The Rose of Tralee: My kind of pageant

As a little girl, I always enjoyed watching the Miss America Pageant: the gowns, the bathing suits, the (sometimes dubious) talent, the (sometimes ridiculous) questions, and – of course – Bert Parks warbling “There she is, Miss America. There she is, your ideal.”

I never quite bought into Miss America being my ideal. After all, it was rare when a young woman from New England made it into the finalists. Or even won Miss Congeniality. (Okay, no New Englander was ever going to win that one.)

Even though I was no longer watching pageants by this point, we did have Carol Ann Kennedy, Miss Massachusetts of 1966, who made it into the Top Ten. Not only was she from Worcester, she was from my parish. I didn’t know her. She was older. She was a pub. (I.e., someone who went to public school.) She didn’t live in my immediate ‘hood. But there was a small connection (other than one time I saw her flying by in a white convertible, heading somewhere wearing her sash and tiara).

When I was in fifth grade, my class’ act in the school Christmas Pageant was singing “Christmas in Killarney” while the short, cute girls in the class – I was neither – did an Irish step dance. The girls were handpicked by Sister Saint Wilhelmina, and as she was my arch-enemy, I wouldn’t have gotten picked even if I had been short and cute.

Anyway, Sister Saint Wilhelmina taught Carol Ann Kennedy in her catechism class, which Catholic pubs had to attend until they were confirmed. And it was Carol Ann Kennedy – the future Miss Massachusetts, the future Top Ten Miss America candidate – who instructed the short cute girls in Irish step dance.

As I said, by the time Carol Ann Kennedy had her star turn, I had pretty much figured out why New England girls were generally shunned in national pageants. We just weren’t geared up to produce pageant winners. We didn’t have the infrastructure or the interest to groom girls from toddler-hood ‘til their early twenties so that they could go on to win.

I know that Miss America still exists, and that they’ve gotten more serious over the years about academics and substance. But, mostly, it’s not on my radar. Maybe if they restore the old Miss America theme song…

There she is, Miss America.
There she is, your ideal
The dream of a million girls who are more than pretty can come true in Atlantic City.
For she may turn out to be the Queen of femininity.

The Rose of Tralee International Festival, which for 60 years now has crowned a Rose of Tralee also has a theme song, the sappy eponymous “Rose of Tralee.”

I’ll spare you the full lyrics, but the crooner tells us that it wasn’t just Mary, the rose of Tralee’s, beauty that won his heart. It ‘twas the truth in her eyes ever dawning.”

And, in this spirit, the Rose of Tralee is chosen. But:

It’s not a beauty pageant. Also, it’s not a competition.

Then things get complicated. Because to the uninitiated, the event, held this year in late August, sure looks like a beauty pageant, which is, by definition, competitive. The festival begins with 32 roses, as the women are called, and ends after six hours of live television spread across two nights, with close to 700,000 viewers in 61 countries. (Source: NY Times)

The 32 roses are interviewed on stage. They wear gowns. They have talent. Some go the conventional route, but this year, the Rose of Meath (a County in Ireland) deadlifted “220 pounds on a barbell while wearing a red, full-length gown.”

Alright!

The festival was originally established – and continues to run – to encourage tourism to Tralee, a not much of anything town in County Kerry. (I’ve been through but not to.)

And it pretty much works. The town’s population of 24,000 doubles during the festival.

The roses themselves come from all over: counties in Ireland, cities and states in the US (including – no surprise here, Boston, New York, and Chicago), and farther afield (Australia, Abu Dhabi). You just have to have some Irish ancestral connection to take part. (And be between 18 and 29 and single.)

Part of what makes this event so quintessentially Irish is the premium everyone here places on humility, which includes, among its many forms, a disdain for show offs and brazen ambition. This may be one of the few international competitions where an essential quality is a seemingly authentic indifference to victory.

My kind of pageant!

The contest is also wagered on quite extensively.

“Oh, they’ll bet on two flies walking up a wall around here,” said the woman behind the counter at the local Ladbrokes, a London-based betting chain, the day before the first broadcast. “The grannies come by and put a fiver on their favorite rose.”

There are odds posted for each of the roses. The oddsmakers had Limerick’s Sinead Flanagan as the second most likely to win. But she won it all. Sinead is a pretty traditional choice: a homegrown, all Irish colleen. Last year’s winner was African-Irish, with a father from Zambia.

Maybe next year I’ll tune in. As for Miss America, nah. Even if they no longer tout the winner as the “Queen of Femininity.” (And I used to wonder why women from New England never won…

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A pink pink slip rose to my sister Kathleen – a rose of Worcester – for pointing this story my way.

Desk set

When I was growing up, a popular gift to give your father was something called a “desk set”. The cheeseball, Woolworth’s versions I could afford were made up of a blotter, a matching pencil cup, and a pen holder that contained a cheap and smearing pen that after spitting out a series of ink globs would blessedly dry up. I have no idea what my father did with the desk sets he acquired over the years.

Needless to say, I always wanted one and at one point either got one for a gift or saved up to make a purchase for myself.

I’m sure that there were really elegant and pricey desk sets, with leather blotter-paper holders and Cross pens, but I never saw one.

(The distaff equivalent was a “vanity set”, a cheap comb, brush, and mirror with some kind of fake fancy embossed design on it. Again, I’m sure there were nice ones – for the folks in Downton Abbey and their peers - but any one I purchased for my mother or received as a gift was most decidedly a Woolworth’s version.)

Anyway, I haven’t thought of desk sets in years.

While I do sit at a desk – not really a desk: it’s a cherry wood trestle table – I don’t use a blotter or a leatherette penholder. But I do have stuff on my desk. Mugs the do hold pens and pencils. A box. A vase. A basket. (Let’s ignore the stacks of papers for now.)

My office has a calendar, a few framed pictures, a decorative plate that had been my mother’s, and the kindergarten pictures of me and my husband. (Aww….)

When I worked in an office, I always had a few personal items around. I wasn’t much for pictures, but I always had mugs, a plant, a calendar, a framed New Yorker cartoon. In 2003, after the Red Sox blew it, I printed out Boston Globe columnist Marty Nolan’s famous words, “"The Red Sox killed my father, and now they're coming after me” and posted it on my office door.

Everyone personalized their office to some extent. And I’m guessing they still do. Unless they’re doing office “hoteling” or “hot desking.”

Every day, they may wind up in a new location, with only the possessions they can carry to sustain them. At the end of each day, all trace of their personality is erased, in the way that the Soviet Union removed pictures of Leon Trotsky from the historical record. It is hard to think of a clearer indication that the individual worker is being treated as an anonymous drone. (Source: The Economist)

Hoteling and hotdesking are variations on a theme. With hoteling, you can make a reservation for a desk; with hotdesking you’re in a daily scramble for a place to call home work.

At one leading financial institution, any employee who accidentally leaves a possession on their desk overnight must try to retrieve it from Lost Property in the morning. That makes the end of each working day feel like the last frenetic minutes before you leave the house for a holiday, frantically checking that you haven’t left anything behind.

The impetus behind such arrangements is, natch, cost savings. Especially when so many folks work from home at least part of the time, and with so many road warriors out there, it really doesn’t make sense to tie up a full time office for someone who’s seldom there. Still, to make it the rule for even those who are always in the office is a step that’s way too far.

I worked for a couple of years for a company that was an agglomeration of small companies. I worked in HQ, where all of the senior execs had window offices, even though 90% of them didn’t work at HQ and were only there a couple of days a quarter. Most of the possessors of these offices locked them, so they weren’t available for small meetings, private or conference calls (the rest of us were in cubicles), or a grouse-fest with a colleague. The only women senior exec, however, left hers open and told a group of us that we could use it whenever we wanted.

Of course, hoteling wouldn’t have worked, given that the execs were all at HQ for the same couple of days each quarter. But what a waste of office space to not make these communal property when no one was occupying them. Not to mention that when the execs were in town, they were perpetually in meetings and used those precious locked window offices about 10% of their day.

Most of those offices weren’t personalized, by the way. Just selfishly hoarded.

Anyway, not having a dedicated office may be a cost saver, but studies show that it cuts down on productivity and hinders morale. And for hotdeskers who have to participate in an Oklahoma Land Rush on a daily basis, it can be a total time-waters.

A survey of British workers, published in June, found that those in a hot-desking office took an average of 18 minutes to find a seat. That translates into 66 wasted hours a year.

I’m always a bit skeptical of these workplace surveys, but having employees spend their first minutes at work scrambling around for a place to plop their laptop, well…

Then there’s this:

It is hard to see how anyone will be well-motivated by such an arrangement. If companies want employees to have bright ideas, it helps if they feel comfortable at their desks. And people are likely to feel most comfortable in familiar surroundings.

Is it worth even mentioning that “hot-desking is usually linked to another design feature: the open-plan office.”

I’m not going there, other to say that all the touted benefits of open-plan office have been largely debunked.

