Mr. Bunbun. Benicio...) - they've gotten as bold as brass. The size of a small racoon, these suckers come right up to you, and get a bit pissy if you don't have something to offer them. I can imagine what they'd be like if they got a whiff fried chicken emanating from your tootsies. Why, Mr. Bunbun might latch right onto your foot...

I'm sure that this is a good way for KFC to get some attention.  If Mr. Peanut can kill off Mr. Peanut, if Popeye's can sell (out) their uniforms, why not.

I'm sure there are Kentucky Fried aficianados who'd want a pair. I'm not one of them, but there is, as we see demonstrated time and again, no accounting for taste. 

I'm sure that there are folks who collect Crocs. I'm not one of them, but there is, as we see demonstrated time and again, no accounting for taste. 

And I'm also sure that most of these will end up in landfill, where they'll take a thousand years to decompose. 

Meanwhile, since it is Valentine's Day, I do want to give a shout out to love.  Because the world could use a bit more sweet love and a bit less once and future trash like KFC Crocs.

What the world needs now is love, sweet loveIt's the only thing that there's just too little ofWhat the world needs now is love, sweet love,No not just for some but for everyone.…

(Don't know if that embedded video of Jackie DeShannon singing Burt Bacharach/Hal David's great song from the mid-sixties, here's the link.)

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Think I'll celebrate by heading to Georgetown Cupcakes  for a cupcake with a sugar heart on it. (Happy Valentin'es Day to me.)

And hurray for swag bags

Sure, I'm interested in hearing about who wins what at the Academy Awards. Not interested enough to watch the show, mind you. But interested enough to read about it. 

And I'm also and always interested in finding out what's in the swag bags that are given to those nominated for one of the major awards: Best Actor/Actress, Best Supporting Actor/Actress, Best Director. 

Not that any of these folks actually need anything that's in their swag bag, but, hey, who doesn't like to get presents - even if they turn around and give them away to charity and/or staff members. And for the companies that provide swags for the bags, it's great publicity.

Needless to say, the swag bags contain a lot more than any goodie bag you ever got at a wedding. More better than M&M's with the bride's and groom's initials on them. More better than a mug with the wedding date on it. More better than the good night cookie, the monogrammed shot glass, the packet of Kleenex in the wedding color scheme. More better even than a net bag full of Jordan almonds. 

The swaggiest swag in this year's bag is a trip for two to Antarctica worth $78K. The trip is on an ultra-luxe yacht called the Scenic Eclipse. This is not your average run-of-the-mill ultra-luxe yacht. It contains 8 restaurants, a spa, a submarine and two helicopters. All the better to do an icecap jaunt and mingle with the penguins. I'd say the celebs better jump on this one quick. Get it while it's hot. Or still cold, as it were. 

Antarctica is heating up - the highest temperature (65 degrees F) ever recorded there was recorded just the other day - and, thanks to global warming, the penguin colonies there are disappearing. 

Looks like the scenery - flora and fauna, ice and snow - are becoming eclipsed. Permanently. So the Scenic Eclipse is pretty well named. And I'm guessing that excursions in which rich folks are helicoptered in to rub noses with penguins aren't exactly helping maintain the Antarctic environment.

If penguins aren't a gift baggee's thing, there's a trip for 8 to a Spanish lighthouse, and a five night stay at the Waikiki Beachcomber by Outrigger. This place bills itself as a "lifestyle" hotel, whatever that means. And it's "curated by local artists and tastemakers," a place where you can find "instagrammable aloha vibes.") (The marketing person who first began using the word "curated" should be barred for life from writing any more copy. Ditto for anyone using "instagrammable aloha vibes," but that might be a one-off. Curated is everywhere.) 

All these trips! Bon voyage to the winners and the runners up.

If they happen to find themselves in Cabo, Mexico, on their own dime, winners and losers alike can snag a free dinner for two at Flora's Field Kitchen, which serves "handmade, fresh food." (So do I, on occasion. Although I can't vouch for a red pepper I've chopped up as "handmade." At least they aren't using the word artisanal.)

I suspect that someone who's gotten an Academy Award nomination no longer needs a life coach. But if they do, Jessica McGregor Johnson is gifting them with a private phone call. And a copy of her book: "The Right T-Shirt, Write Your Own Rules and Live the Life You Want." In addition to writing "The Right T-Shirt," Johnson was a Certified Passion Test Facilitator. (Passion, hmmm. Talk another of those words that should be banned. But maybe I'm just feeling pissy because my passion has never been tested by a certified facilitator.)

Then there are a couple of necklaces from do-gooder organizations. The lapis lazuli necklace uses gems from Afghanistan and proceeds from sales help American and Afghani military widows. The lariat necklace benefits disabled vets. But the handcrafted earrings appear to benefit the moi charity. 

PETA is apparently now making sunglasses. Is there such a thing as vegan eyewear? There is in the swag bag. Plus they threw in subscription to a vegan meal service. I could be a vegetarian, but wouldn't want to go through life without eggs and dairy. Still, if someone gave me a free vegan meal service, I'd give it a whirl. And after Joaquin Phoenix's veganish acceptance speech for Best Actor...

