Today is Bastille Day, which is French for Fourth of July.
I was going to write about Paris, and the half-dozen times I've been there. And how, when "it" is over, and the seat belt sign is off and we're all free to walk around the cabin, I'll get there again.
Then I was going to write about the Bastille Day celebration that Boston's French Library runs every year on Marlborough Street, just around the corner from where I live. It's a big block party, with champagne, baguettes, pâté, and dancing under the stars. I've never been, but I have walked by a few times.
But thinking about the French Library got me thinking about how you get to know (or get to know someone who knows) some VERY (OR AT LEAST SORTA) IMPORTANT PEOPLE - especially if you live long enough in the same place, and if that same place is a small big town like Boston.
Many year (decades) ago, my apartment was broken into. The place was a top floor studio in a funky and exceedingly oddball building on Beacon Hill.
Among the other peculiarities were the eccentric live in supers, an Irish immigrant couple who oddly took off in the middle of the night at some point, without telling anyone (including the building's owner) that they were leaving. For some reason, I got the idea in my head that they were on the lam, and possibly had some involvement with the IRA. In any event, they were gone baby gone. The Sheas were replaced by a family, a dour threesome of parents and adult daughter, all morbidly obese, such that they could barely move.
Each apartment had access to a dumbwaiter used for trash which opened up into your kitchen - and the kitchen of the apartment that abutted yours. My opposite number was a flat occupied by an elderly gentleman and his nosy home health care aide, who spent most of her days (as far as I could tell) with her head in the dumbwaiter shaft, trying to listen in on whatever was happening in my apartment. It was great sport to creep into my kitchen and yank open the door to the dumbwaiter, only to find Sally's head in there.
With two exceptions - me and a "career gal" in her late thirties - there were no tenants under the age of 70 in the building. They were all quite nice and quite quiet, but they demanded that the outside door, which opened onto the foyer that contained the mailboxes and the apartment buzzers, be locked by sundown. Thus, if you had company - and I think I was the only one in the building who ever had company - they had to call you from the payphone around the corner. (The payphone was in front of a firehouse that, a few years later, became the place where Spenser lived on the TV show Spenser for Hire.)
It should go without saying that I loved that place.
Anyway, I was away the night of the break in, but one of my ancient (which is how I thought anyone over the age of 70 was when I was in my twenties) stopped me on the way in to alert me about the event - and to let me know that I was going to find my door smashed in. The thief in the night had come in through a window - quite a feat, considering that there was five story drop and, while there were small balconies, there was not stair-type fire escape connecting them. According to the police officers, the thief - a known quantity to the BPD, a man they had dubbed the Flying Puerto Rican - had managed to swing himself up from balcony to balcony. All that work. He must have been so disappointed to land in my apartment and come away empty handed, except for a handful of costume jewelry that included my old Girl Scout Pin.
The person below me had heard the thief breaking in to my apartment and had alerted the police. They came crashing in through my front door, but the Flying Puerto Rican had already made his escape by trapeze-artisting his way off my balcony and up onto the roof. He was making away across the roofs on my block, looking, I suppose, for a way down and out, when he fell through the sky-light of the home of the ancient widower a few doors down the street.
When the Flying Puerto Rican crashed through the skylight, he fell into the ancient widower's bathtub. It is there where the ancient widower encountered him, and began a wrestling match that managed to contain the thief until the BPD arrived on that particular and peculiar scene. I'm a little fuzzy here, but I think the ancient widower may have pulled a gun on the Flying Puerto Rican at some point.
I ended up meeting the ancient widower when we all went to court to testify against the Flying Puerto Rican. I was there to identify my costume jewelry and Girl Scout pin; the ancient widower, of course, had the more interesting story.
Alas, the Flying Puerto Rican was a no-show.
The cops returned my jewelry, and asked me whether I also wanted a solid gold chain that they had yanked off the thief's neck, which still had flesh and blood in the links. No thanks! And the cops returned General Georges Doriot's bloodied, pale blue Brooks Brothers pajamas.
The visit to court was how I got to meet General Doriot.
If his name rings no bell, it's not because he wasn't a VIP.
Georges Doriot was born in France, and came to the US as a young man to get his MBA from Harvard. He liked it well enough that he stayed on to teach there. He took time off during World War II to serve in the US Army, where he became a general. After the war, he founded one of the world's first venture capital firms, and eventually became known as "the father of venture capitalism." (He also went on to found INSEAD, the international business school.)
It's not that we became friends, but when I would see him on the street, we would always nod and smile. The General would tip his hat. He died in the late 1980's, by which point I was no longer living on Lime Street.
Other than General Doriot's being French, what does this have to do with Bastille Day?
I thought you'd never ask...
From what I heard, Georges Doriot's wife (dead a couple of years by the time I met him) had been a secretary at Harvard Business School. Because she had held such a lowly position, she was looked down upon by some of the other HBS faculty wives. So, looking for something important and prestigious that his wife could do, Georges got Edna involved in the French Library, and the couple (and their funds) became the key to growing the Library and keeping it alive. Edna became the president of the organization, and also held a number of high visibility board positions in Boston. And the snobby HBS wives ended up having to eat some crow.
So there.
And so here's to Georges. Here's to Edna. Here's to the French Library. Here's to Bastille Day, from one modern democracy to another. And here's hoping that we can hang on to ours. Allons, citoyens!
Tuesday, July 14, 2020
Monday, July 13, 2020
Yet another embezzlement story
I don't know why - maybe it's because I have a bit of larceny in my heart - I am fascinated by embezzlers. I've posted about embezzlers so frequently that I should probably have an embezzlement label. There have been too many good ones to get to them all. The Midwest-nice mom who stole from her kids' hockey league and blew most of it on Pandora bracelets and charms. The woman who siphoned off enough from her employer to hire Burt Bachrach to perform at her brother's wedding. The meter-emptiers who filched hundreds of thousands of dollars in quarters out of Boston parking meters.
Boyd is also being charged with making "false declarations" in front of a grand jury - make that a federal grand jury - by stating in sworn testimony that she and Bouchard had chastely stayed in separate rooms when they traveled.
When it comes to embezzlers, I'm guessing that many start out harmlessly. They really only want to borrow some money for a bit. They intend to pay it back. But then, when no one notices it's gone, why it's easy enough to stick your hand back in the till. Ditto for those who don't start out so harmlessly, but who start small. And when no one notices, why, back for more. A few bucks here, a few more bucks there. After a while, it all starts to add up.
It's hard for me to imagine anything more career limiting than stealing from your employer. Honestly, I think most people would rather hire a murderer than a thief.
Anyway, the latest from Embezzlement Central is the sad tale of a high-level civilian manager (and I believe former soldier himself) who works - make that worked - for the Army facility in Natick, Massachusetts. Thomas Bouchard's motivation was not so much greed as lust. Which he may have mistaken for love.
In any case, Bouchard met a gal in a bar, and as so often happens when a fellow meets a gal in a bar, he wanted to keep Chantelle Boyd in his life.
It took a while - the lovebirds met in 2007, and it took until 2014 to come up with the no-show job scheme - but at some point Bouchard engineered a job for his sidekick that paid $65K a year.
To snag her plum job, Bouchard had Boyd falsify her resume to claim that she had experience working with government contracts, and that she had a college degree. In fact, she was a bartender. (Not that a bartender couldn't know how to manage big contracts and/or have a degree. It's just that Boyd didn't.)
To fill the concocted position, Bouchard convinced folks that he needed an assistant, got it approved, and found a way to get Evolution Enterprises, a government contractor he was working with, to hire her on. Her pay was, then, reimbursed by the government.
It would have been one thing if Boyd had actually done any work:
“Boyd’s position cost the Department of Defense more than $490,000 during her time at Evolution from 2014 to 2018, during which she performed little if any useful function,” the US attorney’s office said in a statement.
Employees like Boyd were required to submit weekly reports about their activities to superiors, according to court papers. “In the almost four years of employment under the EEl contract, BOYD submitted approximately nine (9) weekly updates,‘' prosecutors allege.
She was so unknown to the people she was hired to interact with that a colleague found just 23 e-mails with her name between 2014 and 2016 and thought for two years she no longer worked for the government until being told she was still on the payroll as of 2018, prosecutors said.(Source: Boston Globe)Three years and just 23 emails? No wonder they got caught!
It was more than just salary and bennies that Boyd enjoyed. Bouchard managed to factor in some perks. He:
...approved thousands more in travel expenses by falsely claiming trips were job-related when the couple instead spent time at Disney World and on the beach during 31 trips to Orlando, federal officials said.All this duped us taxpayers another $75K in reimbursement for some Disney fun and frolic.