There are more and more freelancers out there. Internships (even if they’re paid) are gaining, not just for students but for recent grads. Many jobs are part-time – sometimes because the worker wants it that way, sometimes because the company does. So the proportion of workers who aren’t full-time and permanent has declined during my work life. So everyone’s not going to get a desk of their own. But at least let some of the people have a workplace that grounds them.

At this point in that work life, I’m delighted to be a very occasional freelancing part-timer. But during my “real” career I wanted to be at work. And whether it was a private office with a window, or a miserable little cubicle, I wanted to know that on Friday afternoon, Frank would swing by my office for a bull session. That on Monday, I would always have tea with Joan. That I could count on John, in the cubicle next door, to repeatedly tell the same boring story over and over and over. And that wherever I was calling home away from home, I knew that my shoes, lip balm and teabags would be in the drawers. And that my mug and New Yorker cartoon would be on the desk top. That was all the desk set I needed, but I wanted it there. 

The Hungry Eye? Leaving so soon?

My husband and I went out to dinner all the time. ALL.THE. TIME. I had a pretty demanding job, and Jim worked out of the house, so by dinner time, he wanted to get out of the house. There were plenty of weeks when we went out every night except for Saturdays, when we (mostly) ordered in Chinese, Thai or pizza.

One of the restaurants closest to us was the Hungry I, a French bistro which for nearly 40 years occupied a prime spot on Charles Street.

Restaurants come and go on The Hill, but the Hungry I certainly had staying power.

And it did it without us.

For some reason, we never got there.

We did try once, sticking our heads in just as they were opening. But we didn’t have reservations, so they couldn’t take us. We walked by a bit later, and it was mostly empty. It was mostly empty most of the time we looked in. We figured you needed to make a reservation well in advance so they’d be sure to have some food around for you.

Oh, it looked plenty charming: a brick-walled basement that your could easily peer in to. It was considered one of Boston’s most romantic restaurants.

We just never ate there.

We had a favorite romantic French restaurant on The Hill, but it wasn’t the Hungry I. It was Au Beauchamp, with it’s light turquoise banquettes and the Paris-scene murals on the walls. We loved that place, which looked like something straight out of the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the 1950’s. Jim always ordered the trout almandine, I usually went with coquilles San Jacques.

We mourned when Au Beauchamp closed, then cheered when it was replaced by Another Season. We didn’t frequent Another Season quite as often as we did Au Beau, and were bummed when they painted over the murals, but we ate there plenty of times. We did the same at the Persian restaurant, Lala Rokh, now closed, which replaced Another Season in the 1990’s.

During this time,The Charles (on Chestnut Street) must have been under five or six owners. It’s been 75 Chestnut for a long time now. We were regulars.

We ate a lot at the Beacon Hill Bistro (still going strong, although under changed ownership), and its predecessor, Rebecca’s (which inspired me to add orange-chocolate pound cake to my baking repertoire). And before that, it was decidedly non-romantic dump of a steak house with red-checked table cloths and grisly meat. (We rarely ate there.)

We were regulars at Toscano’s (still there; still am).  At the cute little Dutch place which has probably been gone for as long as the Hungry I has been in existence. And at Bel Canto (with the wonderful deep dish broccoli and walnut pizza: yum!). And Tiger Lily, up on Joy Street – I couldn’t remember the name, but my sister Trish did – with the outdoor, hidden garden dining room and the scrumptious scallop mousse, which Jim would sometimes have for dessert. Cozy indoor dining, too. Fireplace on in the winter…(We loved that place, and it was even more romantic than Au Beauchamp.)

Not once during all this time eating out in our ‘hood did we ever step toe in the Hungry I.

A few weeks ago, I walked by, glanced in, saw no one there, and made a mental note to actually have dinner there at some point. Soon.

Alas, I’m too late.

The Hungry I, which has been a staple of Beacon Hill dining since 1981, has closed.

For 38 years, the restaurant remained a contender on the city’s burgeoning restaurant scene. Zagat and Time Out named it one of Boston’s most romantic restaurants in 2018 and 2019 features, respectively. A website for the quaint hideaway claims it hosted more wedding proposals than anywhere else in the city. The statistic remains unconfirmed, but The Hungry I befit such a special occasion in cuisine, ambiance, and price tag. (Source: Boston Globe)

We did know people who had eaten there, and most of them weren’t all that impressed. Overpriced. Too cramped. Snotty waiters.

Not that any of those were deal breakers. Over the years, we ate at plenty of overpriced, cramped restaurants with snotty waiters. Just not that one.

The price of the real estate, the lure of the bucks that the liquor license would go for, proved too much for the owner.

A bookstore and cafe will move in, partially staying true to the establishment, which was once called The Hungry Intellectual.

I’ll be delighted to see a bookstore, as it’s been years since we’ve had one in the neighborhood. Oh, the Trident is only a mile away. But sometimes you just want a book. And you want it NOW, not after a 20 minute walk. And the only place to get a book is Gary Drug, that carries mostly trade paperbacks, but sometimes lit fic, and in any case works out if you’re desperate but don’t want to Kindle.

I can’t say that this hungry intellectual will miss the Hungry I. You can’t miss something you never experienced, can you? But I am sorry that Jim and I didn’t get there just once, if only to complain about it afterwards.

Yet another opportunity lost.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. (But it’s over.)

This past season, I didn’t watch as much baseball as I usually do. For one thing, there has been just too much going on politically to distract me. For another, the Red Sox -  my lifelong boys of summer – have been spectacularly unfun and lackluster. Oh, I’ve certainly seen worse teams. After all, I’ve been a fan for over 60 years, and there were some doozies back in the day. But there was something especially disheartening about this edition. No, I didn’t expect this year to be a replica of last year, when they had a brilliant ultra-winning season and ended up World Series Champs. But they did have the highest payroll in baseball, and for that you expect something a little better than .500-ish ball. Especially when their ticket costs are ultra-gouging.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over, but me of little faith realized by Patriots Day, when I saw my first game at Fenway, that this year was heading for a crud fest.

I was right.

I saw about a half-dozen in-person games this year, and mostly they lost.

They did manage to redeem themselves a bit on Sunday, when I was at Fenway with my sister Trish and niece Molly for the final game of the season.

It looked at many points as if the Sox were heading for an L, which would have been especially disappointing, given that pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez was looking for his 20th W of the season. Rodriguez has been the one bright spot in the starting rotation, churning out a reliable set of outings. Which is more than you can say for the kazillion dollar pitchers that are bulking up the payroll.

Alas, Matt Barnes blew Rodriguez’s narrow lead in the 8th, and Eduardo didn’t get that W. Better luck next year. (And, yes, I did boo Barnes, as did most of the fed up Fenway Faithful.)

It must be noted that the Red Sox opponents this past weekend were the hapless Baltimore Orioles, possessors of the second-worst record in baseball this year. Only the Detroit Tigers were worse. Despite Baltimore’s dismal record, they had managed to drub the Sox on both Friday and Saturday. So the least the Red Sox could do was eke out a meaningless win in the final meaningless game of a meaningless series.

When Trish bought these tickets last February, we were much looking forward to the new season. What might that last game have held? A clinch game in a tight race for division champion? A shot at a Wild Card slot? Or a “we knew it all along” fat-cat game in which we would just lean back and enjoy watching our boys before they started the post-season?

Ah, but no.

Nonetheless, the game was not without its pleasures. No baseball game ever is, even the ones where it’s 40 degrees out. There is ALWAYS something.

In this game, there was a spectacular catch by an Orioles outfielder whose name I’ve forgotten already. (I looked it up: Stevie Wilkerson.) And just as I was ready, willing, and able to boo Matt Barnes, I was ready, willing and able to cheer Wilkerson for his stunning catch. Even though it robbed Jackie Bradley, Jr., of a home run.

And then there was the walk-off (slide-off?) Red Sox win in the 9th, when Mookie Betts scored from first, with a head-first slide, on a single from Rafael Devers. Yes, the ball was muffed by the Orioles, but Mookie is also a speed-demon and an all-heart ballplayer.

From the cheers of the crowd – pretty much a sell-out, with most fans hanging in until the end on what was a pitch-perfect late September day – and the dugout clearing reception for Mookie, you’d have thought the Red Sox had actually clinched something.

The moment is all the more bittersweet, given that the Red Sox are already making noises about letting Mookie go.

IMHO, this would be a BIG mistake. To me, he’s the heart and soul of the team and one of a handful of players that I’d hang on to. But no one’s making me GM and the Red Sox have a sky-high payroll, bloated by the foolish contracts they gave to some do-nothing pitchers. And if they deal Mookie this year, they’ll get something in return. I hope they realize that the something in return will be offset by fan displeasure that such a brilliant and likable ballplayer, who’s been with the Sox throughout his still-young career, is seen as expendable. (Aren’t they all…)

I wasn’t going to buy anything afterwards. I already have enough caps, enough tee-shirts, an aging but still serviceable fleece. In fact I have so many tee-shirts that I was willing to part with the World Series related shirt (“Damage Done”) mid-season. I gave it away in disgust at the way the team was playing, but it did make a guest at St. Francis House quite happy.