Skincare is a big swag bag deal, and this year's bag edition includes a 24 karat gold bath bomb, which is made of "organic hyaluronic acid, purple Brazilian clay, and vegan coconut milk." Bombs away! Make that vegan bombs away!

There's a spa day, and up to $25K worth of cosmetic treatments, including Botox and injectables/fillers. But you have to go to NYC to collect on it.  I guess you'd also have to go to NYC for your full-body performance evaluation package, as the doc who offers it is based in New York. So you could cut your costs and get your full-body eval and your Botox on one trip.

There's a bunch of other stuff, including a $20K per annun membership in a matchmaking service, Drawing Down the Moon. Forget about it, Best Supporting Actor Brad Pitt. Just call Jennifer Aniston up and give the matchmaking to someone who needs it.

On the low end, there's a couple of packages of Pepperidge Farm Milano's. Guaranteed that this is the one product that everyone will use!

Overall, the value of the swag bag is $215K. Which sounds like a lot, but last year's was worth $232K. 

Despite that decrease, it sure does pay to get one of the biggy Academy Award nominations.


Sources for swag-fo: Cheatsheet and Newsweek. 

Hurray for Hollywood!

For some reason or another, I've never been that interested in watching the Academy Awards. Even when I was a regular (weekly, even) moviegoer, the Oscars always kind of left me cold. Nonetheless, I'm always interested in seeing who gets nominated, and who wins. Especially this year, when I've actually seen a few of the nominated movies and a couple of the nominated performances.

I was rooting for either Little Women or Parasite to win Best Picture, so I was happy to wake up to the news that Parasite took home the honors. I don't know quite to make of that film, but I thought it was highly original and brilliant, and I much enjoyed it. I've seen it described as a thriller, but I'm going with dark comedy. That turned exceedingly dark towards the end. So bravo to Parasite. (Interestingly, I have a good friend who is Korean-American - born in Korea but immigrated as a small child. She has NO interest in seeing Parasite. Which reminds me that an Italian-American friend of mine, who grew up in a Philadelphia neighborhood where a lot of wise guys lived, wouldn't watch The Sopranos.)

Although I was happy with Parasite being named Best Picture, I was a bit disappointed that Little Women only walked away with the girly-ish Best Costume award. Sigh.

The other films nominated for best that I actually saw were 1917 (enjoyed might be the wrong word; maybe admired) and Marriage Story (which I watched on TV, happy that I didn't pay big bucks to see it in the theater; it was okay, but not great).

Of the remaining nominees, at some point I intend to watch The Irishman, Ford v. Ferrari, and Once Upons a Time in Hollywood. My personal jury's out on whether to see JoJo Rabbit. I'm usually interested in anything to do with World War II/the Holocaust, but JoJo sounds a bit too close to Life Is Beautiful, a movie that I felt trivialized and romanticized the Holocaust, and which I heartily disliked. But my jury is honestly still out on JoJo, so I might watch it when it shows up on Netflix.

I cannot imagine the circumstances under which I would ever in a million years watch Joker - I make it a habit to just say no to anything with a clown in it -  so I'll have to take the august Academy's word that Joaquin Phoenix was great in it. I thought Jonathan Pryce was super in The Two Popes, but I really am not a fan of Adam Driver, who was nominated for Marriage Story. Perhaps he is an acquired taste, but it's one I have no intention of acquiring.

Not a big Renee Zellwegger, but I will watch Judy at some point. I was rooting for Saoirse Ronan, who I think is her generation's answer to Meryl Streep (a good thing!). But looks like "they" just wanted to snub Little Women. I will watch Harriet and, if I'm bored enough some night, do Bombshell.

I also have Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Tom Hanks was nominated for Best Supporting Actor) and Richard Jewell (Kathy Bates was nominated for Best Supporting Actress). These are two actors I'd watch in anything, even a soup commercial.

Anthony Hopkins was good as Pope Benedict in The Two Popes, but since I really don't like Pope Benedict, I was just as happy he didn't win. Florence Pugh in Little Women made me actually like and understand Amy, something that hasn't happened in the 60+ years since I first met this characters. But Florence is still young. Plenty of time.

As for the Supporting winners, although I was meh on Marriage Story, I really do like Laura Dern. As for Brad Pitt, I'll let you know once I get around to Once Upon a Time...

I love that American Factory, a documentary produced by Michelle and Barack Obama, won for Best Documentary. It was a terrific film, and it really got to the heart of what it's life in a declining industry city, where the good blue-collar jobs are increasingly being automated out of existence. Depressing. Sad. Cautionary. (This problem ain't going away.)

And although I didn't see it, what a great story that Matthew Cherry and Karen Rupert Toliver won for their animated short, Hair Love. Cherry is a former NFL player who boldly predicted a couple of years ago that he was going to win an Oscar. Good for him (and her). With so many African-American kids getting hassled over their hair styles, this is a really timely topic. 

Anyway, hurray for Hollywood. Glad to have a few more movies on my watch list. Must see TV!

What's with that NY Life ad???

NY Life is an insurance company. They're a big one. They may well be a good one. For one company I worked for, they were a BIG client, and the people who worked there were very nice. They also had an extremely cool HQ building in Manhattan, and I was delighted that I got to go there a couple of times. The building was designed by Cass Gilbert, who also gave us the Woolworth Building. What's not to love?

Did I say love? Maybe I meant more like like.