Boyd is also being charged with making "false declarations" in front of a grand jury - make that a federal grand jury - by stating in sworn testimony that she and Bouchard had chastely stayed in separate rooms when they traveled.
“For most of these trips, however, BOYD traveled with BOUCHARD and stayed with him in the same hotel room. During the trips, BOYD and BOUCHARD visited Disney parks and spent time at the pool and waterslides at the resort hotel — all during business hours,‘' prosecutors wrote in court papers.Waterslides during business hours! Well, I never!
The closest I came was on a trip to Minneapolis. We had a few hours between our meeting and our flight, and decided to check out the Mall of America. Which has an indoor roller coaster. Which I went on with my two colleagues. There we were, in our business suits, clutching our briefcases - which for some reason we hadn't left in our rent-a-car - and whee!-ing along with the tourists on the roller coaster. Good times!
Anyway, Bouchard and Boyd have ruined their professional lives. If they had personal lives, other than with each other, those are probably pretty much junked, too. They'll likely face fines. And do time.
Were the trips to Disney worth it? Jeez. The least Boyd could have done was show up for her no-show job.
Ah, the mind of the embezzler...
Friday, July 10, 2020
Swag!
I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, but one of the things I miss about working is the swag.
Oh, I occasionally score something from a client. I have a logo water bottle from one that I use every once in a while. A former client kept my husband in polo shirts. They were very nice - ultra soft, and wore really well. They were Jim's favorites. In fact, he was wearing one of these logo polos when he died.
Who doesn't like a freebie?
I was disappointed when I went to the dentist the other day that they weren't doing their usual giveaway of new toothbrush and travel toothpaste.
And I like it when the bank hands me a pen or notepad, even though the pens are cheesy and tend to fail quickly.
I know all about those cheesy pens. I was working a trade show once, and our giveaway was a ballpoint pen. Too bad that most of them were leaking into their little plastic holder. A little something to remember us by.
Trade shows were always an excellent source of swag, and one of the pleasures of working a show was strolling around and grabbing goodies. So what if I didn't actually need another stress ball? Swag, baby!
Most of the swag I scooped up over the years is long gone. But I still wear the denim shirt my company gave away at our user group 25 years ago. And I still tote stuff in the excellent LL Bean tote bag from the same company.
When we bought stuff for our user group, we always ordered one for every employee as well. This was good for morale, and it also helped ensure that there was no shrinkage from the storage closet. At one time, my group had ordered logo golf balls that were earmarked for a client golf outing. By the time we got to the outing, those logo balls had rolled out and disappeared.
There was a minor scandal at one company I worked for when most of the Helly Hansen parkas that were ordered for a promo for our partner program disappeared. Someone on my team was the lead on that program - but had no control over the internal distribution of the parkas. Poor Donna! She found herself confronting colleagues (from the CMO on down) swanning around in an upscale red parka with the company logo on it.
This was at Genuity, a dot.com era bust that was insane when it came to swag. It didn't matter what the occasion - internal, external - there was always swag around. We had an offering called Black Rocket that was launched with a ton of fanfare.
To mark the occasion, there were BR lava lamps, BR coffee tables (I can't remember who those were supposed to be for), BR lunchboxes, BR bicycles, shirts, caps... Some of this stuff was given away, some of it sold online in the company store. Tchotchke sales probably brought in as much revenue as the ill-fated Black Rocket offering. I did my bit by buying Black Rockets in multiple sizes.
What's the latest when it comes to swag?
There's a downside - isn't there always? - and that's that some might view slapping your logo on a mini-bottle of hand sanitizer as exploiting the pandemic for branding purposes. Thus, many are using smaller, discreet forms of their logo. (The FedEx logo mask I saw wasn't screaming, but, admittedly, it's not easy to tone down a logo that uses bright orange and bright purple.)
For companies that specialize in swag for trade shows and corporate events, pandemic-related swag has been a boon to their business, offsetting the event losses.
There's more to pandemic swag than face masks and hand sanitizers. Popular items include:
Oh, I occasionally score something from a client. I have a logo water bottle from one that I use every once in a while. A former client kept my husband in polo shirts. They were very nice - ultra soft, and wore really well. They were Jim's favorites. In fact, he was wearing one of these logo polos when he died.
Who doesn't like a freebie?
I was disappointed when I went to the dentist the other day that they weren't doing their usual giveaway of new toothbrush and travel toothpaste.
And I like it when the bank hands me a pen or notepad, even though the pens are cheesy and tend to fail quickly.
I know all about those cheesy pens. I was working a trade show once, and our giveaway was a ballpoint pen. Too bad that most of them were leaking into their little plastic holder. A little something to remember us by.
Trade shows were always an excellent source of swag, and one of the pleasures of working a show was strolling around and grabbing goodies. So what if I didn't actually need another stress ball? Swag, baby!
Most of the swag I scooped up over the years is long gone. But I still wear the denim shirt my company gave away at our user group 25 years ago. And I still tote stuff in the excellent LL Bean tote bag from the same company.
When we bought stuff for our user group, we always ordered one for every employee as well. This was good for morale, and it also helped ensure that there was no shrinkage from the storage closet. At one time, my group had ordered logo golf balls that were earmarked for a client golf outing. By the time we got to the outing, those logo balls had rolled out and disappeared.
There was a minor scandal at one company I worked for when most of the Helly Hansen parkas that were ordered for a promo for our partner program disappeared. Someone on my team was the lead on that program - but had no control over the internal distribution of the parkas. Poor Donna! She found herself confronting colleagues (from the CMO on down) swanning around in an upscale red parka with the company logo on it.
This was at Genuity, a dot.com era bust that was insane when it came to swag. It didn't matter what the occasion - internal, external - there was always swag around. We had an offering called Black Rocket that was launched with a ton of fanfare.
To mark the occasion, there were BR lava lamps, BR coffee tables (I can't remember who those were supposed to be for), BR lunchboxes, BR bicycles, shirts, caps... Some of this stuff was given away, some of it sold online in the company store. Tchotchke sales probably brought in as much revenue as the ill-fated Black Rocket offering. I did my bit by buying Black Rockets in multiple sizes.
What's the latest when it comes to swag?
COVID stuff.
As some businesses reopen and others try to stay in touch with employees working from home, companies are opting for coronavirus-related corporate swag — branded sanitizer bottles, “clean key” tools for pressing elevator buttons and, above all, masks — joining the tote bags, travel mugs and USB flash drives that have long defined company giveaways. (Source: Washington Post)Sure enough, when I went into FedEx-Kinko's the other day to do some copying and the fellow running the store was sporting a logo'd facemask. Some companies are even selling their logo face masks. (No thanks. Maybe if you gave it to me for free...)
There's a downside - isn't there always? - and that's that some might view slapping your logo on a mini-bottle of hand sanitizer as exploiting the pandemic for branding purposes. Thus, many are using smaller, discreet forms of their logo. (The FedEx logo mask I saw wasn't screaming, but, admittedly, it's not easy to tone down a logo that uses bright orange and bright purple.)
For companies that specialize in swag for trade shows and corporate events, pandemic-related swag has been a boon to their business, offsetting the event losses.
There's more to pandemic swag than face masks and hand sanitizers. Popular items include:
...cozy socks, clip-on Zoom vanity light rings, webcam privacy covers, and branded books and puzzles to keep kids busy for work-from-home staffers.
Some companies have also placed orders for returning workers, including personalized and branded water bottles, mugs or tech gadgets so they don’t get mixed up in the office. “Now, not sharing is caring,” said Kim Laffer-Nick, director of marketing communications at ePromos Promotional Products.But masks are at present ruling the swag roost, especially as employees tiptoe back to work and companies want to have a more uniform look and feel when it comes to PPE.
“The mask could become the new fleece vest,” said Susan Scafidi, academic director of Fordham University’s Fashion Law Institute, referring to the popular Silicon Valley fashion staple.The new fleece vest? A grateful nation thanks you.
Thursday, July 09, 2020
Up, up and away, in my beautiful balloon
If my husband were alive, I think I know what he'd be signing up for. Early next year, Space Perspectives will be testing out a spacecraft that, in short order, will be taking travelers to the edge of space. It's not exactly a walk on the moon. Or to infinity and beyond. But Jim would be all in.
I would be on the ground, having a very terrestrial heart attack, but Jim was very interested in space exploration. So he'd be up there, chatting it up with his fellow travelers. Even at $125K - the rumored price - I like to think I'd be happy that he got to go up, up and away. (IRL, I probably wouldn't have been quite so thrilled about this enterprise.)