While I wasn’t in any particular buying mode, I was so cheered up by Mookie’s ending play that I paid an inordinate amount for a fleece that I don’t need. (China blue. Very pretty.) I hope some of that money goes to keeping Mookie on the Old Towne Team.

Maybe I’ll wear it while watching the playoffs. Which I will do, even though I feel more strongly about the root against teams (Yankees, Dodgers) than I do about the root for teams (Twins, Brewers) that are still playing ball in October.

But watch I will, with at least half an eye, even though the distractions on the save-the-nation front are even more powerful now than they were earlier in the season.

As for the Red Sox, they haven’t yet posted the date when (over-priced) pitchers and catchers report for Spring Training, but it’s somewhere in early February. So, another 130, 140 days until things get moving. (Fewer than that until the truck gets moving to Florida on Truck Day.)

Wait until next year.

More on the movies. (I almost feel like Siskel & Ebert.)

Okay, okay. I’m not reviewing movies, so I I’m really not entitled to feel like Siskel or Ebert. Like Pauline Kael. Like Rex Reed. Or Anthony Lane.

Still, for a former regular moviegoer to have two back-to-back posts about movies, well, this is heady stuff.

Yesterday, Pink Slip riffed on the top grossing movies set in New England. Today we take on Business Insiders take on the the most famous movies set in every state.

Not wanting to be 100% arbitrary in what is pretty much an subjective choice, the insiders came up with some criteria:

To pick the most famous, we evaluated the state's prominence in the movie and considered whether it was filmed in that state or not. The movie's lifetime gross, its critical acclaim, and testimonials by our geographically diverse staff also influenced our decisions.

There were some pretty obvious choices:

Georgia: Gone with the Wind

Iowa: Field of Dreams

Kansas: The Wizard of Oz

Others less so:

New York: Taxi Driver

Not The Godfather? Good Fellas? The Naked City? Lots of Woody Allen flicks? Midnight Cowboy? Travis Bickle, eh?

(Aside to Illinois relations: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I would have said Home Alone, and you?)

Since I am a pure homer, I am most interested in New England. So here goes:

Connecticut: The Stepford Wives. With apologies to my cousin Mary Beth and friend Kyung, both of who lived in Connecticut for many years, I think that The Stepford Wives is a perfect representation of a certain category of woman, in a certain class, in a certain kind of Connecticut town. Admittedly, I haven’t seen the movie since 1975 when it came out, and I’m betting that it’s plenty dated. And I never saw the 2004 remake with Nicole Kidman. But spot on!

Maine: Shawshank Redemption. Any most famous movie set in the State of Maine is bound to be one based on a novel by Stephen King. And so it is. I haven’t seen Shawshank in years, but remember liking it well enough. But when I think of Maine prisons, I always come back to the Maine State Prison Showroom, which is right there in Thomaston on Route 1 – the Maine/main drag to picturesque and charming Camden – which sells prisoner-made goods.

I’ve shopped there a couple of times, and a pair of wooden toast tongs graces my kitchen.

I can’t remember what, if anything, Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman did by way of crafts. Tim, I believe, was too busy tunneling out of prison…

Massachusetts: Good Will Hunting. I really liked this movie, and my husband was especially fond of it. So I’ve seen it a million times. And, yes, it is a reasonably good representation of the state of the state. Bonus points in that most of the accents – thanks to locals-extraordinaire Matt, Ben and Casey – are flawless. And the reference to Carlton Fisk’s 1975 World Series homerun is just plain sweet. But most famous movie set in Massachusetts? The Departed, however famous and/or infamous, shouldn’t get it because most of the accents – especially Jack Nicholson’s -  are truly terrible. And I’d really have to think about whether Spotlight should take pride (or shame) of place. But in the end, I’d have to give it up for The Friends of Eddie Coyle, grim as it is. That said, Good Will Hunting is a good choice.

New Hampshire: Jumanji. All I know about Jumanji is that there are chimps jumping around, and – as of yesterday – that it was filmed in Keene, NH. But since I know so little about films set in New Hampshire – I thought – as of yesterday – that On Golden Pond was set there. But, no, set in Maine; filmed in NH (on Squam Lake). So for the most famous film set in NH, at least the most famous film set in NH that I’ve seen, I’d go with To Die For, the mordantly funny movie based on NH teacher Pam Smart, who enlisted the help of some of her students (one was her 15-year-old lover) to kill her husband. I know it’s hard to believe that a movie about someone killing her husband can be laugh-out-loud funny at times, but this one is. And it so gets something about the New Hampshire zeitgeist.  It deserves to be famous.

Rhode Island: Witches of Eastwick. All I remember about this film is that I liked it. What’s not to like about Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer and Susan Sarandon? (Okay, these days there’s plenty to not like about Susan Sarandon…) Looking it up, I learned – thank you, Wikipedia – that the film was originally supposed to be made in Little Compton, Rhode Island,

Warner Brothers instead turned to Cohasset, Massachusetts, after controversy erupted in Little Compton over whether or not its Congregational church should be involved with the film's production.

I know Little Compton well, as my late friend Marie had a place there, and her husband has retired to LC. But what I really love about this bit is that a controversy that involves a Congregational church has to be the echtest of the echt New England

Vermont: Super Troopers. Forget poor little Rhode Island. When it comes to the movies, it’s poor little Vermont. The top grossing movie set there was What Lies Beneath. And the most famous movie set there is something called Super Troopers, which kind of sounds like a poor man’s Fargo. Or the film about the mall cop. And how can it be that famous if I’ve never heard of it? To add to the indignities, while Super Troopers is set in Vermont, it was actually filmed in New York State. If you’re going to go by that, I vote the corny and ridiculous White Christmas as the most famous movie set in Vermont. Forget every bad thing I said about White Christmas yesterday.

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Happy Birthday to my sister Kath!

Mass Movietime

I am a complete and utter sucker for any clickbait that promises a list, especially when the list is of whatever, shown by states.

Worst/best states to retire in. Favorite cookie in each state. Craziest roadside attraction. Doesn’t really matter what the topic is, I’ll give it a click. When the set up is that you have to click (vs. scroll) through every state, if the subject isn’t that interesting, I may not make it through Arkansas. But I’ll almost always give a state list a try.

The last one I looked at showed the highest grossing movies set in each state. I don’t tend to go to highest grossing films, which are mostly super-hero or violent action, and predictably, I’d only vaguely heard of most of the state champeen grossing movies to begin with. But I did want to check out what was up in the New England states.

Connecticut: The only film I could think of that took place in Connecticut was Holiday Inn, the 1942 musical that gave us “White Christmas.” But I knew that couldn’t be the top grosser. Readers, it wasn’t. The highest grossing film to take place in Connecticut was Raiders of the Lost Ark. Which I actually did see, nearly 40 years ago, but I had no recall that there was a Connecticut connection. I thought it all took place in places that had things like lost arks. Anyway, Indiana Jones was a professor at a fictional college in Connecticut. So there. (Gross: $389.9M)

Maine: Hmmm. Something to do with the state’s favorite son, maybe. Stephen King. Bingo! IT ($700.3) which -  like most (all?) Stephen King sagas takes place in Maine - is that state’s top grosser. Matters not that I’d never heard of it/IT. Plenty of other folks did. Not that I’m an anti-Stephen King snob. I really enjoyed Under the Dome and 11/22/63. And I loved his book Faithful (co-authored with fellow Red Sox fan – and my favorite novelist ever – Stewart O’Nan), which chronicled their attendance at most Red Sox home games in what turned out to be the club’s greatest season ever. (They had the contract for the book before anyone knew it would turn out to be 2004 and the breaking of the curse.) Plus I think that King is a completely underrated and brilliant short story writer. No one portrays working class people more authentically. Unless it’s Stewart O’Nan. But, no, IT wasn’t familiar to me.

Massachusetts: I knew it wouldn’t be Friends of Eddie Coyle, Love Story, or The Verdict, all of which were made too long ago to be top grossers. Even Good Will Hunting I thought would have been too old. But never in a million years would I have landed on War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise ($591.7M). Once I saw the name, I did manage to remember that the plot  brought Our Hero Tom Cruise and his kids to Boston to reunite with their mother. But “set in Massachusetts” seems as stretchy as setting Raiders in Connecticut. And in any case, I much preferred the 1953 movie of the same title, which was set in California and was one of those brilliantly cheesy 1950’s Red Scare sci-fi films. Not quite as brilliantly cheesy as The Day the Earth Stood Still or Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but right up there…

New Hampshire: Seriously, who would make a movie in New Hampshire? I mean, other than the makers of On Golden Pond and that one with Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid that ends up at the naval base in Portsmouth, which was only partially set in NH. But the Jumanji movies are set and filmed in the Granite State, and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle grossed $962.1M. Turns out it was filmed in Keene, NH, which is a fairly charming small city not all that far from the fairly uncharming town of Bellows Falls, VT, which is where my husband grew up. I’ve never seen any of the Jumanjis, but knowing they were filmed in Keene kinda-sorta makes me want to give one a look.