After all, love is how you feel about your family (storge), your friends (philia), your lover (eros), and humankind (agápē, which is all entwined with love of God). Got that? 

What's this got to do with NY Life, you may well be asking yourself.

Good question.

If you didn't watch the Super Bowl, you may have missed it, but NY Life is running an ad about their agápē-ness.

Silly me. Here I was thinking that were about selling insurance, but, nope: it's been 175 YEARS OF HELPING PEOPLE ACT ON THEIR LOVE, and that love that they help people act on is the:

...one love that stands out above the rest. Selfless love. It’s called agápē (ah-gah-peh) — love as an action. Agápē is what inspires us to put others' needs before our own. It's about doing what's right, being our best selves, and building better futures.

Well, sure, you probably don't buy life insurance if you aren't concerned about what happens to your spouse and kids if you die in your earning prime. But there are plenty of people who love selflessly - love their families, friends, lovers and others, but who can't afford insurance premiums. And plenty of crappy peple who can.

So, with respect to this ad, I have to ask the Tina Turner question: what's love got to do with it, do with it? 

I am having technicolor, 3D flashbacks to being at an all-girl Catholic high school in the 1960's.

We were all about agápē. We hung felt posters in our homerooms - doves, flowers, crosses, agápē spelled out in a weird felt font of our own making.

We went to the Saturday Midnight Folk Mass at Holy Cross, where we sang Paul Quinlan folk songs and listened to some Jesuit talk about agápē. Or we hung out at Limbo, the Holy Cross coffee house, and talked agápē.

We swooned about God's love, probably because none of us had boyfriends (or girlfriends, for that matter) to swoon over.

We read C.S. Lewis.

Our yearbook was called "Everyman," because back then, no one worried about inclusive language, and everyman, mankind, etc. were considered universal, inclusive terms. (Our school song - words written by my classmate and still friend Kathleen to the tune of The Boys from Wexford -  because JFK's ancestors were from County Wexford, and before he was assassinated our freshman year, we swooned over JFK - included lines like:

In union is the strength of man, in union is our goal.To light the light of brotherhood, in each and every human soul.

The sisterhood was on the verge of getting powerful, but it never occurred to us that "sisterhood" might have been more appropriate for an all-girls school.

We actually wanted to call our yearbook "Fat Lady." Because, while we may have read (or tried to read) C.S. Lewis, we gobbled up J.D. Salinger. Who told us (in the person of Seymour Glass, channeled by Buddy Glass - or was it Zooey - that we were supposed to do it - pay attention, be kind, shine our shoes - for the Fat Lady. And we wanted our yearbook dedication to quote from Salinger's Franny & Zooey.

"...There isn't anyone who isn't Seymour's Fat Lady. Don't you know that? Don't you know that goddam secret yet? And don't you know - listen to me, now - don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? Ah, buddy. Ah, buddy. It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself, buddy."

It almost goes without saying that the nuns didn't allow us to name the  yearbook "Fat Lady." Alumnae, they told us. Our parents. Wouldn't get it. Nor did they let us include that dedication. ("Goddam"? In the Notre Dame Academy yearbook? Hell, no.)

So we watered it down:

Do it for Everyman. Search for Christ in him. Possess the insight to realize the immortal soul of humanity. Contact your brothers with undersanding, whic is to stand under, which is to look up to, which is a wonderful way to understand. Be one with yourself, one with your brothers, one with your God. Do it for Everyman.

"Don't you know it, Buddy, don't you know that secret yet? Everyman is Christ."

And, yes, we did put quotes around what wasn't a quote from J.D. Salinger but a paraphrase. No goddam, no Fat Lady for the girls of Notre Dame Academy, even though one of the lines in our school song (since replaced, I note sadly) was "We girls of Notre Dame Academy, behind the truth do stand." Well, yes and no.

No need to mention - but I will anyway - that I was on the yearbook staff. The yearbook was edited by my classmate (and still friend) Kathleen. My closest high school (and beyond) friend, Marie, was an assistant editor. 

I did pull it out my yearbook out in 2017, when I went to our 50th reunion. (More than sadly, Marie had died in 2014.) But I really hadn't thought of the Fat Lady thing in ages.

We spent those high school years, all in an agápē swirl. (Even though half of us had one particular Peanuts cartoon thumb-tacked to the cork bullletin board in our bedrooms. The immortal words of Linus Van Pelt: I love mankind. It's people I can't stand.)

Bottom line: I find the NY Life ad plenty dopey. Even dopier, for some reason, than the Subaru ads that tell us that love is what makes a Subaru a Subaru. Proably because Subaru uses a lot of cutie-pie golden retrievers in their ads. And NY Life just uses plain old humans. (I love mankind. It's people I can't stand.)

I don't think I'd find the add so offputting if it weren't for the agápē throw in. Maybe if they just stuck with plain old love. 

Anyway, I come away from that NY Life ad shaking my head, agape at agápē. Agápē? Seriously?

Well, it's not the coronavirus, but...

I am now entering the fourth week of what I thought was a headcold, but which I learned on Friday was a bacterial sinus infection. Good to know.

It started out as a runny nose and plenty of sneezing. But nothing below the neck - no sore throat, no cough - and no fever. I didn't feel particularly sick or tired. I was just sick and tired of blowing my nose. As runny noses go, this runner was a marathoner.

