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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-103292782014-11-28T04:12:00.454-04:00Pink SlipPink Slip is devoted to posts related - however tangentially - to the workplace, business, management, the economy, lay-offs, etc.Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-29067308289535400382014-11-28T04:12:00.000-04:002014-11-28T04:12:00.459-04:00I wish I hadn't seen this
Me? I couldn't wait until Cyber Monday to get going on my online Christmas shopping.

I've been doing a bit here and there, getting the jump on The Season.

I'm a bit loath to admit- given my (current) loathing of all things professional football – that my shopping has taken me to the New England Patriots Pro Shop, looking for a little something for a young family member who happens to be A FAN.

While I was clicking through the dozens of possibilities – more than likely selecting the one that he will be least interested in – I came across the Toddler Dream Job Long Sleeve Tee.

The Toddler Dream Job Long Sleeve Tee-Red is great for the young fan in your life. The tee features the body of a cheerleader in a New England Patriots uniform with a small logo on the front. (Source: Patriots Pro Shop)

At first, I thought it was a headless cheerleader, which did make some sort of sense. Then I realized that this is a 'your head goes here' sort of shirt.

I don't think I would have found this so ridiculous if it had been billed as a Patriots Cheerleader Tee.

But dream job? DREAM JOB?

Okay, when you're wearing a size 2T or 4T you may not actually have a dream job. And you probably don't have $19.95 to spend on one of these tees, anyway. But the grownup with that $19.95 really should think for a sec or two before putting the idea in a little mind that cheerleading is actually the sort of job you might want to aspire to.

And if your child does say that her dream job is cheerleading, isn't this the time to tell her that this is really not a job. That cheerleaders get paid squat. That they all do something else. They're dance instructors. Stuff like that.

Waving the pompoms, sweetie-pie, is just not valued in our society – and with pretty good reason, frankly.

Admittedly, there would be few jobs on the Pats payroll that any kid would want. (Boys get to grab the player dream job shirts.)

Here, honey, I know you'd like to work in the Pats' front office when you grow up.

But why not team doctor? Or nurse?

Even little kids know who they are.

And here I was, just last week, complaining about the insulting approach Mattel had made to turning Barbie into a computer engineer.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrr…….
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-78383727035087430632014-11-27T18:18:00.000-04:002014-11-27T18:18:00.275-04:00Thanksgiving 2014
This is a year in which I have a couple of things to be decidedly unthankful for. Namely, the death of my husband and the death – two months later – of my oldest and dearest of friends, Marie.

Yet when I think about it, even these two terrible situations give me some reason for thanks.

I'm thankful that I was with Jim when he died, holding his hand, which I do think eased things for him a bit. I know it did for me.

I'm thankful that, with Jim gone, I had more time to spend with Marie during her last couple of months, and was able to be with her the day before she went into full palliative sedation, no longer able to communicate.

I'm thankful that, later that day, in a final conversation with another old friend of ours, Marie asked Kim whether she thought that she (Marie) would be well enough to go with me to Ireland to bring some of Jim's ashes. I know that on that day, Marie was in and out of lucidity. She knew, on one level, that she was dying. She told me she was ready, that she wasn't afraid, that she was just waiting. On the other hand, Marie was still drifting in and out of conversations like the one she had with Kim. I'm just thankful that I was fortunate enough to have a friend so good and dear that, on her death bed, she would be thinking about helping me through my grieving for my husband.

As always – but especially this year – I'm thankful for friends and family. I am extraordinarily lucky in this regard, that's for sure, as I have been reminded again and again throughout this long year.

As always, I'm thankful for my clients, especially for the ones who have become friends.

As always, I will make my annual appeal for St. Francis House, which has been helping Boston's poor and homeless rebuild their lives for 30 years now. If you have reason to be thankful this Thanksgiving Day, please consider donating to this wonderful organization.

As always, I'll put in a link to my last year's post for this holiday.

Last year, in writing about Jim's illness, I said:

We remain hopeful, but both weary and wary.

The day after Thanksgiving, some beyond the norm bleeding brought us into the MGH Cancer Center, where we got the word that it was time for hospice and the final countdown.