Jim was a space buff. He enjoyed reading about it, studying the physics, the history. Not so much the astronauts - although he liked The Right Stuff - but the science and the scientists behind it. Decades ago, at the Fleet Science Center in San Diego, we got to take fake flight on an IMAX-ish space shuttle. Jim loved it, peering over the edge and looking down into space. Me? I was having an anxiety attack. (I have no fear of flying, but an awful fear of heights. Things like this just wig me out.) Years later, we did another simulated space flight at the Boston Science Museum. I mostly kept my eyes shut.
One of Jim's dying wishes was to have his ashes sent into space, a wish that I was able to accommodate. Eight months after Jim's death, a thimble-full of his ashes went rocketing out there. Jim got his ride, so mission accomplished. And the ashes that went on his space shot are sitting in a little Connemara marble urn on my mantel.
Anyway, who knows is the Neptune will ever slip the surly bonds of earth with passengers aboard. I do know that I won't be one of them. But it does look kind of cool, and I think it will make a great Christmas tree ornament. I'll hang it in a prominent place and think of Jim. Wish you were here. Or there.
Before sun rise, eight Explorers and a Pilot climb aboard the Neptune Capsule, recline in the plush seats and lift off into the predawn sky. Neptune ascends for two hours to over three times higher than a commercial airliner flies while the sky is still dark, and stars are visible like you’ve never before seen them. As Neptune glides along the edge of space, the sun slowly rises over the curved limb of Earth, scattering rainbow colors of light across the planet and illuminating the thin, bright blue line of our atmosphere. And the sky remains black, completely inky black. This view of Earth in the void of space has transfixed astronauts since the dawn of the space age. Reluctantly, the Explorers and Pilot prepare to leave space to return to Earth. Neptune gently descends under the balloon, and two hours later splashes down, where a ship retrieves the capsule, balloon and Explorers.
I would be on the ground, having a very terrestrial heart attack, but Jim was very interested in space exploration. So he'd be up there, chatting it up with his fellow travelers. Even at $125K - the rumored price - I like to think I'd be happy that he got to go up, up and away. (IRL, I probably wouldn't have been quite so thrilled about this enterprise.)
Jim was a space buff. He enjoyed reading about it, studying the physics, the history. Not so much the astronauts - although he liked The Right Stuff - but the science and the scientists behind it. Decades ago, at the Fleet Science Center in San Diego, we got to take fake flight on an IMAX-ish space shuttle. Jim loved it, peering over the edge and looking down into space. Me? I was having an anxiety attack. (I have no fear of flying, but an awful fear of heights. Things like this just wig me out.) Years later, we did another simulated space flight at the Boston Science Museum. I mostly kept my eyes shut.
One of Jim's dying wishes was to have his ashes sent into space, a wish that I was able to accommodate. Eight months after Jim's death, a thimble-full of his ashes went rocketing out there. Jim got his ride, so mission accomplished. And the ashes that went on his space shot are sitting in a little Connemara marble urn on my mantel.
"We're committed to fundamentally changing the way people have access to space -- both to perform much-needed research to benefit life on Earth and to affect how we view and connect with our planet," said Space Perspective founder and co-CEO Jane Poynter in a release. (Source: CNN)Poynter and her partners are veterans of Biosphere 2, where they spent two years. (I don't know much about Biosphere 2, other than what I read in T.C. Boyle's novel The Terranauts, which was based (loosely) on it. A fun read.)
The capsule is five meters in diameter, while the polyethylene balloon above has a 100-meter diameter when fully inflated, about the length of a football field.By my calculations, that five meter diameter should allow for social distancing, if we're still in masked mode when the Neptune starts boarding passengers. Of course, if we're still pandemic-ing, I don't suppose there will be eight folks who want to sit around in an enclosed capsule for six hours.
The lavatory, it claims, is "the loo with the best view in the known universe," and is located in the center of the capsule in the splashdown cone.Just reading about this gives me the willies. One time, Jim and I were having a drink at the bar on the top of a really tall building in Chicago. (I can't remember whether it was the Hancock or the Sears. Anyway, it was right up there.) They tried to seat us next to the window, but I wasn't having any of that. Smack dab in the middle, please and thank you. Before we left, I had to use "the loo", and when I walked in, there was a big old floor-to-ceiling window I had to walk along the narrow path to the toilets. Yikes!
Anyway, who knows is the Neptune will ever slip the surly bonds of earth with passengers aboard. I do know that I won't be one of them. But it does look kind of cool, and I think it will make a great Christmas tree ornament. I'll hang it in a prominent place and think of Jim. Wish you were here. Or there.
Wednesday, July 08, 2020
Think I'll print up some dinner
In the early days of the lock down, when panic was setting in, I - like everyone else I know - stocked up. Not just on TP and paper towels, but on food. At my grocery store, the Friday before things really started to shutter and the warnings were starting to go out that had us wondering whether it was ever going to be okay to go outside again, the shelves were starting to empty out.
No pasta. (Good thing that's something I always have a supply of.) No flour. (Had to go to a foufou little neighborhood store and pay twice as much as I would have for a 5 lb. bag of Paul Revere.) No Progresso soups. (Other than Manhattan Clam Chowder, which no New Englander would ever buy, unless they were starving to death.)
Over that first month or so, I'd hazard out every couple of weeks to replenish my larder, grabbing whatever I could find to tuck into my cabinets, stuff into my freezer. Just in case the food supply chain broke down and we went to total scarcity, to rationing. Which is how I ended up with six jars of Teddie peanut butter, and - in my freezer - a giant bag of frozen bay scallops (when all I'm ever going to use IRL are sea scallops), and a couple of ham steaks (don't ask).
Before much longer, these worries will be a thing of the past. As long as you have a 3D printer.
A startup in Israel, Redefine Meat, is well, redefining meat. And taking the definition the next step beyond where the folks from Impossible Burger went. (As an aside: I've had an Impossible Burger, which is plant based, and it's not bad.) Here's what Redefine has to say for themselves:
Redefine isn't into sneakers however, nor medical devices, or car parts. They're printing up animal-free meat.
It all sounds so crazily futuristic, but the future is now - or will be in another year or so. And I wouldn't bet against it. In my lifetime, I do believe I'll hop into an autonomous vehicle, scoot over to a restaurant, and order up a nice piece of Filet Mignon that's coming from a printer. Maybe they'll even print it up table side with the same flourish used to use for Steak Tartare or a Caesar salad (back in the old days, before Caesars became ubiquitous, and they made a big production about whipping up your salad for you).
And maybe, before the next pandemic rolls around, we'll all have 3D printers in our homes and will get to print up whatever we want, whenever we want it.
What's for dinner? Whatever your little heart desires.
No pasta. (Good thing that's something I always have a supply of.) No flour. (Had to go to a foufou little neighborhood store and pay twice as much as I would have for a 5 lb. bag of Paul Revere.) No Progresso soups. (Other than Manhattan Clam Chowder, which no New Englander would ever buy, unless they were starving to death.)
Over that first month or so, I'd hazard out every couple of weeks to replenish my larder, grabbing whatever I could find to tuck into my cabinets, stuff into my freezer. Just in case the food supply chain broke down and we went to total scarcity, to rationing. Which is how I ended up with six jars of Teddie peanut butter, and - in my freezer - a giant bag of frozen bay scallops (when all I'm ever going to use IRL are sea scallops), and a couple of ham steaks (don't ask).
Before much longer, these worries will be a thing of the past. As long as you have a 3D printer.
A startup in Israel, Redefine Meat, is well, redefining meat. And taking the definition the next step beyond where the folks from Impossible Burger went. (As an aside: I've had an Impossible Burger, which is plant based, and it's not bad.) Here's what Redefine has to say for themselves:
3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, is revolutionizing 21st century production for athletic shoes, airplane and car parts, medical devices, and more.And it works. At least for sneakers. I recently got sucked in by an ad for a BOGO on sneakers in all sorts of wild prints. They were a lot cheaper than my regular sneaks (New Balance or ASICS), and a lot more fun. I wouldn't wear them on a long march, but they're surprisingly sturdy and comfortable. I'm still trying to decide if the blue floral pair represent me channeling my mother, but the sun-and-moon ones are definitely cool. (At any rate, they are by my admittedly warped standards.) The sneakers do smell a bit odd, so it's a good thing that my nose is over 5' from my feet, and that I always have my mask on. But I like them, and the fact that they're 3D printed kinda sorta makes me happy.
Redefine isn't into sneakers however, nor medical devices, or car parts. They're printing up animal-free meat.