I went through a box of Kleenex. Then two.

I did my usual: clear up congestion by slathering Vicks VapoRub on my nose and throat and taking a hot shower.

It seemed to be working. I was getting my five-mile-a-day walk in.Whatever it was seemed to be dying down. Sort of.

Then at the start of week two, I went to the dentist to have a permanent crown put in. When I got home about noon, I realized that whatever it was hadn't died down. It was leaping up and out like that creature in Alien.  Talk about Boogerpalooza!

I took to my bed, sleeping most of Monday afternoon and pretty much all day Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I called in sick for my volunteer work at a homeless shelter. Ditto on Thursday.

When I wasn't dozing, I was blowing my nose; disposing of wadded up, completely boogerized pieces of Kleenex; taking a VapoRub shower; or lying there with a hot compress over my sinuses, which were killing me.

Forget five miles a day. I was barely getting in a mile, a mile devoted largely to getting a fresh box of Kleenex.

But I was reading.

For sanity's sake, I had to swear off watching the news. I keep up via Twitter, which gives me the highlights - not that most of them are exactly highlights - and the condensed version. Up to date, but not submerged.

Here's what I've been reading:

Say Nothing, by Patrick Radden Keefe, a brilliantly written book that recounts the murder of mother-of-ten Jean McConville by the IRA. It reads like a novel. Chilling.

Elevator Pitch, by Linwood Barclay, a beach-read thriller that went quickly.

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, by Caitlin Doughty, who, after graduating from the University of Chicago, got a job working in a mortuary/crematorium.

Henry Himself, by Stewart O'Nan, a novelist at whose typewriter I worship. This is a prequel to Wish You Were Here and Emily Alone, two novels that chronicle the Maxwell family after the death of Henry Maxwell himself. I hate coming to the end of a Stewart O'Nan novel. If he could churn out a book a week for the rest of his life I'd be happy as a clam. If bivalves liked good books.

My Life as a Rat, by Joyce Carol Oates, one of my favorite writers. My Life was pretty good, but it was a bit too echo-y of her We Were the Mulvaneys, which was written more than 20 years ago. Both books center on large Irish-American families from which a young daughter is sent into exile. The exile was more believable and organic in Rat than it was in Mulvaneys. Still I found it odd that she revisited this theme.

NW, by Zadie Smith, which has been sitting in the bookpile next to my sickbed for years, and which I finally dug out. Love Zadie Smith, and I'm moving right along through this one.

On Wednesday of week two, I put down my books and made a trip to the local drugstore. (Gary Drug: a true local indepedent pharmacy. Not a CVS. Not a Walgreen. A true gift to our neighborhood.) While there, I broke down and got some NyQuil Plus. And some more boxes of Kleenex: one infused with aloe vera, one infused with Vicks, and one that claimed it could kill 99.99% of all germs. (Right.) I started handwashing a la Lady Macbeth.

Whatever it was finally started calming down.  Unfortunately, the nose-blowing wasn't going anywhere. But I was feeling fine. Other than the yuck feeling you get when you wake up in the morning in a bed covered in wadded up Kleenex.

I was back to my five miles per.

I wasn't sleeping round the clock.

I got back on track with my volunteering at St. Francis House.

Last Friday, I had a regular appointment with my primary care physician.

She me I had a bacterial sinus infection and prescribed Amoxicillin.

A miracle!

Boogerpalooza is not 100% over, but I am no longer blowing my nose 24/7.

Just to be on the safe side, to make sure I don't get reinfected, my doctor suggested that I wear a mask and/or gloves when I'm volunteering. I told her that I really didn't want to put up a barrier between me and the folks I'm handing a toothbrush or a tube of lotion to. They have enough cares and woes, let alone having a volunteer treat them as if they were Typhoid Mary.

I told my doctor that, while I'm there, I Macbeth it up with the Purell, but she said that I'd be better off using good old fashioned soap and water (while singing Happy Birthday) to get rid of germs if I came in any contact with one of our guests and/or an object that they've touched. Will do.

I'm halfway through the antibiotic course, and it seems to be working. My nose is no longer churning out factory-levels of snot. I feel great.

No, it wasn't the coronavirus, but I'm sure glad I'm pretty much done with it. Talk about the no-fun zone...

Rocket science

As far as I can tell, way too many startups are focused on building apps. Apps that are useful - at least marginally. Apps that are frivolous - but that just might catch on. Apps that are meant to make the world a better place - but as often as not make things worse.

And then there are a bunch of rocket makers that have attracted billions in venture money. These are companies that are, for the most part, focused on small scale rocketry and that aren't, for the most part, competing directly with the goverment and SpaceX, which build the big kahunas.

One of these rocket companies is Astra, a three-year-old startup based in California. (And located right next door to a Pottery Barn outlet. Not that this is germane to their story. Nor is it likely to matter to the rocket scientists who work at Astra, who are probably not the Pottery Barn market sweetspot. But how much fun to be able to meander around a Pottery Barn outlet during lunch? Years ago, I counted myself lucky to work near a Gap outlet - pretty much the only good thing about working at Wang Labs...) 