Rhode Island: The Conjuring ($319.4) is Rhode Island’s top grossing film. It almost goes without saying that I’ve never even heard of it. (Or if I had heard of it, I’ve forgotten about it.) While it was filmed in North Carolina, it’s set in Harrisville, Rhode Island. Harrisville is one of the many villages in the town of Burrillville, from whence haileth my old and dear friend Joyce and her almost equally old and dear to me husband Tom. Joyce was from the village of Pascoag, Tom from Wallum Lake. In a few weeks, I’ll be visiting Tom and Joyce who, for some foolish reason – oh, yeah, it was their careers – live in Dallas, Texas. We may well decided to Netflix The Conjuring and see whether fake Harrisville bears any resemblance to real Harrisville.

Vermont: As can happen on occasion, things in life have come around to Bing Crosby. No, not that any top grossing film had Der Bingle in it. But just as the only Connecticut film I could come up with was Holiday Inn, starring Bing Crosby, the first movie set in Vermont that came to mind was White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby. My husband and I had few Christmas traditions – he hated the holiday – but we always watched White Christmas at some point in December. It is a true howler, but there’s some decent music and dancing in it. Still, it’s mostly a preposterously corny howler. The December before Jim died, we decided not to watch it yet again, as Jim said that he didn’t want to spend any of the last few hours he had on earth watching a dreadful movie. Anyway, the highest grossing movie set in Vermont is not White Christmas. It’s What Lies Beneath ($291.4M), yet another movie I’ve never seen, even though I like Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer just fine.

So of the big deal movies set in New England, seems that I’ve only seen Connecticut and Massachusetts. Looks like I have some film viewing to catch up with. Too bad I just started watching Downton Abbey. I’m only a few episodes in. Just far enough to dislike two of the three Crawley sisters, not to mention Carson and O’Brien. Could be a long slog before I get to Jumanji…

We don’t work. Lucky we!

I haven’t been following the WeWork saga very closely. I was aware of their stratospheric paper valuation – $47B – that the market was placing on this unicorn of unicorns, a real estate company that rents out shared office space, largely to tech startups.

I had a client that had space in WeWork before they grew up and got their own offices. The place was plenty cool – there was a kitchen where all these techie hipsters hung out sipping cold brew. It goes without saying that the only time I was there, I was one of a handful of folks who appeared to be over the age of 40. Make that 30.

Anyway, WeWork (now calling itself We Co.) had to hold up on:

…its hotly anticipated initial public offering after filings last week showed billions in losses and potential conflicts of interest for Adam Neumann, its controversial and charismatic chief executive. (Source: WaPo)

I had no interest in blowing through WeWork’s prospectus, but it did show that the company “had blown through more than $2 billion in 2018,” and “cast serious doubts on the company’s business model, profitability and stability.”

Oh, that. (I’m old enough to remember working for a small tech company with the wild ambition of becoming “the next billion dollar software company.” That was when a billion dollars was a big deal. When we blew through $45 million in venture funding, it was considered totally shocking. We survived – barely – by paring down radically, and ended up being purchased for a couple of million dollars a few years down the road. Hey, I was happy to get my $45K. This was a long, long time ago, but I remain gobsmacked by the numbers that get bandied about these days.)

Anyway, Adam Neumann may be on his way out as CEO and given a BS-y title like “nonexecutive chairman” so that someone else could be brought in to straighten things out, and figure out how to launch We Work’s stalled IPO.

Neumann sounds like the ultra visionary, the ultra disrupter, the ultra crazy man, the ultra annoyance.

I worked for some narcissistic a-holes over the years, but nothing quite like this.

Yes, you have to think big, but Neumann’s goals include “becoming the world’s first trillionaire, taking WeWork to Mars, living forever, being Israel’s prime minister or president of the world”.

Maybe it’s just me, but a little grandiosity goes an awful long way…

He’s also invested in a number of companies that own real estate that WeWork leases, which looks to some (i.e., potential investors) like self-dealing.

Neumann was even paid nearly $6 million by WeWork for the trademark rights to the word “We” during the company’s rebranding. (He later paid the money back, the company said in an updated filing.)

Neumann has certainly built something with WeWork. They manage millions of square feet of property throughout the US and in over 30 countries worldwide. But like Uber et al., at some point you need to turn a profit.

And the culture, with the CEO running around gushing about trillionaire-ing and office space on Mars sounds to me like a true horror show.

Everyone has to go to “camp” each summer to party and work on crafts. (Ugh! One of the worst off-sites I ever experienced was one where they handed us all a box of Tinker Toys and instructed us to build a helicopter. Where’s Leonardo DaVinci when you need him?)

At camp, you might have to listen to Deepak Chopra. (Admittedly, listening to Deepak drone on would have been better than listening to, say, Scott McNealy, the founder of Sun Microsystems, who was the guest speaker at one hideous sales kickoff I had to attend. He began his remarks (this was January 2001) by talking about how glorious it was to have morality restored to the White House now that GW was in office.)

Neumann has suggested, at various times, that WeWork could help stop world hunger, solve the problem of parentless children and end the refugee crisis.

“I need to have the biggest valuation I can, because when countries are shooting at each other, I want them to come to me,” Neumann said, according to New York magazine.

I, I, I, I. Yikes!

As for that $47 billion valuation, it’s now plummeted to about one-third of that amount. Not that $15 billion is exactly down to earth, but it’s a far cry from $47 billion.

But it’s no surprise that there’s been some reckoning, and not just because of concerns over “serious doubts on the company’s business model, profitability and stability.” No, a couple of years ago Neumann:

…told Forbes that his company’s valuation was “more based on our energy and spirituality than it is on a multiple of revenue.”

Energy and spirituality? Talk about intangibles. (We always seemed to have plenty of chicken-with-a-head-cutoff energy, so was the problem with my little go-nowhere companies that we had insufficient spirituality?)

And speaking of energy and spirituality:

Neumann’s wife has also been closely involved in WeWork. It should come as no surprise that Rebekah Paltrow Neumann is “the cousin of Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and founder of the natural health and lifestyle brand Goop,” which has a definite aura of oddball, weirdball spirituality. There is certainly something decidedly Goopy about the WeWork enterprise.

And energy?

The Wall Street Journal reported that [Rebekah Neumann] ordered that a number of employees be fired after brief interactions with them because “she didn’t like their energy.” It is unclear whether her orders were followed.

Bet I would have been on that list. I always worked hard, but I’m guessing that my actual energy would have been weighed and found wanting.

I certainly understand why younger folks are drawn to companies where they have a chance to strike it rich. Who wouldn’t want to have their life-nut covered by the time they’re 30? The son of a good friend was one of the first employees of a startup that recently went public, and he’s pretty much set. Well deserved! He’s a great guy (who had one of the most fun weddings ever – colossally excellent band).

But if you have to put up with an environment like WeWork?

All I can say is, we don’t work. Lucky we!

Is there no end to the dumb-ass apps????

I’m always on the lookout for nonsense applications that ain’t nobody wants and ain’t nobody needs. Many of these apps are “smart”, part of the vast and growing Internet of things. Embedded sensors capture data and all of a sudden you can track just about anything.

Sure, plenty of the apps are fun and/or useful: think Fitbit. Others are good for your health: think monitors that keep an eye on a cardiac patient’s heart.

And then there are the pure, unadulterated “Technology in Search of an Application” applications. Into this bucket, into its Hall of Fame, in fact, I would put the smart diaper.

A smart diaper comes equipped with a sensor that can alert a parent if their baby is wet. (One brand can distinguish between wet and loaded.)

Whatever happened to a baby crying? A parent using the old touch or smell method?

There are people who are going to buy a $200 diaper monitoring “system”?

And then I came across a smart water bottle. Make that an electronic smart bottle.

LifeFuels, based in Reston, Va., uses cartridges to shoot peach, citrus or blackberry-acai flavoring, as well as vitamins and minerals, into its smart water bottle. The bottle syncs to an iPhone app to enable you to record your intake of fluids and nutrients such as potassium and sodium.

“People like data,” [entrepreneur Jonathon] Perrelli said. “They want customization, portability and the ability to understand why they feel the way they do. And they want to track it all.” (Source:  Washington Post)

Well, I like data as much as the next gal. But how much data do I want/need on how much water I’m drinking? Drink when I’m thirsty and occasionally when I’m not seems to work out pretty well.

Then, speaking of want and need, there’s customization. Although I did adore the tee-shirt I had with the teddy bears on it and M-A-U-R-E-E-N spelled out in candy-striped letters. But I was four. When I’m offered customization, as often as not, I find it a bother. Value of customization vs. effort expended? Seldom worth it.

Portability? Well, it’s better than having a cement block manacled to something, but – beyond my ID and my phone – there’s not all that much that I need to have with me at every given moment. Okay, okay, there are a lot of goodies packed into that phone. But I really don’t need to be able to whip through a DuoLingo German exercise while I’m on the road. Not really. So, portability? Meh.