The startup, launched by cofounders who met while developing digital printers at HP, created custom 3D printers that aim to replicate meat by printing layers of what they call “alt-muscle,” “alt-fat,” and “alt-blood,” forming a complex 3D model. “Real meat is an extremely complicated product, where much of the sensory experience comes from the matrix,” says cofounder and CEO Eshchar Ben-Shitrit. “Meat is not just proteins, fats, and water. . . . Beef, especially, is a product that has been ‘built’ for years by the cow.” (Source: Fast Company)That alt-muscle, al-fat, and alt-blood goes into the making of Alt-Steak. At present, Alt-Steak is in its testing phase, but once it's in commercial production:
The company will be selling the printers to restaurants, which can tailor the digital recipe so “changes in the product come at zero cost or complexity,” [Ben-Shitrit] says. “We can use a 3D model of an entirely different meat product with the same machine, process, and ingredients, whereas traditional food production technologies have to change entire formulations. We can also iterate a steak to be softer, harder, juicier with less fat, and much more—all with a simple click of a button.”There are plenty of benefits to fake meat, environmentally and health-wise:
...the team has calculated that it uses 90% less water and 95% less land, and emits 90% less carbon dioxide, than meat from a cow. The meat is also healthier, with less fat than meat and no cholesterol, but the same amount of protein and more fiber.Not to mention you don't have kill some poor critter, no doubt slaughtered in a facility that Temple Grandin hasn't yet made more humane, to produce it. So there's that.
It all sounds so crazily futuristic, but the future is now - or will be in another year or so. And I wouldn't bet against it. In my lifetime, I do believe I'll hop into an autonomous vehicle, scoot over to a restaurant, and order up a nice piece of Filet Mignon that's coming from a printer. Maybe they'll even print it up table side with the same flourish used to use for Steak Tartare or a Caesar salad (back in the old days, before Caesars became ubiquitous, and they made a big production about whipping up your salad for you).
And maybe, before the next pandemic rolls around, we'll all have 3D printers in our homes and will get to print up whatever we want, whenever we want it.
What's for dinner? Whatever your little heart desires.
Tuesday, July 07, 2020
Land of the lost luggage
I've been most fortunate in my personal and business travels in that I've never experienced the annoyance and heartache of delayed or lost baggage. I've had screw ups in baggage claim a couple of times, but never left empty handed. I have, of course, lived vicariously through the travails of friends, family, and colleagues who have not been quite so fortunate.
Electronics are a biggie - mostly things that get left in the cabin - and, just so you don't worry, devices are scrubbed before they're sold. Phew! But the good stuff - which is sold at 20% to 50% of price - goes fast. Pretty much every laptop available online was, well, unavailable.
You can probably find a wedding or engagement ring there if you're interested. One time, they had a Rolex worth $60K. (Seriously, who doesn't figure out how to claim a $60K Rolex).
As happens with those flea market finds you read about (or see on Antiques Road Show) - and a friend once found an Edward Hopper throw-away oil painting for next to nothing at a Cape Cod yard sale - people sometimes luck out. That work of art snagged for $60 turns out to be worth $25K. Someone forked over $80 for a vase. That was some vase. It was valued at $18K.
Lots of pretty intriguing items have come through UBC:
Even among those folks, I don't think I've known anyone whose bag has gone totally missing, even if the mislaid baggage put a crimp in travel plans or dressing for success on a business call. The tracking technology has improved a ton over the decades. Something that gets lost isn't all that likely to stay lost.
Still, when I'm checking a bag - something I try to avoid - I always have survival gear in my carry on: a change of underwear, an extra shirt, my toothbrush...Just in case: I WILL SURVIVE. And in my checked baggage, there is always a copy of my itinerary and full contact info.
Inevitably, of course,some baggage is lost to the ages. Especially, apparently, carry on, which the airlines don't tag and thus can't easily trace.
For 50 years, Unclaimed Baggage has been waiting the 90 days the airlines have to hang on to unclaimed or just plain lost baggage, then transporting it to its Scottsboro, Alabama store to be sold. The store is huge, and new inventory comes in at a rate of 7,000 pieces a day.
Unclaimed has become a major tourist destination for Alabama, and has given the town something to be known for other than the Scottsboro Boys, a group of Black teens (and a preteen: one boy was only 12) who, in the midst of the Depression, were falsely accused of raping two white girls. And convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. The bottom line (and it took forever to reach it) was that all of the "boys" were eventually pardoned, and the courts ruled that all white juries aren't necessarily such a good thing.
But I digress...
What Unclaimed Baggage has is a lot of stuff. And now you don't have a schlepp to Scottsboro to paw through it. The store is celebrating its 50th anniversary by going online.
In addition to the expected assortment of items -- apparel, shoes, fine jewelry, musical instruments, sporting goods, electronics and entertainment -- shoppers will also find several specialty categories. "Luxe Finds" features a diamond tennis bracelet. "Unusual Finds" houses gems ranging from a 2016 Chicago Cubs World Series ballcap to anti-radiation boxer briefs. And in the "Weird and Wonderful" section, there's everything from a pole spear for spearfishing to Bavarian Lederhosen leather shorts and a trumpet. (Source: ABC News)Given that they've already had something as novel as anti-radiation boxer briefs - whatever they are! aren't boxers and briefs two different modes? and what would you need anti-radiation shorts for - maybe if you're a radiologist??? - it's no surprise that we give the shout out: wait, there's more!
Incredible items purchased include a suit of armor, a 40-carat emerald, a Chinese dragon kite and a puppet created at Henson’s Creative Workshop.Unclaimed Baggage Center (UBC) has the process down to a science. Once the bags (from airlines, as well as from train stations, bus depots, and car rental services) are unloaded from the tractor-trailers that deliver them to Scottsboro, the sorting begins:
Each individual item is considered for sale, donation, or trash. About a third gets recycled, a third is donated to various charities like The Salvation Army through the UBC's Reclaimed for Good program, and a third gets sold.
Those items deemed sellable get cleaned at the UBC's in-house dry cleaner (the largest commercial dry cleaner in Alabama). (Source: Insider)
Electronics are a biggie - mostly things that get left in the cabin - and, just so you don't worry, devices are scrubbed before they're sold. Phew! But the good stuff - which is sold at 20% to 50% of price - goes fast. Pretty much every laptop available online was, well, unavailable.
You can probably find a wedding or engagement ring there if you're interested. One time, they had a Rolex worth $60K. (Seriously, who doesn't figure out how to claim a $60K Rolex).
As happens with those flea market finds you read about (or see on Antiques Road Show) - and a friend once found an Edward Hopper throw-away oil painting for next to nothing at a Cape Cod yard sale - people sometimes luck out. That work of art snagged for $60 turns out to be worth $25K. Someone forked over $80 for a vase. That was some vase. It was valued at $18K.
Lots of pretty intriguing items have come through UBC:
...a six-foot-tall paper mache Tinkerbell, a set of McDonald's arches, a puppet from the movie "Labyrinth," a live rattlesnake, 50 vacuum-packed frogs, a full suit of armor, an engraved headstone, and a mummified hawk dating back about 4,000 years.
Sort of like the $60K Rolex, who doesn't claim a 4,000 year old mummified hawk? And how does one forget a six-foot tall paper mache Tinkerbell?
On the other hand, I can see why no one bothered trying to retrieve that Barbie and Ken wedding keepsake ornament. In the opposite corner from Barbie and Ken:
A camera from a space shuttle was promptly returned to NASA, while a missile guidance system for a fighter jet was quickly given back to the Air Force.
Hmmm. I'd hate to have to explain to the boss that I forgot a missile guidance system in the overhead.
I won't be beating a path to Scottsboro, Alabama, anytime soon. Still, it's fun to do a bit of window shopping and see what travelers leave behind.
Hasidic fedora. Ramones tee-shirt. Louis Vuitton side bag. Vera Wang wedding dress.
Attention shoppers!
Monday, July 06, 2020
Gold fingers
A couple of months back, I came across (and wrote about) MSCHF, an internet collective that specializes in what they call "drops" in which they promote or sell or ideate or do something clever. The drop that got me to drop in was their cutting up a Damien Hirst print of dots, and selling the individual dots off one at a time. MSCHF is plenty imaginative, plenty clever, and plenty funny.
For their latest drop - I keep wanting to say "hack" here, because they remind me of the pranks (called hacks) that MIT students have been famous for for decades - is in partnership with Jimmy Donaldson, a young (he's 22) YouTuber with tens of millions of subscribers, who specializes in stunts. In 2017, his breakout stunt was a video of himself counting to 100,000. (And I thought getting through the entirety of 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall was tedious enough...)
Anyway, the Donaldson brainchild that just finished up is:
Turns out there a ton of young folks willing to see if they can turn their obsessions with their smartphones and gaming, and their ability to stay awake around the clock by no doubt fueling on Jolt or Mountain Dew, into some pretty big bucks. Nice to know that there's gold in them there fingers.