As for Astra: 

The company’s founders say they want to be the FedEx Corp. of space. They’re aiming to create small, cheap rockets that can be mass-produced to facilitate daily spaceflights, delivering satellites into low-Earth orbit for as little as $1 million per launch. If Astra’s planned Kodiak flight succeeds on Feb. 21, it will have put a rocket into orbit at a record-setting pace.(Source: Bloomberg)

Astra has attracted $100M in investment, which is not a helluva lot, considering what they're trying to do - and given that a lot of stupid app companies fritter away that kind of money on stupid marketing schemes.  

Astra is hoping to top that investment money by winning the Darpa Launch Challenge. (Darpa is the R&D wing of the Pentagon.) Darpa's offering  a $12M prize to a startup that can "send two rockets from different locations with different payloads within a few weeks of each other."

The prize is Astra's for the taking, as the two other finalists Richard Branson's Virgin Orbi and Vector Launch are out of the running. Virgin withdrew, and Vector went bellyup.

So I wish Astra luck getting their hands on that $12M.

I have no idea why I lit on this story. Maybe it was the fact that one of Astra's co-founders is a rocket scientist with a PhD from MIT. Maybe it's because I got a kick out of their near-Pottery Barn location. Maybe it's just as good a distraction as any from the meshugas of the "real world."

It isn't because I have any great interest in space. I don't. My father was the paper boy for Dr. Robert Goddard, father of American rocketry. That's about the alpha and the omega of my interest in anything to do with space.

So I think my interest is because Astra will be working on small payloads. And a few years back, a smidgeon of my husband's ashes were part of a small payload into space.

My husband wasn't a rocket scientist, but he was a science guy, and he was keenly interested in the space program. One of his final wishes was that some of his ashes get launched into space.

We were sitting in the living room, a month or so before his death, talking about the places Jim wanted a tiny bit of his ashes to end up. Most are buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, but there are a few grains on his parents' grave, on the gave of his beloved aunt and uncle, on my parents' grave, on that of my Aunt Margaret (Jim just adored her). There's a bit of Jim in Galway Bay, in Connemara, in Central Park, in Washington Square. With a few more places still on the list.

Anyway, Jim at one point said, "I'd pay a million dollars to have my ashes sent into space."

Well, I told him, that's where we part company. "I'm not going to end up sleeping over a heating grate so that your ashes can go to the moon." I guess it was the brain tumor talking, because he immediately agreed that the million dollar thang wasn't a good idea. But I was happy to find him a way to get into space.

Which I did. 

And in October 2014, Jim got his spaceflight through an outfit called Celestis. He's in good company. Gene Rodenberry, producer of Star Trek went into space thanks to Celestis. As did the actor who played Scotty -  of "Beam me up, Scotty" fame. As did astronaut Gordo Cooper.

 Jim's ashes were part of a pretty small payload, and I'm glad we had the opportunity to get Diggy where he wanted to go - and for a lot less than a million bucks.

I think Astra is going to focus it's business on niche-purpose satellites. But I'm just happy that there's space in space for the little guy. Or the little guy's ashes. (Sixth anniversary of that little guys death's coming up. Time sure does fly...)

 

Putting the brass in brass balls...

The good citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are well familiar with the scandals surround the Massachusetts State Police. The most recent scandal has centered on a scheme in which troopers put in for overtime without ever having worked the overtime. This enabled them to pad their salaries in the here-and-now, plus contribute to the earnings that got toward figuring out just how lucrative their already lucrative pensions could be. The only effort required was filling out the lying paperwork, and faking up some citations that would make it seem as if they'd been working.

Dozens of state troopers have been caught up in this one, and they're losing their jobs and/or their pensions and/or receiving sentences. (It's not clear whether any have actually served more than nominal time.) But it's been pretty disgusting to witness the spectacle of first responders resonding first and foremost to their own duplicity and greed.

But the overtime scam is by no means the only scandal to surface of late.

There was also the case of the troopers who worked at the State Police Armory (which manages gun purchases and inventory for the staties) who were caught taking free guns from a firearms dealer who did business with the state. Gee, why would anyone find this at all amiss...

One of these jamokes, Robert Outwater (who took 10 guns from the dealer - let's not bother to ask ourselves why he thought he needed 10 guns; probably one of those 2A nutters arming up for the next civil war), has been suspended without pay since 2016. But now he's suing for his job back. And then some.

In order to get out of the hot water he found himself in, Outwater elected to cooperate with the AG. He agreed to cop to an ethics violation and to pay a relatively modest ($5K) civil fine - and have any criminal charges against him dropped - in exchange for diming his boss and another senior trooper. Now he wants back in.

In a lawsuit filed against State Police in Middlesex Superior Court last week, Outwater’s lawyer said the investigation by Healey’s office is done and argued his client should get his job back, and more.

“Trooper Outwater has been charged with no crime and found guilty of no crime," Boston attorney Patrick Hanley said in a statement to the Globe. “The State Police has not charged Trooper Outwater with internal misconduct, let alone found him guilty of such misconduct.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Oh, I see. It doesn't matter if a crime were committed. As long as you're not charged with a crime, you should be A-OK to keep on being a statie. Got it.

Me thinks it might be time for the MSP to charge Outwater with internal misconduct, even though I understand that, when it comes to defining internal misconduct, the Massachusetts State Police force has erected an credibly steep threshold to get over.