I will say that I do like to understand why I feel the way I do. But this has been the study of a lifetime, and I really don’t need an app for that.

As for wanting to track it all? What the hell for?

I do track my miles per day, but that’s about it. (And that’s ridiculous enough.)

But I’m not all that obsessed about every little bitty thing about me, myself, and I. Beyond what I obsess about in my little old mind.

Of course, because that little old mind is, in fact, old, I am not the target demographic for LifeFuels.

They’re looking at urban hipsters who are (even) more self-absorbed than I am.

LifeFuels’ markets care about hydration.

Well, who doesn’t? As I mentioned, when I get thirsty, I drink. Either plain water (Boston tap, refrigerated) or fizzy water.

Perrelli notes the “dehydration is a major cause of emergency room visits in the United States.” But I note, errrr, guess, that those who visit the ER because of dehydration are not the same sort of folks who’ll buy a $179 smart water bottle. Just notin’, errrr, guessin’.

LifeFuels also promotes sustainability: use the jazzed up smart bottle rather than the one-use drink and toss plastic bottle. But it’s entirely possible to cut down on drink-and-tossers by investing a couple of bucks in a non-smart bottle. Or – better yet – cadge one from the corporate swag cupboard.

And while I do drink lightly flavored fizzy water, why does anyone need a water bottle that comes with a cartridge that squirts blackberry-acai into perfectly good plain water.

Anyway, Perrelli has sunk $1 million of his own dough into LifeFuels, and has gotten another $25 mil from investors. Plus the company is partnering with Keurig. So maybe LifeFuels knows something I don’t.

The product went on sale online earlier this week. You buy the smart bottle then sign up for a subscription to the inject-a-flavor pods.

In return:

“We supply you with actionable insights,” the 47-year-old entrepreneur said.

Not that I couldn’t use some actionable insights, but actionable insights about my hydration wouldn’t be high on my list.

Lucky for LifeFuels I’m not the audience they’re after.

Maybe it’s just me, but so many of these smart apps strike me as just plain dumb-ass.

Attention Fashionistas!

Joke?

There have been plenty of times when I would have been more than happy to have a portable chair with me: long walk, no-seat T, musical chairs (I win!). Still, I’m not sure I’m up for the wearable chair. So much so that, when I first saw a reference to it on Twitter (@techinsider) the other day, my first thought was: JOKE.

But, nah.

The wearable, bionic chair is the LEX, the brainchild of Astride Bionics. And thanks to the kick that Kickstarter crowd funders got out of it last fall, it’s got current bragging rights as “the most crowdfunded exoskeleton project.” And thanks to those kickstarters, the LEX is now on the market.

What is the LEX? According to The Guardian, it’s:

…a pair of £200 foldable aluminium legs that you strap to your bum and lean against whenever your legs get a bit tired. (The Guardian)

While it’s the chair that you take with you, wherever, whenever, it’s also billed as a “posture-correction tool”:

…an exoskeleton that helps to keep your back in good alignment whether you’re sitting or standing. It even comes with something called a “load distribution module”, a little platform that you can rest your backpack on as you wear it, significantly lowering the burden on your spine.

And while someone who does not want to appear geeked out may not find the LEX all that attractive, Astride Bionics begs to differ.

TRULY begs to differ. According to their website:

The LEX takes wearable to a new level by becoming a discreet part of your clothing.

Really? Really and TRULY? In what universe is a pair of bright red titanium (?) poles attached to your back “a discreet part” of anyone’s clothing.

I’m sure that in another decade or two, these will be de rigueur. Given that Boomers are literally and figuratively on their last legs, and given that, at least in my subway riding experience, young folks aren’t as ready to offer their seats to geezers as once they were, these might well become the “what to give Grandpa” gift of the year. Or, if the price comes down, a Yankee Swap par excellence.

The Guardian article points out that the LEX may be something of an encumbrance when it comes to using the toilet. For women, anyway. But I’m guessing that the majority of the early adopter population for this is of the male variety, so LEX will have time to figure things out for the ladies.

Meanwhile, still hard not to think of it as some sort of geeks-in-Paradise joke.

But even if it is a joke, it’s not a bad joke.

Bad Joke

For those less interested in wearable tech:

A New York clothing company has introduced school shooting hoodies that have bullet holes in them and feature the names of four schools where nearly 100 students were shot to death, including Sandy Hook, Columbine, Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Virginia Tech. (Source: ABC News)

Because who wouldn’t want their Sandy Hook first-grader’s name slapped across some hipster’s hoodie?

The company responsible for this fashion statement is Bstroy, a “‘neo-native’ post-apocalypse streetwear brand” that specializes in $135 tee-shirts and $1,000 jeans. ($1K for jeans? Now that’s what I call post-apocalpytic!)

It almost goes without blogging that Bstroy has been mercilessly dragged (including by the families of school shooting victims) over their new clothing line.

In the company’s defense, one of its founders:

…Brick Owens, responded to the critics by releasing a statement on Instagram.

"Sometimes life can be painfully ironic," the statement read. "Like the irony of dying violently in a place you consider to be a safe, controlled environment, like school. We are reminded all the time of life’s fragility, shortness, and unpredictability yet we are also reminded of its infinite potential. It is this push and pull that creates the circular motion that is the cycle of life. Nirvana is the goal we hope to reach through meditation and healthy practices that counter our destructive habits. Samsara [the school shooting collection] is the cycle we must transcend to reach Nirvana."

Huh? I say, huh? Huh?

But The New York Times cleared things up for me.

These guys are the fashion spawn of Kanye and his Yeezy line. They’re the hip-hop generation “arriving in luxury fashion…haute street wear’s next generation of innovators and inspirations.”

As Brick and Du [Grams] of Bstroy conceive it, first will come the apocalypse, then the post-apocalypse, in which people will be seeking ways to survive. (Source: NY Times)

And if you’re wondering whether you’re ready to go neo-native.

And finally, after that, the period they’re designing for: the neo-native, in which those who have survived will begin building things anew.

For now, the Bstory guys are “empowering” through “storytelling”, “making violent statements” aimed at creating a “voice” that “will say things that everyone can wear.”

All this fashion-as-art stuff makes my head hurt. Kinda/sorta a personal apocalypse that I’m not quite certain I want to survive.

My bottom line is that I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to wear a pricey, bullet-riddled hoodie with the name of a Shady Hook first-grader on it.

Guess that makes it official. I’ve officially crossed the line between not and artist and outright philistine.

What the everlovin’….

In truth, I witnessed plenty of bad  behavior when I was in first grade. 99.9999% of it was, of course, at the hands or lips of Sister Marie Leo. Over the course of that long and brutal slog of a school year, I witnessed the following Sister M.L-related incidents in which the good sister made:

Ginny B, one of the few kids who brought her lunch to school, eat the now nearly day old lettuce that she had removed from her ham sandwich because the lettuce had wilted on a brutally hot September day. (This was, needless to say, well before there was any such thing as a cold pack to tuck in your kid’s lunch box.) This was about five-of-three, and we all had to sit there, stomachs churning, while poor Ginny gagged down the lettuce.

Bradley D. lick the milk he’d spilled out of his carton off the ancient wooden floor of the cloakroom. I’m not sure whether it’s worth mentioning that Bradley was a little slow, and, thus, was the frequent target of sta’s wrath and “humor.”

All the boys who’d gotten their pants soaked sliding on the slushy hill in the schoolyard take off their pants, place them on the radiator registers, and spend the rest of the days sitting around in their undies. Sort of. The boys had to put on girls’ coats. The real genius here was Sister ML’s ability to humiliate the boys (undies + girls’ coats) and ick-out the girls (boys undies + our coats). And, yes, I do remember that my red and green plaid winter coat was worn by Michael C. Yuck!

Any kid who’d forgotten to bring in the signed permission card for the new-fangled polio shot trudge home, alone, in the middle of a howling snowstorm to fetch the signed slip. Note that all of those who were sent home would have gone home for lunch a couple of hours later anyway…I raced up the hill and back down to school in record time. I beat everyone back, including kids who lived closer. My friend Kathy S was last in. Her mother had made her stay for a cup of cocoa.

Oh, there was plenty more.

Turn around in class to see who just threw up? You would just have to sit there until your hair turned green.

Step on the “holy grass” outside the church? Mortal sin! And a one-way ticket to hell.

Sister Marie Leo told us that if we ever talked to strangers we would “end up chopped in pieces, floating in a barrel in Lake Michigan.” Nothing wrong with a warning about strangers, but, seriously folks. This one was especially vivid and scary to me, as I had actually been to Chicago’s Oak Street Beach a number of times – my mother was from Chicago – so I’d been in Lake Michigan. (Never did spot any floating barrels…)

And my personal favorite: We always sat in girls rows/boys rows. One day, when Philip N. was coming back from the blackboard, the boy in his row all reached their arms out, touching the desk opposite, to impede Philip’s passage. Well, that was the end of the world. Sister Marie Leo was going to call Monsignor Lynch, and he’d send the paddy wagon to haul these miscreants off to reform school. “If you brought your lunch, that will be the last meal you’re ever going to eat. If not, it was breakfast. And I hope you kissed your mother goodbye, because you’re never going to see her again.”