Me? Even if my fingers were athletic and game enough to participate, a minute or two staring at the day-glo screen would have blinded me. Over and out.
But that's just me. At 70 hours, Donaldson called the whole thing off, and handed the four winners who were still letting their fingers do the apping $20K each. Not bad for 70 hours work, even though it might take them quite a while to unkink their finger and unblear their eyeballs.
The Final Four were a bit confused when Donaldson blew the final whistle. One thought it was a trick trying to sucker three of the contestants to give it up. But, no, Donaldson was on the up and up.
Other than the Fab Four, there were a handful of others (actually a handful with four fingers but no thumb) who walked away with a few bucks when, "over the last day, Donaldson started offering some of the remaining players thousands of dollars to take their finger off the app."
Remember, at that point, the winners wasn't 100% guaranteed to get a big payday. They could've ended up with as little as a buck. Plus there was no guarantee you were going to be the last finger standing. So two players settled for $5K each and, the following day, another two for $10K a piece.
In any case, even with the possibility of a permanently kinked finger, Finger on the App is a lot better for everyone's health than the hot-dog eating contest that was held on the Fourth of July. Plus Finger on the App has bigger prize. (In case you're interested, coronavirus or not, the Coney Island Nathan's contest went on as usual, with perennial champeen Joey Chestnut gulping down a record-breaking 75 hot dogs and buns. He won $10K.)
By the way, Donaldson is more than a YouTube prankster. He uses the money raised by his stunts to do nice things for friends, family, and strangers. And he's helped raise nearly $30 million for the Arbor Day Foundation, which will be put towards planting 30 million trees. Plus he's worth an estimated $8 million.
Not bad for a 22 year old kid. And big props that he's no an influencer, getting paid to pout his lips and shill for some product. However weird and somewhat useless the stuff Donaldson comes up with is, he's creative, interesting, and do-gooding.
Finger App on!
For their latest drop - I keep wanting to say "hack" here, because they remind me of the pranks (called hacks) that MIT students have been famous for for decades - is in partnership with Jimmy Donaldson, a young (he's 22) YouTuber with tens of millions of subscribers, who specializes in stunts. In 2017, his breakout stunt was a video of himself counting to 100,000. (And I thought getting through the entirety of 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall was tedious enough...)
Anyway, the Donaldson brainchild that just finished up is:
“Finger on the App,” a one-time multiplayer game with a very simple premise: the last person to take their finger off their phone screen wins up to $25,000. The twist is that “Finger on the App” has a fluctuating prize pool. Other players decide the final cash prize amount, meaning the prize can be anywhere from $1 to $25,000. The game kick[ed] off on June 30th at 3PM ET. (Source: The Verge - 06.22.20)And it kicked off with 1 million players. Sounds like a ton to me, but Donaldson had been anticipating that there would have been more:
Finger on the App can handle “millions of concurrent players,” Donaldson told The Verge, and that comes with some concerns. Donaldson, his team, and MSCHF were especially interested in “making sureYou might have been tempted to believe that all the young folk were either occupied with protests - Oh, those wonderful kids who are going to make the world a place - or running COVID parties in which mask-less party-goers throw money into a pot which goes to the first attendee to come down with COVID - Oh, those feckless little a-holes.
someone couldn’t just duct tape their hand to the phone,” so they require you to occasionally move your finger in specific ways, he said. With millions of players signing up to try to win money, Donaldson knows that much of it is out of his control, but it’s that chaotic element that he’s most excited by.
“I think the beauty of the game is that we don’t really have control,” Donaldson said. “It’s really up to the people playing and seeing who lasts the longest, and I think our main thing was just keeping the game fair.”
Turns out there a ton of young folks willing to see if they can turn their obsessions with their smartphones and gaming, and their ability to stay awake around the clock by no doubt fueling on Jolt or Mountain Dew, into some pretty big bucks. Nice to know that there's gold in them there fingers.
Me? Even if my fingers were athletic and game enough to participate, a minute or two staring at the day-glo screen would have blinded me. Over and out.
But that's just me. At 70 hours, Donaldson called the whole thing off, and handed the four winners who were still letting their fingers do the apping $20K each. Not bad for 70 hours work, even though it might take them quite a while to unkink their finger and unblear their eyeballs.
The Final Four were a bit confused when Donaldson blew the final whistle. One thought it was a trick trying to sucker three of the contestants to give it up. But, no, Donaldson was on the up and up.
“DEAR THE FOUR REMAINING CONTESTANTS WITH YOUR FINGER STILL ON THE APP, I’M ENDING IT HERE.” (Source: The Verge 07.03.20)Donaldson is just "Glad a robot didn’t win."
Other than the Fab Four, there were a handful of others (actually a handful with four fingers but no thumb) who walked away with a few bucks when, "over the last day, Donaldson started offering some of the remaining players thousands of dollars to take their finger off the app."
Remember, at that point, the winners wasn't 100% guaranteed to get a big payday. They could've ended up with as little as a buck. Plus there was no guarantee you were going to be the last finger standing. So two players settled for $5K each and, the following day, another two for $10K a piece.
In any case, even with the possibility of a permanently kinked finger, Finger on the App is a lot better for everyone's health than the hot-dog eating contest that was held on the Fourth of July. Plus Finger on the App has bigger prize. (In case you're interested, coronavirus or not, the Coney Island Nathan's contest went on as usual, with perennial champeen Joey Chestnut gulping down a record-breaking 75 hot dogs and buns. He won $10K.)
By the way, Donaldson is more than a YouTube prankster. He uses the money raised by his stunts to do nice things for friends, family, and strangers. And he's helped raise nearly $30 million for the Arbor Day Foundation, which will be put towards planting 30 million trees. Plus he's worth an estimated $8 million.
Not bad for a 22 year old kid. And big props that he's no an influencer, getting paid to pout his lips and shill for some product. However weird and somewhat useless the stuff Donaldson comes up with is, he's creative, interesting, and do-gooding.
Finger App on!
Friday, July 03, 2020
Glorious Fourth? Not feeling it this year...
Many years ago - fifty, in fact - I was at the July 4th Boston Pops concert and fireworks show on the Esplanade along the Charles River. This was well before it became a thing that attracted half-a-million people, etc. I haven't been for years. Make that decades. Why subject myself to the security measures and all those people when I can watch the concert on TV and the fireworks out the window?
Anyway, at that long ago concert, my roommate and I were sitting on our blanket (a madras bedspread: this was, after all, 1970) next to a young couple with a little girl who was 1 1/2 or 2.
The Pops concert, then an now, always featured some sing-along and clap-along numbers. We were in the clap-along to The Stars and Stripes Forever moment, all of us dutifully clapping along. With the exception of the toddler on the next blanket. She just was not feeling it. She wasn't acting out in any way - although God knows the concert must have been a pretty boring experience for such a little kiddo. Just happy to be sitting there not clapping along.
Mom, however, wasn't having any of that behavior, and zoomed right in to harsh that little one's mellow.
At first, she mildly attempted to coax her daughter into clapping, even taking her hands to demonstrate how clapping worked - just in case her child was having a senior mo and had forgotten how to patty-cake. Anyway, the little girl continued to resist - how terrible! how two! - and mom kept escalating, until she grabbed the kid, roughly, by her arm and hissed, "Clap or I'll clap your ass."
Not surprisingly, this didn't put the child into a patriotic frame of mind in the least. The family departed, not in a patriotic fervor, but in a huff.
I usually feel reasonably good about the Fourth of July, and generally enjoy it. I read the Declaration of Independence in the Boston Globe. (Say what you will, those boys could write.) I sing along with the Pops when they play Grand Old Flag. I wear my light blue baseball cap with the flag on it - if only to show that die-hard liberals can be patriotic, too.
Truth is, I'm not patriotic as it has come to be defined by so many - the others, the them. My country, right or wrong. Love it or leave it. Me? I always drift on back to the Jules Feiffer cartoon from the late 1960's: Heads off! The flag!
There is a lot to like - even love - and admire about my country. It's complex, beautiful, vibrant, big-shouldered and often bighearted. It was founded by men who, while imperfect, were brilliant. (Imperfect: slavery, the Electoral College...) We are a nation built on ideas, not bloodlines or religion. America provided a home for my Irish immigrant great-grandparents, and for my German (by way of Rumania) immigrant grandparents - my mother in tow, not much older than that toddler who wouldn't clap along. They had a lot more opportunities, and they became a lot more prosperous here than they would have in the old country. To me, the genius of the United States is that it doesn't matter who you are, what you are, and where you came from, you can become an American, in your first generation here, in a way that you can't become Irish by moving to Ireland, or German by moving to Germany.