Hanley does plenty of boo-hooing on behalf of his client. 

“Yet the Department has suspended him for 41 months without affording him due process,” Hanley continued. "This lawsuit is simply an effort to put Trooper Outwater back to work and make him whole for the months the Department has suspended him without the benefit of due process.”

The lawsuit says State Police should be ordered to: lift the suspension; give Outwater back pay, including for overtime and details; restore his benefits; and promote him to the sergeant, a rank and pay increase he was bypassed for in 2018 while suspended.

So, is the overtime he's entitled to real overtime, or real fake overtime? And how do they figure out the difference? And don't get me started on details. These are the ultra-lucrative gigs in which local and state cops get to sit in their cars and fiddle with their phones while keeping a partial eye on road work and other outside construction/repair work. Of course, they may not even be sitting in their cars at all. There was one situation in which a state trooper parked his state police car at a worksite, took off for parts unknown (probably another job), and then came to collect the car at the end of the day. As I always say, a job worth doing is certainly worth not doing at all.

“Trooper Outwater’s alleged misdeeds are immaterial, where the Department has failed to follow its own investigatory and disciplinary processes,” Hanley added.

Ah, the case of the immaterial misdeed. 

In the suit, Hanley noted how the Outwater’s former armory colleagues who were charged “were permitted to retire and are now collecting their lucrative state pensions.”

Retired lieutenant Paul M. Wosny and retired trooper Michael G. Wilmot were each charged with a felony in October in East Brookfield District Court. They allegedly received free guns from a state-contracted firearms dealer and accepted personalized assault rifles from a gunmaker seeking business with the state.

I don't know whether they were allowed to keep those snappy personalized assualt rifles, but both of these bums were allowed to retire, and are collecting state pensions (which they may lose). So you can't blame Overwater for being a bit steamed. Still, looking for your back pay - plus non-worked overtime and details, plus a promotion - when you are an admitted wrongdoer, seems like way too much of a reach.

The analogy is imperfect, but I keep thinking of the old joke in which a man kills both of his parents and then throws himself on the mercey of the court because he's now an orphan.

I won't be shedding any tears for Robert Overwater. What made you think it was okay to take those free guns, huh? You screwed up. You had a good thing going. A well-paying job with an end-of-the-rainbow pension. A job in the armory where your life wasn't really on the line and where you weren't required to 'run to danger' on a regular basis. 

Maybe I wouldn't be this outraged if "all" he was looking for was his job back. But backpay for OT and details? And a promotion? Talk about putting the brass in brass balls.

Whatever happened to the simpler days of 'don't do the crime if you can't do the time'? 

All aboard!

I've always loved train travel.

When I was a kid, every other summer or so, we went to Chicago (where my mother hails from) to visit family. Some years we drove, other years we took the train. 

I remember snippets from all of those trips. 

Taking a taxi cab - a nearly unheard of luxury, one that I only knew about through The Taxi that Hurried, one of my favorite Little Golden Books - to Worcester's Union Station.

Pushing up the curtain - shared between two seats - just a tiny bit so I could watch what was going by, only to have the soldier in the seat in front of me slam it down. ( I was 4 years old, and I was only looking for a half inch of daylight.Thanks for your service - not!)

The ice old water in those conical cups.

Dressing up for the trip - Sunday dress, patent leather Mary Janes, little white gloves - because that's how you traveled back in the day. At least that's how Catholics traveled. I remember my sister Kath and I being shocked by a couple of girls our age wearing green slacks and pastel shirts (one pink, one pale yellow), while Kath and I were in our matching polished cotton dresses - hers pink, mine turquoise - with their nifty little bolero jackets. We ended up playing Fish with these girls to kill time on what was a long overnight trip and, sure enough, they were Protestants. (We just knew it!)

Breakfast in the dining car.

Upgrading, over time, to roomettes, so that, rather than have to sit up all night in steerage, we could sleep on fold-down beds, and enjoy our own private toilet. I remember my father tipping the Negro porters who helped fold down the beds.

That place outside of Cleveland where wild roses grew all over the banks next to the tracks.

I loved those trips.

In my early twenties, I spent four months hitching around Europe, but my friend Joyce and I did end up taking a couple of trains. The train in Spain was especially memorable. We ended up in a car full of leering men, and we both got chigger bites. 

I've taken plenty of trains in Ireland, the most unforgettable being one from Dublin to Enniscorthy. The train had too many cars to fit in the Enniscorthy station, so you had to know which car to be in so you could disembark. We spent the journey trying to find someone who could tell us. We asked the conductor, who was mostly MIA. We asked the barman in the club car, who was clueless. We asked fellow travelers. At the last minute, we found two women who were getting off in Enniscorthy and passed the secret code onto us. Phew! 

I can't remember the last time I flew to New York City. Mostly, I take the Acela. Much less stressful.

I take commuter rail all the time - to my sister's in Salem, my cousin's outside Worcester.

The longest train trip I ever took was from Orlando to Boston, in the aftermath of 9/11, when the planes weren't flying. What an eerie trip. We left Orlando no knowing whether the train would get any further north than Richmond, and were relieved to learn that it was going all the way through. We made a frantic connection in DC to get on the Boston-bound train. The car went completely silent when we departed Newark and saw the black cloud, much of the length of Manhtattan...