Seems about right.

I only recall two kind gestures during the entire year.

My friend Bernadette L. had an older sister who had Down Syndrome. She was mainstreamed in our school, and was in fourth grade while we were in first. Every couple of months, Sister Marie Leo would invite Mary Margaret L. in to read to us. (I thought Mary Margaret was a genius, she was such a good reader.)

In their downtime, the nuns made valentines and sold them to us to make money for the missions. Most of them were a heart cut out of construction paper (2 cents), or a heart cut out of construction paper with a holy card or sticker of angel plastered on it (a nickel). But they also made elaborate valentines out of the covers of heart-shaped candy boxes. These went for $.50 or a buck. Stephen W. was a very sweet boy, the youngest kid in our class (and, as a late December baby, one of the few kids younger than me). He was also from a very large family. He wanted to buy one of those candy-boxers for his mother, but didn’t have the money. So he started to cry. And Sister Marie Leo took him into her lap and comforted him.

These small acts of kindness aside, Sister Marie Leo shouldn’t have been in any classroom, let alone in a first grade one.

But if she were still alive and kicking, she might be able to secure a spot in the Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy in Orlando, Florida, where she’d fit right in.

Here’s what happened there:

First grade Kaia Rolle was having a meltdown. Not surprising. This happens. After all, she’s only six (and in the case of this little one, they’re dealing with a child with a sleep disorder who gets overtired). The teacher sent Kaia to the office. Again, no surprise there. Kids act up. They get sent to the office. A parent might be called.

While in the office, Kais’s tantrum continued. A “staff member grabbed her wrists to calm her down”, and Kaia kicked here.

Well that was apparently too much for the coping skills of the grownups at the Lucious and Emma Nixon Academy in Orlando, Florida.

They called the cops, and Kaia was cuffed, put in the back of the car, and driven to juvie. Where she was finger printed and had her mug shot taken, which was followed up by her being booked on an assault charge. Kaia (along with her grandmother, who was caled by the school) will have to appear in court to answer the charge.

There was another child – this one an 8 year old – who was arrested by the same officer that day. Officers are supposed to get permission from their watch commander if they’re going to arrest a kid under 12 years of age. This cop failed to do so. A mere technicality, I’m sure.

Kaia Rolle is African-American. What do you want to bet that the 8 year old arrestee is, too.

I know that even small children can be out of control, terrible, violent. But surely schools should have policies and procedures in place for handling really young children who need to be calmed down. Surely arrest – cuffs, fingerprints, mug shots – shouldn’t be among those policies and procedures.

I read this story and just shook my head.

What the everlovin’ f…

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Source for story about Kaia Rolle’s arrest: Click Orlando. Source for stories about Sister Marie Leo: my brain.

Well, that was fast

Today is the fist day of fall. Fall!

Not that I don’t love autumn. I actually like it more than I like summer.

But where did the summer go?

I had big plans, big plans.

Empty out the only decent-sized closet in my condo and find a place to get rid of 20+ years of accumulated laptops (and a desktop or two; plus a printer).

Go the last mile on organizing my finances, including updating my will.

Start turning a bunch of linked short stories into a novel.

Lose 10 pounds.

None of it got done. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

It’s not like I lost time by going on a big old vacation or anything. A couple of weekends on the Cape; my recent 4-day jaunt to Canada and Bar Harbor.

No, I’ve been around

And I’ve had plenty of time, especially since the Red Sox have been so lousy that I only watch an inning or two of every game, not the entire thing.

But nothing seemed to get done.

Maybe this coming season.

I sure won’t miss the time-wasting that seemed to accompany summer this year. Can’t blame summer, but still…

There are a couple of things I will miss about summer.

Corn on the cob.

Last week, I picked some up at the Farmers’ Market in Copley Square. Probably the last of the season, but it was so tender and sweet. I’ll miss corn on the cob.

Tomatoes.

Yes, you can get good-enough tomatoes all year round. And unlike the pink and pulpy winter tomatoes of yore, they actually look, taste and smell like tomatoes. But there’s nothing like a newly picked tomato. Tomato in one hand, salt shaker in the other. Heaven! I’ll miss tomatoes.

Summer fruit.

As with tomatoes – but not, for whatever reason, corn on the cob – you can get decent fruit pretty much all year round, and if you’re willing to pay enough, fruits are rarely out of season. But I’m not always willing to pay enough, and I’ll miss cherries, plums, nectarines, and peaches. Also the occasional tiny Maine wild blueberries that show up in the market – so much better than the more commercial versions, the blueberries the size of marbles. Wild blueberries. Just like the ones we used to pick in the woods when I was a kid. Yum! (Kicking myself for not getting an extra pint or two for the freezer when they had them at Roche Brothers.) I’ll miss summer fruit.

Baseball.

Despite the Red Sox crash and burn season, I will miss the Boys of Summer. I know, I know, there’s still another week. And I’m going to the final game of this lackluster season on Sunday. And beyond that, there’s the postseason, which runs until the end of October, and which I do keep an eye on, even if the Olde Towne Team fails to make it. (Looking at you, Cleveland, to come through…) But it’s not the same as watching your team during the regular. No more Jerry Remy, no more Eck. There’s always next year. I’ll miss baseball, even though I do have another month plus of it.

Light. Mostly what I’ll miss is the light.

Most evenings, I take a brief walk – a half hour or so – and most evenings I head for the Esplanade, which runs along the Charles River, or the Boston Public Garden. I do walk both of these locations year-round, but in the summer, in the evening, they’re full of folks, and very safe-feeling as long as there’s still some light. Within the next few weeks, I’ll have to switch my evening walk mode to after dark. Which means walking along Charles or Newbury. Fine. Interesting. Good window shopping. People around. But it’s not quite the same as an evening walk along the river or through the beauteous Boston Public Garden, where if you’re lucky the Dirty Water Brass Band or the Saxyderms (a sax ensemble that started out at Tufts, which has Jumbo the Elephant – a pachyderm  - as their mascot) are giving a little concert. (Meanwhile, the swan boats have already been retired for the season. Wish they’d leave them in the water until Columbus Day, but I think that once the college kids who pedal them go back to school, they’re hard put to find workers.)

Time does seem to go by faster as you get older. And there’s even some science to back up the fact that this perception may well be a reality (dopamine levels dropping, etc.). But this summer really seemed to fly by.

I need to figure out how to slow this down. Or just do a better job trying not to waste a season.

Seriously, folks, how many more summers do I have left?

Actuarially speaking, I should make it another 87 and a half years. So a few more summers, falls, winters, springs.

Let’s see if I can make a bit more out of this new season. There’s the financials, the closet, the novel, the 10 pounds. But I’ve got until the end of December. Plenty of time…

Suffering from RBF? There’s a fix for that…

I’ve neve given it much thought, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that I have something of a Resting Bitch Face. After all, while I’m plenty friendly, I’m an introvert and I’m no one’s idea of a smiley face kind of gal. No one’s idea of Little Miss Sunshine. So I don’t stand around or walk around with a slap-happy look on my puss. When I’m standing around or walking around, I’m thinking. And when I’m thinking, it’s mostly about the State of the Universe. No laughing matter, that.

Like most women I know, I’m annoyed when a man, generally a complete stranger and never anyone I’d be interested in knowing, tells me to “Smile.”  It’s always a man. Seriously, has any women ever walked by someone on the street and uttered the word “smile” to the person she’s passing by? Anyway, it’s happened to me often enough that I suspect I may have a bit of RBF going on.

And even if I were to find out that I’ve got an extreme RBF, I wouldn’t bother to do anything about it. I’m not running for Mrs. America. I’m not looking to get promoted. I’m not looking to sell something to anyone. I’m not looking to get picked up. And I’m not looking to knee-jerk respond to the man in the street who wants me to smile.

But there are apparently plenty of women out there who aren’t happy with what they’re seeing in the selfies they’re posting on Insta. So they’re turning to plastic surgeons for the fix.

“This is actually a common request from patients — I get several each week,” says Dr. David Shafer, a double board-certified plastic surgeon and medical director of Shafer Plastic Surgery & Laser Center in Midtown.

“They may not always use the words ‘resting bitch face,’ but if I mention ‘RBF,’ they say, ‘exactly.’” (Source: NY Post)

Fortunately, the cure for RBF – other than not giving a damn – doesn’t require surgery, just “the injection of fillers into the face and sometimes Botox.” It runs anywhere from $500 to $5,000, and a procedure can last up to two years.

The increase in requests to do something about RBF is attributed to the Kardashians, who are responsible to some degree for “a public shift in focus from the upper to lower face.” Oh, those Kardashians. There’s no end to the good they do. The K’s are more focused on lip plumping, but while you’re down there…

There’s no set approach for fixing RBF – each doctor has their own process. One doctor “injects filers into their [patients’] marionette lines.”