Has this worked out equally well for all? Obviously not. There are lumps in the melting pot.
Still, I'm glad I'm here, and not in Syria, or Russia, or North Korea, or in any number of places where life would be pretty damned awful.
Notice I didn't say Ireland or Germany here. Because, in truth, while life in those places would have been harsher and far more difficult for my great-grandparents and grandparents - even though they were all intelligent, industrious, hardworking - if they'd stayed, there's no doubt in my mind that if you fast forwarded a couple of generations, by my generation, "we" would be doing pretty well. We'd be well-educated. We'd have good jobs. We'd have a lot more possessions than what fit in the small trunks that Matthew, Bridget, John, Margaret, Jacob, Magdalena, and Elisabeth (my mother) came over with.
Still, I'm happy to be here. It's just that I have no problem acknowledging that there are plenty of other countries where you can live in prosperity and freedom, without the burden of having to live in a superpower that continually gets itself all caught up in its exceptionalism, its need to think of itself as the greatest nation ever in the whole wide world ever. USA! USA! Maybe yes, maybe no. Canada's pretty good, isn't all. All the goodies, none of the baggage.
When I was in college, during the Vietnam War, I had this poster (Sister Corita meets Albert Camus) in my dorm room.
I no longer have the poster, but the sentiment still holds.
I hope that we can work things through as we - hopefully - begin to seriously grapple with our original sin of slavery. And I hope to do my bit by voting for decent people, by donating to worthy causes, and by working through my own shit - because ain't none of us escaped the swirl of racism untouched.
This is a scary year. Addressing racism is scary. Living during a pandemic is scary. Having an iffy economy is scary. Having an evil and incompetent man in the White House who would seemingly like nothing better than to foment a race-based civil war, who would prosecute/persecute his perceived enemies on trumped up charges, who would do everything possible to suppress the votes of those who would vote against him, who would silence the free press, who insults our democratic allies while sucking up to strong men who'd like nothing better than to see us topple over in ruins, and who could give two shits if millions of people die thanks to the coronavirus hoax (as long as most of those millions are brown or black) and many millions more die because of his climate change denial, is scary.
Life being scary is not the reason I'm not feeling so Glorious Fourth-y this year. It's watching the country that I - am I going to use the L word? yes I am - love come apart at the seams that's taking the joy out of the day for me. Can we get through all this? I certainly hope so.
Until then, fingers crossed for a more Glorious Fourth next year.
Anyway, at that long ago concert, my roommate and I were sitting on our blanket (a madras bedspread: this was, after all, 1970) next to a young couple with a little girl who was 1 1/2 or 2.
The Pops concert, then an now, always featured some sing-along and clap-along numbers. We were in the clap-along to The Stars and Stripes Forever moment, all of us dutifully clapping along. With the exception of the toddler on the next blanket. She just was not feeling it. She wasn't acting out in any way - although God knows the concert must have been a pretty boring experience for such a little kiddo. Just happy to be sitting there not clapping along.
Mom, however, wasn't having any of that behavior, and zoomed right in to harsh that little one's mellow.
At first, she mildly attempted to coax her daughter into clapping, even taking her hands to demonstrate how clapping worked - just in case her child was having a senior mo and had forgotten how to patty-cake. Anyway, the little girl continued to resist - how terrible! how two! - and mom kept escalating, until she grabbed the kid, roughly, by her arm and hissed, "Clap or I'll clap your ass."
Not surprisingly, this didn't put the child into a patriotic frame of mind in the least. The family departed, not in a patriotic fervor, but in a huff.
I usually feel reasonably good about the Fourth of July, and generally enjoy it. I read the Declaration of Independence in the Boston Globe. (Say what you will, those boys could write.) I sing along with the Pops when they play Grand Old Flag. I wear my light blue baseball cap with the flag on it - if only to show that die-hard liberals can be patriotic, too.
Truth is, I'm not patriotic as it has come to be defined by so many - the others, the them. My country, right or wrong. Love it or leave it. Me? I always drift on back to the Jules Feiffer cartoon from the late 1960's: Heads off! The flag!
There is a lot to like - even love - and admire about my country. It's complex, beautiful, vibrant, big-shouldered and often bighearted. It was founded by men who, while imperfect, were brilliant. (Imperfect: slavery, the Electoral College...) We are a nation built on ideas, not bloodlines or religion. America provided a home for my Irish immigrant great-grandparents, and for my German (by way of Rumania) immigrant grandparents - my mother in tow, not much older than that toddler who wouldn't clap along. They had a lot more opportunities, and they became a lot more prosperous here than they would have in the old country. To me, the genius of the United States is that it doesn't matter who you are, what you are, and where you came from, you can become an American, in your first generation here, in a way that you can't become Irish by moving to Ireland, or German by moving to Germany.
Has this worked out equally well for all? Obviously not. There are lumps in the melting pot.
Still, I'm glad I'm here, and not in Syria, or Russia, or North Korea, or in any number of places where life would be pretty damned awful.
Notice I didn't say Ireland or Germany here. Because, in truth, while life in those places would have been harsher and far more difficult for my great-grandparents and grandparents - even though they were all intelligent, industrious, hardworking - if they'd stayed, there's no doubt in my mind that if you fast forwarded a couple of generations, by my generation, "we" would be doing pretty well. We'd be well-educated. We'd have good jobs. We'd have a lot more possessions than what fit in the small trunks that Matthew, Bridget, John, Margaret, Jacob, Magdalena, and Elisabeth (my mother) came over with.
Still, I'm happy to be here. It's just that I have no problem acknowledging that there are plenty of other countries where you can live in prosperity and freedom, without the burden of having to live in a superpower that continually gets itself all caught up in its exceptionalism, its need to think of itself as the greatest nation ever in the whole wide world ever. USA! USA! Maybe yes, maybe no. Canada's pretty good, isn't all. All the goodies, none of the baggage.
When I was in college, during the Vietnam War, I had this poster (Sister Corita meets Albert Camus) in my dorm room.
I no longer have the poster, but the sentiment still holds.
I hope that we can work things through as we - hopefully - begin to seriously grapple with our original sin of slavery. And I hope to do my bit by voting for decent people, by donating to worthy causes, and by working through my own shit - because ain't none of us escaped the swirl of racism untouched.
This is a scary year. Addressing racism is scary. Living during a pandemic is scary. Having an iffy economy is scary. Having an evil and incompetent man in the White House who would seemingly like nothing better than to foment a race-based civil war, who would prosecute/persecute his perceived enemies on trumped up charges, who would do everything possible to suppress the votes of those who would vote against him, who would silence the free press, who insults our democratic allies while sucking up to strong men who'd like nothing better than to see us topple over in ruins, and who could give two shits if millions of people die thanks to the coronavirus hoax (as long as most of those millions are brown or black) and many millions more die because of his climate change denial, is scary.
Life being scary is not the reason I'm not feeling so Glorious Fourth-y this year. It's watching the country that I - am I going to use the L word? yes I am - love come apart at the seams that's taking the joy out of the day for me. Can we get through all this? I certainly hope so.
Until then, fingers crossed for a more Glorious Fourth next year.
Thursday, July 02, 2020
All I really want is a sparkler or two
I've always loved watching fireworks. Not that I ever went to any spectacular display. If we were visiting family in Chicago, we'd spend the 4th at my grandmother's summer house in Lake Villa, about 50 miles out of the city. The Rogers kids and the Dineen kids would pile into the family cars and head over to Libertyville for fireworks. I suspect the show in Chicago, while likely not as extravaganza as it is these days, was bigger and better than what we saw in Libertyville. Still, fireworks on a warm summer night... Heaven.
Since the lock down began a few months back, some neighborhoods in Boston have been lit. Not mine. I've only been awoken once. (I do anticipate more action over the next couple of days.) But in some areas of the city, it's an every night and every wee hours of the morning occurrence. My niece lives in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, and there it's happening a lot, rousting folks out of their sleep and driving dogs to a distraction (and no doubt leading to an uptick in purchases of Thunder Shirts). And we're not talking about small potatoes fireworks, either. This beauty was set off outside the Franklin Park Zoo, which - if it isn't in Jamaica Plain, isn't far away. (Poor critters.)
Anyway, there's been a surge in fireworks purchases this year, with some sellers claiming that business is booming: 2x or even 3x last year's take.