Carol Burnett was sitting near me. There's always something...

Anyway, I really enjoy train travel, and hope that I live to see goodies like high-speed travel in this country. 

All that said, I don't follow train news all that closely. Still, a recent story on Bloomberg caught my eye.

Believe it or not, there's actually a private passenger railroad, Brightline, that's backed by private equity and runs trains between Miami and West Palm Beach.

It’s the first new private company to move paying customers between American cities by rail in almost a century. It's also far from profitable, behind on ridership projections and recovering from a canceled initial public offering. (Source: Bloomberg)

Although they're not quite making a go of it yet, Brightline sounds pretty nice:

The seats are wide and made of leather. Blue-jacketed attendants greet passengers. Drinks are free in first class. The company plans to extend the line to Orlando by 2022 and possibly on to Tampa.

They're also opening up shop on a route between Victorville, California and Las Vegas. Turns out that pretty much any driving route from anywhere in California to Las Vegas goes through Victorville. So the Brightliners are betting that folks would be willing to park in Victorville and chillax for the final 90 miles of their journey. 

The private equity firm is now sniffing about for similar deals that would enable it to stitch together cities that fit a simple criteria: too long to drive, too short to fly. Atlanta to Charlotte, Los Angeles to San Diego, Portland to Vancouver, and Dallas to Houston are among those it’s mentioned.

The timing seems right for all this. Traffic is insane everywhere, and planes are big polluters. And, thanks to awareness building by Greta Thunberg, people are now being shamed into no flying.

What's interesting is that, unlike Amtrak, which is a quasi-public entity, Brightline is a private initiative. So they don't have to live under the constraints that Amtrak does, which has to make sure that the train goes to where powerful senators wants it to go, even if it's a money-losing proposition. (I am fortunate to live on Amtrak's most lucrative route, the Northeast Corridor, where taking the train from Boston to NYC, and from NYC to DC, really makes sense. Brightline, by the way, would love to privatize this piece of Amtrak's business.) 

Fortress (its private equity backer) did get a bit ahead of itself in trying to rush Brightline's IPO.  It was way off in its passenger and fare revenue estimates. Plus it was dogged by:

....safety concerns raised by Brightline’s opponents in areas north of West Palm Beach, through which its trains will eventually pass. An analysis of Federal Railroad Administration data published by the Associated Press found Brightline had more deaths per mile than any other U.S. railroad. Most of the 41 fatalities were suicides, according to the report, and the railroad itself wasn’t at fault. That hasn’t stopped critics from calling Brightline “the death train.”

Forty-one people struck and killed by a train that doesn't go that far and that often? In just over a two-year period? Yikes!

The majority have been suicides, while most others involved impatient motorists, pedestrians or bicyclists who misjudged the trains’ speed and ignored bells, gates or other warnings. Drugs, alcohol or both have been found in many victims’ systems.  (Source: AP)

Florida man...

Meanwhile, Brightline is trying to make its trains run more safely. Plus it's making its train stations smell citrusy and it's coming up with a way to close that treacherous gap between the train and the platform that happens in so many stations. I am always worried about breaking an ankle, so props for making it so we don't need to 'mind the gap.'

Me? I'd like to take a good long train trip somewhere. Maybe someday...

Co-working comes to Staples

For some, the can't-resist is a shoe store. For others, it's a jeweler. Or an artsy gift shop. 

Me? I like to poke in stores in general, but my big three are bookstores, container stores (i.e., The Container Store), and office supply stores. 

Ah, office supplies!

Since I got my first back-to-school pencil box, I've liked nothing better than having a newly-sharpened pencil, a pristine pad. 

I love having a goodly supply of yellow pads on hand. Post-its. Pens. Pencils. Eraser caps. (I do Sudoku.) A cheapo pencil sharpener or two.

I like to make sure I have plenty of folders, including the clear plastic ones that ziplock - sealing in my papers for freshness.

I'm happy if I have a non-dried up set of markers, manila envelopes in multiple sizes. 

I like knowing there's pair of scissors in the kitchen, in the living room credenza, in my office.  A stapler on both floors of my condo. Ditto for rolls of Scotch tape. And box-sealing tape. Paper clips. Alligator clips. 

And ordering any and all of this stuff is just not the same as strolling around the aisles and picking and choosing. So I'm happy that Staples is trying to hang in there, keeping its retail outlets open. And it's doing so by offering co-workings space in many of its stores, including my Staples, near Boston's Government Center.

When I was last in there, around Christmas, they were refiguring things. Yes, in order to make room for the co-workers, they had to get rid of a ton of the product space. But I was pleased to find that I could still get the yellow pads and the pens I'd come in for. 

While I saw the work-in-process, I haven't been back to see the new set up. So I haven't yet been able to:

Meet the new Staples: It’s not just an office supply superstore anymore, it is, the company puts it, a “destination dedicated to continued curiosity, growth, and development." (Source: Boston Globe)

Is it just me, or does "continued curiosity, growth and development" sound more like pre-school than it does like co-working space? 

To me, co-working space is about professionalism. Working out of Stapes sure beats trying to do work while sitting at a co-coffee table at Caffè Nero, hoping that the guy next to you won't slop his Flat White onto your laptop.