Marionette lines? Are they part and parcel to an RBF, or is starting to look like Howdy Doody or Knucklehead Smith something entirely else women of a certain age need to worry about?

Then there are the women getting butt injections to boost their booties.

Lordy, lordy, lord.

One of my hard and fast health rules is not to take any pill I don’t absolutely need and not to inject any weird chemicals into my body that’s not, say, a flu shot.

It’s pretty easy for me to believe that getting shot upt with Botox or any other marionette filler might have some long run not-great-for-your-health implications.

Guess I’ll just have to live with whatever degree of RBF I’m blessed with.

Just don’t ask me to smile.

Oh Canada….

I knoh, I kno: it’s O Canada. But we’re not talking the Canadian national anthem – dandy tune that it is – we’re talking the country, which I visited last week. And a dandy country it is.

I’ve always wanted to visit the Maritimes – at least since I read Anne of Green Gables and/or first heard Paul Simon’s Duncan, one of his short-story-of-a-song in which Lincoln Duncan tells about leaving his home in the Maritimes. Yes, I want to get to Prince Edward Island some day (c.f., Anne of Green Gables). And I want to get to Nova Scotia some day. After all, I’m a city girl and Nova Scotia’s where the only Maritime city of appreciable size (Halifax) lies. And I want to get to Newfoundland some day: cool dogs.

But you have to start somewhere, so I started with New Brunswick.

Between Bangor, Maine and the Canadian border crossing, things are pretty bleak. As in Beans of Egypt Maine bleak. A good reminder that there’s plenty of depressed and depressing flyover country in New England, too.

Not that urban squalor is any fun, but I’d take being poor in a city over poor way out in the country in my ramshackle trailer any old day. Sure, big cities have food deserts, but out in the middle of nowhere there are everything deserts: nothing stimulating, nothing entertaining, nothing interesting, nothing to do. It’s no surprise that the opioid epidemic has such deep roots in areas like rural Maine.

Once we reached Canada, it may have been my imagination – after all, I was relieved and delighted to be in a country lead by someone intelligent, articulate and principled – but things seemed to pick up. The houses were neater. (Skies bluer, sun shinier.)

Our stop was St. Andrews, a very British-y tourist town, where we stayed at an old-fashioned, very British-y upscale resort.

Our purpose in St. Andrews was that it’s sort of near Campobello, the summer home of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the prime purpose behind our trip. (See yesterday’s post.)

Getting to Campobello required some island hopping via ferry, and it brought us through a couple of areas that could almost rival northern Maine for their rundown-ness. Maybe it was my imagination again, but nothing seemed nearly as bleak as those spots in Maine. Was it Justin Trudeau? National health insurance? Fewer worries about getting mowed down by some maniac wielding an AK-47? Sure, these little Canadian fishing villages weren’t exactly prosperous. Still…

Canada just seems better, nicer, saner than the States. Admittedly, it’s generally easier to fall for a place where you don’t know where the bodies are buried, where all the warts are. Still…

Anyway, Campobello Island was wonderful, but we wanted to experience more of New Brunswick’s charms.

Why not St. Stephen? It is, after all, Canada’s Chocolate Town, home of Ganong Chocolates. So what if we’d never heard of St. Stephen? Or Ganong? There’s a chocolate museum in St. Stephen. We’re off!

The museum is in the building that housed the old Ganong chocolate factory, in downtown St. Stephen, and while it’s not worth a trip to New Brunswick, it’s definitely worth a stop if you’re in the ‘hood.

It has a bit about the history of chocolate, but the museum is largely devoted to Ganong Chocolates, a family owned business – now run by the 5th generation of Ganongs – that’s been around since the late 1800’s. That’s when Ganong Numero Uno is said to have been the first in North America to wrap a piece of chocolate and turn it into the candy bar as we know it today. They were also the first to introduce the Valentine-shaped candy box. (Awwwww…)

The museum features a several decades old video of the old, unautomated Ganong factory. The video was very sweet, mentioning most of the featured employees by name, and shows how the candy is made. Believe it or not, it’s actually fascinating to watch someone construct a candy box, or hand dip chocolates. (Talk about up to your elbows in chocolate.)

Another video features Whidden Ganong, the third gen to run the company. It was made when Whidden (now long dead) was in his 90’s, but hearing him recount his history with the company was quite interesting. Quite a character, Whidden courted the best chocolate dipper in the world – one Eleanor Deacon – for 14 years before marrying her. Eleanor had grown up quite poor – as Whidden told us, she had to trap weasels to make money to buy clothing (I heard this as poor Eleanor actually wore clothing made out of weasel, but I’m trusting my sister here). So  marrying into the Ganong family must have been quite a step up. I do believe that even post marriage, Eleanor continued to dip chocolates.

Among Ganong specialties are the Chicken Bone – cinnamon hard candy with a chocolate center. Sounds ghastly, but it’s okay. Better, though, is the Marrow Bone: a Chicken Bone wrapped in dark chocolate. Yum!

I bought a few to take home at the candy shop attached to the museum, and also took a chance on a Pal-O-Mine candy bar. I opened it with some trepidation – it could have been one of those awful old timey “treats” – but it was actually quite good. If you’re in Canada and see one in a gas station, don’t hesitate.

I took a pass on the gigunda box of chocolates – 3.5 pounds – that’s a Ganong Christmas favorite. It’s a tricky one, as there’s no key to what you’re getting. We all know square is something chewy, oval is something soft-centered, but beyond that, until you memorize what each of the squiggles means, you’re one your own.

St. Stephen/Ganong was an altogether excellent stop. The border crossing there is easy-peasy, too.

From St. Stephen, to quote Lincoln Duncan of Pau Simon fame, we “headed down the turnpike for New England, sweet New England.”

We spent our final night in Bar Harbor, where there was plenty to see, shop, and eat.

But, Oh Canada, I really enjoyed my time up north.

With Franklin and Eleanor at Campobello

Last week, I went on a road trip to New Brunswick, Canada. My traveling companions and I are all celebrating landmark birthdays this year – my sister Trish just turned 60; our friend Michele turned 65 (and retired); and for me, the big 7-0 is just around the corner – and we wanted to do something to mark the occasion. Our initial quasi-plan was Iceland, but we couldn’t quite agree on the plot. But we’re all Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt fans, and Campobello (where they summered) was a close second to Iceland anyway. So Campobello it was.

We stayed in the charming seaside town of St. Andrews, where we treated ourselves to rooms at The Algonquin, one of those grande dame resort hotels from the late 1800’s. The actual building we stayed in is massive Tudor-style pile which replaced the original, which burned down in 1912. We think that our rooms, which had smaller windows and were on the top floor, were originally used as servants quarters. Seemed fitting, as any of our ancestors who would have made it to The Algonquin would definitely have bunked in the servants’ rooms.

Anyway, the hotel was just lovely, and walking distance to St. Andrews downtown. Quaint enough, but not much for shopping. We did have a very enjoyable dinner at the Niger Reef Tea House, where we were able to eat out overlooking the water.

St. Andrews to Campobello is a straightforward – sorta – jaunt. You drive to the town of George and take a regular old ferry to Deer Island. You then drive the length of Deer Island on one of the two roads that runs down its sides, and stop when you see a line of cars pulled over to the side of a dead end road. There are no signs, but some of those in line had a bit of info to share: trips on the hour, cash only, no toilet on board. (Porta-potty in the weeds on the side of the boat.)

There was no infrastructure, no pier, no boat ramp. Eventually, a barge being herded along by some sort of half-tugboat/half-swivel chair hoved into the inlet, and let down its ramp right there in the muck.

Half and hour later we pulled into an even less impressive and even more poorly marked inlet.

Campobello. We had arrived on the island.

The Roosevelt home, part of a national park jointly administered by the US and Canada (and FREE!) is close by.

The setting for Franklin and Eleanor’s “cottage” is just spectacular. Pine trees, craggy cliffs, water. The best of Maine/the Maritimes. (Campobello is in New Brunswick, but looks across the water to the States.) The day was gorgeous – sunny, cloudless skies, mid-sixties – and the tour of the Roosevelt cottage was (mostly) excellent.

I just loved this house. If a 34 room cottage (18 BR, 6 baths) can be described as modest and simple, this one is. All the rooms are light and airy, and most of the bedrooms have twin beds (which look pretty swayback, after all these years, and were probably not all that comfortable – horsehair – to being with), including the guest rooms. And – get this – some of the rooms on the bedroom floor were used by the servants. So FDR and Eleanor were just down the hall from their cook and maids.

Wanting to put a stamp on this house (in a way that she wasn’t able to with her New York City home, which was pretty much dictated by her harridan of a mother-in-law), Eleanor used a lot of floral wallpaper throughout the house. I’m not all that much of a wallpaper person, but I loved some of the patterns, especially the hydrangea and forget-me-not patterns.

The furniture was simple and comfortable. (The antithesis of Mar-a-Lago, for sure.)