Many attribute it to coronavirus boredom. As in "there's nothing to do." Or as Bruce Zoldan, who runs Phantom, a national chain with three outlets in NH*, puts it, folks are turning to fireworks:
Anyway, Phantom includes a disclaimer in their packages, noting that fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts. But they're not illegal to buy. They are, of course, illegal to sell in Massachusetts, and our Mayor, Marty Walsh, has set up a task force to investigate the back-of-the-van sales that are happening in the city after enterprising folks with nothing to do stock up in New Hampshire and head back down to Boston to make a buck off of those whose only source of entertainment is setting off fireworks.
If we were in Worcester for the 4th, we went to a similarly modest display in Auburn, a nearby suburb.
Whether we were in Lake Villa or Worcester, the 4th also meant our own personal fireworks, if sparklers are classified as fireworks. There's nothing more wonderful than running around in the dark, sparkler in hand, writing your name in the night sky. Bliss! As long as you were smart enough to get rid of it before it burnt down to your fingers. (And there was nothing worse than getting a sparkler that was a dud.)
The other firework-ish things we had were cherry bombs and snakes. Cherry bombs were often disappointing, as you needed to really get the right English on them when you smashed them down against the pavement. I just looked up cherry bombs, and apparently the ones we had as kids were a lot smaller and less lethal than what they're calling a cherry bomb these days. Maybe those little explosives we had - they didn't have much more bang than a handful of cap gun caps - were called something else and we wishfully thinking called them cherry bombs.
Then there were snakes. These were little tablets of something chemical that, when lit, formed a curly, snake-looking ash. My mother was very conservative - a complete and utter wet blanker - when it came to anything adventurous, but I remember being 8 years old or so, sitting in the backyard, exhausting a pack of matches in an often futile attempt to light my snakes.
Some kids were, of course, more experimental. When I was 12 or 13, a kid in the parish blew a finger off playing with fireworks that were the real deal. I didn't know Al - he was a pub (someone who went to public school) and a year or two older - but you pretty much at least vaguely knew everyone, and I'd seen him hanging around Bennett Field. Before and after, when his hand was all bandaged up.
Fast forward a few decades, and at one point my brother-in-law got a hold of some real fireworks - bottle rockets, Roman candles, pinwheels - and we were all set off to enjoy our own personal fireworks display on the beach near their (then) house in Hull. Rick had some rocket propped up in the sand which, just after he'd lit it, toppled over. We were all a little high, and I recall scary hilarity ensuing as Rick belly-crawled on the sand to get out of the erratic path of that rocket, which was spinning around like crazy.
Where did Rick get those (illegal) fireworks. It may have been in his home state of Pennsylvania, where "consumer" fireworks are legal. Or it may have been in New Hampshire, which is where most residents of Massachusetts - a total no-go zone it comes to fireworks - head when they want to firework up.
If you live in a city, you are more than likely aware that consumer fireworks this year have become a real thing, well beyond the usual fireworks that lead up to and follow the Glorious Fourth.
Since the lock down began a few months back, some neighborhoods in Boston have been lit. Not mine. I've only been awoken once. (I do anticipate more action over the next couple of days.) But in some areas of the city, it's an every night and every wee hours of the morning occurrence. My niece lives in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, and there it's happening a lot, rousting folks out of their sleep and driving dogs to a distraction (and no doubt leading to an uptick in purchases of Thunder Shirts). And we're not talking about small potatoes fireworks, either. This beauty was set off outside the Franklin Park Zoo, which - if it isn't in Jamaica Plain, isn't far away. (Poor critters.)
So if your nocturnal peace is being disturbed, it's not your imagination:
For much of the past two months, the skies of Greater Boston have been lit up by a noisy display that has divided the region into two camps: those lighting off fireworks and those wondering why their neighbors won’t stop lighting off fireworks. (Source: Boston Globe)
Most of these urban nightmares are coming from the home of Live Free or Die, a straight shot up Route 93 from Boston. Ah, New Hampshire.
Patrons waited in a 15-minute line to enter the store [Phantom Fireworks] then emerged with hundreds of dollars’ worth of mortars, fountains, and aerial repeaters. Most said they would never dream of igniting the devices in the Bay State. “Fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts,” observed one man — who like others declined to give his name — as he loaded up his truck with his purchases, including the “BARELY LEGAL” Lock and Load mortar kit.
Nothing to do? Spoken like a true Masshole!Another man admitted that he was bringing his haul back home to Weymouth: “Everybody’s setting off fireworks. If it’s not me, it’s the neighbors,” the man said, holding up coupons that Phantom had mailed him. “And it’s just because there’s nothing to do.”
Anyway, there's been a surge in fireworks purchases this year, with some sellers claiming that business is booming: 2x or even 3x last year's take.
Many attribute it to coronavirus boredom. As in "there's nothing to do." Or as Bruce Zoldan, who runs Phantom, a national chain with three outlets in NH*, puts it, folks are turning to fireworks:
“...because it’s their only avenue of entertainment right now.”Oh, FFS.
Anyway, Phantom includes a disclaimer in their packages, noting that fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts. But they're not illegal to buy. They are, of course, illegal to sell in Massachusetts, and our Mayor, Marty Walsh, has set up a task force to investigate the back-of-the-van sales that are happening in the city after enterprising folks with nothing to do stock up in New Hampshire and head back down to Boston to make a buck off of those whose only source of entertainment is setting off fireworks.
“They’re definitely being sold illegally here,” Walsh said at a news conference Monday. “If we find you, we’re gonna confiscate that, and if you have large amounts of fireworks … that you’re selling in our communities, you will be arrested.”Whether those setting off fireworks are bored, letting off steam, pissed off about the state of the world (and who can blame them there), fireworks are real nuisance. And in a city chock-full of old wooden three deckers, could pose a real danger. Not to mention, you could blow a finger off!
This year, with no fireworks scheduled for Boston - and we usually have a fabulous fireworks show - I'm sure there'll be a ton of amateur hour pyrotechnics going on in our fair city. But, here's hoping that once the 4th is over and done with, the urban menace of fireworks in the night will go away.
As for me, I wouldn't say 'no' if someone spotted me a sparkler or two.
______________________________________
*Not so fun fact: The Tsarnaev brothers, i.e., the Boston Marathon bombers, bought fireworks used in their bomb making at a NH Phantom store.
Wednesday, July 01, 2020
Send in the tourists? Not gonna happen.
I've been down to the Cape - Wellfleet - a couple of times in the last month. Typically in June everything is pretty much opened up, but the tourist (and traffic) season is still not in full swing until this week. So it didn't seem all that odd. Other than the masks and the fact that until just last week, there was no indoor dining at all - and even that's pretty limited - so it was takeout all the way.
Still, there were plenty of signs that all's not well, and that it's probably not going to get much weller any time soon. Empty parking lots at the motels. A few restaurants not yet open - or ever - at all. Fewer inflatables on the roofs of those places on Route 6 that sell all the crazy floats: slice of pizza, swan, Sponge Bob...
The Wellfleet Drive-In is open, but I'm not sure about all the mini-golfs.
The ice cream places are doing a good business, because what's a summer on the Cape without a scoop or two of Cranberry Bog or Ryder Beach Rubble.
From what I've seen, the shops are open. I only went in to Atlantic Spice, but there was a wait, as only a few people are allowed in at a time.
But from what I read, the Cape will be hurting this year.
Sure, those with summer homes will be there - most already seem to be. And maybe those who rent for a week or two will still be renting for a week or two. Mostly. But eating out is such a big part of vacation, and with such limited seating available this year, I don't think a lot of people will bother. It's tough enough getting into some of these places when they're able to seat in their full capacity. Take out's fine - it sure beats cooking, and you're probably not going to make fried clams on your own - but it's not the same as sitting down and having someone wait on you.
Another big part of vacation is poking in shops. For a while there, when I was a kid, we spent a couple of weeks on the Cape, in Bass River, each summer in those years we didn't go to Chicago to visit family. Even as a kid with no money, there was always something you could afford in the Barefoot Trader. One year, for me, it was a bracelet with different colored stones. A family purchase was a hideous ceramic ashtray that was a pinky-tan (old Crayola Flesh color) foot. It was in the family room at our house well after anyone was smoking there.
This is more of less what it looked like:
Classy!
There was also an Irish gift shop, and one year pious little me bought some rosary beads that looked like little brown teeth. Another year, my sister Kath and I got matching straw hats in Hyannis that featured plastic palm trees with a monkey climbing up the trunk. As I mentioned, we were a classy lot.
There are still plenty of cheapo souvenir and tee-shirt shops, but there are also plenty of very nice shops selling cool women's clothing, interesting crafts, nice gifts, and works of art (reasonable and pricey). Going to the Cape for me always means doing a bit of shopping (or at least browsing) in some lovely shops.
Fortunately, for food, there's takeout. And for many shops, there's on line.