It's about community. One of the worst aspects of the gig economy is that you don't get the built in social life that comes when everyone's in the office together. Sure, some might argue that this is one of the best aspects of the gig economy, but to me, even if your colleagues don't end up being your BFF's - and I have made some of my BFF's at work - it's nice to have folks to grab lunch with, to catch up with at the water cooler, to share that sheet cake with when there's baby shower for someone in accounting. Sometimes it's nice to see the same old faces, day after day.

And coworking is about getting out of the house and giving yourself a change of scenery.

Bonus points in that, at Staples, yellow pads are within reach.

This re-work is all about Staples fighting for survival:

Staples built a leading national brand as the traditional stationery store on steroids. But in the three decades since its conception, the workplace — and how we shop for it — have undergone transformational changes. Cloud-based computing, telecommuting, and the ease of one-click ordering have diminished demand for big-box stores stocked with reams of paper. Now, in a dramatic effort to stay relevant, Staples is recasting itself as a place where you can co-work, record a podcast, stock up for your next Uber shift — or even get fingerprinted for a job.

If I wanted to get me some co-working space in my Staples, it would cost me $499 a month ($999 for a dedicated private office). Seems kind of high - it's a bit more than WeWork - but I didn't do a full compare-and-contrast. These days, I'm barely working, and if I want to sit and stare at my computer screen somewhere other than my condo, I can go the The Boston Athenaeum, a funky and beautiful private library that I'm a member of. 

There are, of course, things that Staples provides that The Ath doesn't:

Members and store customers can get free access to fancy AV-enabled meeting rooms that will also host seminars and workshops. And members can use podcast studios gratis (available to nonmembers for $60 an hour). Concierge services like legal, funding, or HR advice are available for small-business customers. And anyone can apply for a TSA PreCheck, a special state license, or a background check. 

Then again, Athenaeum members don't need TSA PreCheck. They're doing great research, writing great books, thinking great thoughts, listening to lectures by those who have done great reseaerch, written great books, and thought great thoughts  - and staring at their computer screens. 

Not clear yet whether Staples will succeed. There's plenty of competition around from WeWork and others. But I wish them well. 

In fact, I wish them more than well.

I want those Staples stores to stay alive. I really don't want to have to go online to buy my yellow pads, and I'm running low...

In defense of Jeanine Cummins

I haven't read American Dirt yet.

You know, the novel about a Mexican women who, fearing for her life, makes her way to the United States with her son to join the ranks of undocumented immigrants.

You know, the novel that got a 7-figure advance and is going to be made into a movie.

You know, the book the Oprah sealed with her approval.

You know, the book that got blurbed as The Great American Novel, a transformative work, the 21st century's Grapes of Wrath.

You know, the book with the barbed wire cover art, which has inspired fan-girls to have their nails done in imitation of. And which inspired the folks running one book party to tastefully include barbed wire in their centerpieces.

I haven't read American Dirt yet. But I probably will. And I suspect I'll find it a good read, even if it's not all that great.

There's been a ton of blowback about this novel. Plenty of it is legitimate literary criticism. And plenty of it is the argument that Jeanine Cummins had no right to write about Mexican immigrants because she's white, and escaping druglords is not her "lived experience."

I call BS!

Fiction is not memoir. Cummins is not pretending that this novel is based on her experience. It's work of her imagination, creativity, empathy, research. And she's got the right to write about whatever and whoever she wants to.

Cummins isn't, of course, the only writer who's come under fire for "cultural appropriation". If you're straight, you can't write from the viewpoint of someone gay. If you're white, you can't write from the viewpoint of someone who's black. If you're not Jewish, you can't write from the viewpoint of a Holocaust victim. The only authentic voice is an authentic voice. You're supposed to stay in your lane.

There are plenty of great writers who have stayed in their lane. A couple who come to mind are John Cheever and John Updike, who much of the time wrote in the persona of an upper middle class WASP male who screwed around with the wives of his suburban neighbors. But, you know, John Updike got out of the suburbs, in wonderful novels like The Coup.

And there are plenty of great writers who jump into whatever damned lane they want.

I worship at the altar of novelist Stewart O'Nan. He's a white guy. Among other things, he's written brilliantly from the perspective of African-Americans (Everyday People), an elderly widow (Wish You Wer Here, Emily Alone), and the manager - Hispanic, I think - of a Red Lobster (Last Night at the Lobster).

And why shouldn't he have?

Reading fiction can be for pure escapist entertainment. We want an a page-turner, an exciting plot. We don't expect anything but a good read. But if you're reading literary fiction, you're probably looking for more. Characters you can empathize with, identify with, learn from. Situations that help us better understand the human condition. That let us know that we're not alone in our experiences, our reactions, our hopes, our thoughts, our fears, our aspirations.

I'm pretty sure Kafka was talking about literary fiction when he said, "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."

Good writers can give us that axe. And it doesn't matter whether they've ever actually been stranded in an iced-in lifeboat on a frozen sea. If they can imagine it, it's theirs.

So critice American Dirt all you want. Heap scorn on the 7-figure deal. Bemoan the fact that we may not be hearing from enough Latinx voices.

But get off Jeanne Cummins' back. She's got every right in the world to put herself in the head of a Mexican immigrant.