The house definitely looked lived in. (Although FDR wasn’t able to get there after 1939, since the island couldn’t be properly secured during wartime, the family spent summers there regularly throughout their marriage. FDR had spent his childhood summers there, as well. Eleanor visited Campobello up until her death.)

There are some personal items scattered throughout. Nowhere near as much as is on display at the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, but we did get to see a Franklin hat and ashtray, and Eleanor’s knitting.

My one complaint was with the tour narrator, who didn’t appear to think much of Eleanor, going out of his way to criticize her capabilities as a mother – and going out of his way to build up her MIL, Sara Delano Roosevelt.

Eleanor was admittedly not mother-of-the-year, had difficulty relating to her children, and spent much of their childhoods doing community good and ignoring her brood. Eleanor had suffered a difficult childhood herself. She was orphaned by the age of 10 and was shipped off to a European boarding school as an early teen. (Not an altogether bad thing, as it was there that she blossomed.)

Anyway, her parenting upshot (and let’s not leave Franklin out here; he may have been the emotional parent, but he had his flaws, too) was that her children all ended up with somewhat dysfunctional lives – the five who survived to adulthood had 19 marriages under their collective belts. But given everything she accomplished in her life, I’ll give Eleanor – a woman ahead of her time, chafing under the constrictions of an oppressive family life, however privileged hers may have been – a pass here.

The read on Eleanor was more positive when we went to “Tea with Eleanor,” held at a nearby (more modest) cottage on the park grounds.

I was expecting a costumed Eleanor, but as it turns out, Eleanor’s grandchildren – a number of them actively involved in Campobello on an ongoing basis – didn’t want an Eleanor impersonator. No, the requirements for the presenters at tea with Eleanor is that they develop an expertise in some aspect of Eleanor’s life. Ours focused on Eleanor’s humanitarian work.

I knew some of the stories – the DAR’s refusal to allow Marian Anderson perform at Constitution Hall; her Civil Rights work; her meeting with the Tuskegee Airmen; her other visits with the troops throughout the War – but hadn’t heard the one about getting a gun license to protect herself from the Ku Klux Klan who had threatened her life. (I’d seen her gun license on display at Hyde Park, but didn’t know the story behind it.)

The narrator also got in a bit of a dig (deserved, IMO) at Sara.

Anyway, as an admirer of the Roosevelts, I was very moved to see their summer place.

Sure, I know they weren’t perfect. FDR authorized internment for Japanese-Americans; FDR let the State Department refuse Jewish refugees into the country. But he was the right man for the time and the job. He helped the country (and democracy) survive the Great Depression, and led the country well during World War II.

Wouldn’t it be nice…Sigh…

As for Eleanor, whatever her failures as a parent, she was a brilliant and accomplished humanitarian. I was thrilled to walk in her footsteps, and look out the windows that she had.

I suppose I should include a picture of the Roosevelts at Campobello. Or the “cottage.” Or the gorgeous view.

But this picture of Eleanor, aged 70, schlepping her own bag at La Guardia Airport is pretty much my favorite.

Wouldn’t it be nice… Sigh…

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Some readers haven’t been able to see the pictures I embed. I haven’t tracked down the problem yet. Here’s the link to the ER picture.

Reputation for sale, Part Two

I’m an MIT alum. No, not a real alum. That honor goes to those brass rat ring-wearing folks who got their undergraduate degree from the ‘tute. The only relationship I had with MIT as an undergrad was that I worked one year as a grill cook/soda jerk in Twenty Chimneys, the campus snack bar.

No, I’m an alum courtesy of their business school. And even though I know that, to insiders, my MIT degree is the equivalent of a certificate in basket weave, it means something to outsiders, conferring intelligence, attainment, and seriousness of purpose. In other words, a good brand. And I’m proud of my association with this institution.

That said, I’ve donated very rarely, and very little over the years – maybe $1K total, maybe $2K. And mostly when the class agent called me directly during a reunion year. Certainly not much by MIT’s standards.

My rationale has been that there are better places for me to place my philanthropic dollar and, besides, MIT surely has bigger donor trees to bark up: grads who’ve made it big, foundations, those who just want to be associated with MIT’s luster…

Ah, but that latter category is where MIT is running into trouble…

It may not be in the news worldwide, but the Boston papers have been all astir with the revelation the late and nowhere as far as I can tell lamented Jeffrey Epstein donated oodles of money on the down low over the years to MIT’s Media Lab.

Now Media Lab doesn’t sound like much. Glorified AV Club? Students playing around with social media?

But it’s pretty prestigious, and kind of a big deal.

Here’s how they talk about themselves:

The Lab creates disruptive technologies that happen at the edges, pioneering such areas as wearable computing, tangible interfaces, and affective computing….

…for over 30 years Media Lab researchers have anticipated and created technologies to make our lives safer, cleaner, healthier, fairer, and more productive. But along with benefits, technology’s everyday efficiencies have also brought their share of issues: obesity, poverty, ethical implications, bullying, divergent politics. The Media Lab’s antidisciplinary research community is uniquely equipped to address these concerns, leveraging the best that technology has to offer, and connecting technology back to the social and the human. Current Lab research examines the deeper implications of where technology creation and adoption has led us—and where we want to go next. (Source: MIT Media Lab)

A mouthful, for sure, and you can see that they’re plenty high on themselves.

They’ve had some reason to be.

I’ve heard big machers from the Lab speak a number of times over the years, and what they have to say has always been fascinating.

But it might be time to start thinking about the ethical implications of their donor practices.

Here’s what’s been happening re: Jeffrey Epstein.

The MIT Media Lab had been taking quite a bit of money from Jeffrey Epstein, and had been using his help to woo in other big-donors.

They did this on the condition that Epstein not be allowed to take public credit for the donations, and use his philanthropy as part of a reputation rehabilitation tour after his earlier sex crimes conviction. But MIT was plenty happy to take his money.

First indications were that the Media Lab had gone rogue, acting on their own to secure the money and covering things up as “anonymous” donations. Joi Ito, head of the Lab, was forced out.

But according to e-mails that circulated in 2014 and 2015 among university officials, at least two top MIT fund-raisers, along with a finance department administrator, were aware of Epstein’s involvement in the Media Lab and knew that his donations were to be treated as anonymous in the university’s donor tracking system. (Source: Boston Globe)

We learned this thanks to a whistle blower.

But wait, there’s more. There’s always more.

The other day, in an email sent to all alums, MIT President Rafael Reif informed us that the school had retained Goodwin Procter (big time Boston law firm) to figure out what had been going on between MIT and Epstein.

Turns out one of the things they found out was the Reif himself, shortly after he became president, had signed a TY note to Epstein.

Now, Reif was probably signing a stack of letters, and I’m pretty sure that this will turn out to be 100% innocent. Pretty sure. But it does add further embarrassment, when there’s already enough of that to go around.

I know I’ve already said this, but wait, there’s more. There’s always more.

Neri Oxman is an architect/designer/professor associated with the Media Lab. A few years back, her group got a relatively modest (or so it appears at this time) donation from Epstein. $125K. In keeping with the MIT omerta regarding Epstein, she was told to keep it under wraps. Oxman has also stated:

“Joi [Ito] assured me that Epstein was an approved donor who wished to devote his fortune to science and technology, in part to make amends for wrongs he committed earlier in his life.” (Source: Boston Globe)

In return for the donations, Oxman was asked to write thank you notes to Epstein.

Then Ito upped the ante. He:

…requested that her design lab, which often produced donor gifts for the university, send a token of appreciation to Epstein: a grapefruit-sized, 3-D printed marble with a base that lit up. It came with a pair of gloves to avoid getting fingerprints on the surface.She complied, and asked lab members to mail it to Epstein’s Manhattan address.

So now there are students lightly implicated – and ticked off. They felt pressured to work on the grapefruit-sized 3-D printed marble with the light up base, even though at least one of them knew Epstein was a sleaze. She pushed back initially, but in the end gave in to the pressure.

Oxman was also feeling pressured:

At the time, she was trying to win tenure in a male-dominated world by showing she could publish significant research, produce enough groundbreaking work, and raise enough money to support the lab’s mission. Oxman became a tenured professor in 2017.

I know I’ve already said this, but wait, there’s more. There’s always more.

Oxman’s husband is Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire.

He jumped in at some point, writing to Ito about how worried he was that Oxman would:

“be forced into a position where to protext her name she is required to be transparent about everything that took place at MIT with Epstein.”

“Once her name appears in the press, she will face a barrage of questions, and anything other than perfect transparency to the media will make her look like she is hiding something. This has regretfully become a witch hunt.”

As, in fact, has happened, although I don’t necessarily see that going after those who benefited from Epstein’s donations even though they knew he was a truly depraved individual should be categorized as a witch hunt. Sometimes there are actually witches worth hunting.

I’m sorry to see MIT caught up in this. (I’d so much rather it be Harvard…) But you take dirty money, your hands don’t stay clean. The fact that MIT wanted to keep the Epstein money quiet tells us all we need to know.

Betcha it won’t be too long before I get to, once again, write ‘but wait, there’s more.’

There’s always more.