Still, there's no denying that some of the fun goes out of vacation when you can't go out to eat, when you can't do a little shopping.
I don't suppose that the restaurants and shops will be doing a great business, but many will try to eke things out.
But there's no takeout, no online, for places that aren't rented out, for motels.
Places that rely on seasonal tourism are just plain in for a tough year. You plan on the 80-20 rule, with 80% of your revenues coming in during 20% of the year. But you're running into the 20-20 rule instead. I'm guessing that a lot of places will be shuttering for good. And a lot of those who rely on a good season to see them through the winter will be hurtin' for certain. (We have not begun to see the devastation to the economy that's coming...)
But the Cape can rely on at least the business of those who spend the full summer there, and for the (however diminished) business that will come from those who will still be renting a place. There are still things to do, like go to the beach. Get lobster rolls and ice cream. Walk around P'town.
It's not just the Cape, of course. Massachusetts overall does a ton of tourist business, and Boston does a lot of convention business. This coming weekend, Boston would typically be jammed with folks coming in for the Fourth of July Pops concert and fireworks extravaganza. This year, zip.
COVID-19 is striking quite a blow, even if - because we've been such good, mask-wearing doobies - Massachusetts is gradually opening things up again.
It's got to be pretty much the same all over. The only hope for tourism may be that, thanks to our cretinous response to the pandemic, Europe won't be letting any of us in. So maybe the folks who were going to go to Paris will end up at the Cape. Or on Mackinac Island. Or at Bear Lake.
Bad as it is in most touristic places, it's got to be worse in Orlando.
I'd guess that most folks who go to Orlando as tourists fly there. You going to get on a plane any time soon?
And even if you are willing to get on a plane, are you willing to fly to Florida, where the coronavirus is running rampant. And given the rumors of how Florida is fudging their numbers, it's probably running a lot more rampant than they're letting on.
It's actually hard for me to believe that, even in the best of times, anyone would want to go to Florida during the summer. But I don't have little kids clamoring to see the Disney Princesses or take a ride on Space Mountain.
And the not-so-Magic Kingdom has been shut down since March, so they missed out on the spring vacationers.
This is all translating into an Orlando unemployment rate of 22.6% for May. (In Boston, it was 14.4%.)
Officials estimate that it will take as many as five years for the Orlando economy to recover from the pandemic.
A mega corporation like Disney can probably suck up a bad year. Not so much all those they employ. And those who work at the other parks. And in the restaurants and bars that are having a hard time whether they're in a tourist center or not.
But it's worse for the businesses that rely on tourists. And those tourists coming back any time soon? I'm afraid that's not gonna happen.
Still, there were plenty of signs that all's not well, and that it's probably not going to get much weller any time soon. Empty parking lots at the motels. A few restaurants not yet open - or ever - at all. Fewer inflatables on the roofs of those places on Route 6 that sell all the crazy floats: slice of pizza, swan, Sponge Bob...
The Wellfleet Drive-In is open, but I'm not sure about all the mini-golfs.
The ice cream places are doing a good business, because what's a summer on the Cape without a scoop or two of Cranberry Bog or Ryder Beach Rubble.
From what I've seen, the shops are open. I only went in to Atlantic Spice, but there was a wait, as only a few people are allowed in at a time.
But from what I read, the Cape will be hurting this year.
Sure, those with summer homes will be there - most already seem to be. And maybe those who rent for a week or two will still be renting for a week or two. Mostly. But eating out is such a big part of vacation, and with such limited seating available this year, I don't think a lot of people will bother. It's tough enough getting into some of these places when they're able to seat in their full capacity. Take out's fine - it sure beats cooking, and you're probably not going to make fried clams on your own - but it's not the same as sitting down and having someone wait on you.
Another big part of vacation is poking in shops. For a while there, when I was a kid, we spent a couple of weeks on the Cape, in Bass River, each summer in those years we didn't go to Chicago to visit family. Even as a kid with no money, there was always something you could afford in the Barefoot Trader. One year, for me, it was a bracelet with different colored stones. A family purchase was a hideous ceramic ashtray that was a pinky-tan (old Crayola Flesh color) foot. It was in the family room at our house well after anyone was smoking there.
This is more of less what it looked like:
There was also an Irish gift shop, and one year pious little me bought some rosary beads that looked like little brown teeth. Another year, my sister Kath and I got matching straw hats in Hyannis that featured plastic palm trees with a monkey climbing up the trunk. As I mentioned, we were a classy lot.
There are still plenty of cheapo souvenir and tee-shirt shops, but there are also plenty of very nice shops selling cool women's clothing, interesting crafts, nice gifts, and works of art (reasonable and pricey). Going to the Cape for me always means doing a bit of shopping (or at least browsing) in some lovely shops.
Fortunately, for food, there's takeout. And for many shops, there's on line.
Still, there's no denying that some of the fun goes out of vacation when you can't go out to eat, when you can't do a little shopping.
I don't suppose that the restaurants and shops will be doing a great business, but many will try to eke things out.
But there's no takeout, no online, for places that aren't rented out, for motels.
Places that rely on seasonal tourism are just plain in for a tough year. You plan on the 80-20 rule, with 80% of your revenues coming in during 20% of the year. But you're running into the 20-20 rule instead. I'm guessing that a lot of places will be shuttering for good. And a lot of those who rely on a good season to see them through the winter will be hurtin' for certain. (We have not begun to see the devastation to the economy that's coming...)
But the Cape can rely on at least the business of those who spend the full summer there, and for the (however diminished) business that will come from those who will still be renting a place. There are still things to do, like go to the beach. Get lobster rolls and ice cream. Walk around P'town.
It's not just the Cape, of course. Massachusetts overall does a ton of tourist business, and Boston does a lot of convention business. This coming weekend, Boston would typically be jammed with folks coming in for the Fourth of July Pops concert and fireworks extravaganza. This year, zip.
COVID-19 is striking quite a blow, even if - because we've been such good, mask-wearing doobies - Massachusetts is gradually opening things up again.
It's got to be pretty much the same all over. The only hope for tourism may be that, thanks to our cretinous response to the pandemic, Europe won't be letting any of us in. So maybe the folks who were going to go to Paris will end up at the Cape. Or on Mackinac Island. Or at Bear Lake.
Bad as it is in most touristic places, it's got to be worse in Orlando.
Few areas of the country rely on tourism more than Central Florida, which is home to Disney World, SeaWorld, Universal, Gatorland, Legoland, and a plethora of smaller attractions. An estimated 250,000 people work in the leisure and hospitality industries, accounting for 25 percent of jobs in the area, according to the trade organization Visit Orlando.
Most workers whose livelihoods depend on Orlando’s ability to attract tourists in large numbers have managed to get by as the amusement economy shut down around them — though for some it has been a struggle. (Source: Boston Globe)No surprise there. Florida is reputed to have one of the worst (and stingiest) unemployment systems. Difficult to navigate through, slow to respond once you do - and supposedly designed to make it difficult for those needing help to get it.
Recent weeks have brought a new kind of purgatory for tourism workers in the region. Will spiking coronavirus cases in Florida halt the reopening that was beginning to happen? Disney, for instance, has been calling back employees ahead of a limited return to operations on July 11.
“To Disney’s credit, they have done everything in their power to mitigate our safety concerns about returning to work,” said [Paul] Cox, who also serves as president of Disney World’s stagehand union. “People are mostly terrified that the company is going to stop the recalls. That would be a disaster. People are barely hanging on as it is, and unemployment benefits will end soon.”But even if Disney does end up opening in another couple of weeks, the question is if they open it, will they come.
I'd guess that most folks who go to Orlando as tourists fly there. You going to get on a plane any time soon?
And even if you are willing to get on a plane, are you willing to fly to Florida, where the coronavirus is running rampant. And given the rumors of how Florida is fudging their numbers, it's probably running a lot more rampant than they're letting on.
It's actually hard for me to believe that, even in the best of times, anyone would want to go to Florida during the summer. But I don't have little kids clamoring to see the Disney Princesses or take a ride on Space Mountain.
And the not-so-Magic Kingdom has been shut down since March, so they missed out on the spring vacationers.
This is all translating into an Orlando unemployment rate of 22.6% for May. (In Boston, it was 14.4%.)
Officials estimate that it will take as many as five years for the Orlando economy to recover from the pandemic.
A mega corporation like Disney can probably suck up a bad year. Not so much all those they employ. And those who work at the other parks. And in the restaurants and bars that are having a hard time whether they're in a tourist center or not.
But it's worse for the businesses that rely on tourists. And those tourists coming back any time soon? I'm afraid that's not gonna happen.
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