Never losing his sense of humor, as we left MGH, my husband said that, at this point, it really didn't seem to make much sense to stay gluten-free. What he really wanted was a hot dog. (Some GF foods are fine, but we never found decent hot dog rolls.) So we went out and had a hot dog.

In last year's post, I also wrote:

Still, when we received the initial diagnosis for Cancer Number Two in late December 2011, we would have given anything for a couple more years. Which we've gotten.

And I am exceedingly thankful for those two years, one month, 18 days.

All in all, I've got a lot to be thankful for. The only problem is I'm not sure exactly who* to be thankful to. (The atheist's dilemma.)

_______________________________________________

*Yes, I know. But "whom" sounds stuffy and awkward.
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-30293096057733968692014-11-26T04:43:00.000-04:002014-11-26T04:43:00.873-04:00Shopping on Thanksgiving Day. Tsk, tsk. (At least now we know who to blame for it…)
Me, I believe that there should be a couple of days a year when stores are closed.

I know it's impossible in the era of online shopping – all those folks with a shopping jones, all those online shopping opportunities (pushers feeding the shopping jones, as it were). But if retail stores could at least keep the shutters shuttered on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Wouldn't it be nice to think that store clerks could have a holiday off? After all, it's not like they're nurses or firefighters or otherwise serving a function that requires someone being on duty 24/365.

But, no.

The madness that had crept into stores having to open at midnight on Thanksgiving night is now contaminating the very day itself.

But apparently it's what the shoppers want.

Come on! Who needs to go shopping on Thanksgiving Day.

Seriously, doesn't it strike you as a bit odd that someone who has no place to go on Turkey Day has such serious Christmas shopping to do that they have to start on Thanksgiving?

Who are these shoppers who need to get into the stores on Thanksgiving Day itself?

If you can believe Money, it's the millennials.

According to one national survey from the loyalty marketing and customer analytics firm LoyaltyOne, only one-third of the overall population thinks that "stores being open all day Thanksgiving is a great idea." However, roughly half of those ages 18 to 24 say it's "great" for stores to be open on the national holiday, while 48% of consumers ages 25 to 34 are also on board with the idea. Among folks ages 55 and up, by contrast, only 16% think all-day store hours on Thanksgiving is a wonderful idea. (Source: Time/Money.)

Another poll showed pretty much the same.

…millennials are more likely than other generations to say they'll be shopping this Thanksgiving. Two-thirds of those ages 18 to 34 say they plan to shop on the holiday—in store, online, or both—compared to 51% of consumers ages 35 to 54 and only 30% of the 55+ category.

Well, I suppose that retailers have to cater to those who enjoy shopping, which apparently the millennials do.

For one thing, a broader look at millennial consumer behavior shows that a big reason this group is eager to jump on board with shopping on Thanksgiving is that young people like the idea of shopping pretty much every day.

I can't get too huffy here.

When I was in my teens, I wasn't much of a shopper. Having no money didn't help, but I really wasn't all that interested, anyway. I had better things to do. And there just wasn't as much stuff out there to be had.

But in my twenties, and well beyond, I was something of a shopping hobbyist.

Going shopping was fun, it was an outing with the girls, something to do on a Saturday.

When I worked downtown, I would "cruise The B" – i.e., check out Filene's Basement – pretty much every day.

When I worked in the burbs, it was easy enough to pop into the nearest mall on the way home and by something I didn't need: yet another periwinkle blue sweater, yet another cute bowl from Crate & Barrel.

So I can't put too much blame on the millennials.

Someday they'll realize that they have enough stuff. Just not yet.

And, after all, as the article points out, they're not apt to be hosting Thanksgiving Dinner, and may be just as happy to get out of the house as listen to Uncle Harry snore it off in front of a football game, or Aunt Bertha reveal the secret to her parsnip puree.

Interesting thing about those millennials, though.

When asked if they thought stores should be open so that they could shop, they were all in.

But when the question about holiday store openings was framed differently, so was the response:

In yet another holiday consumer poll, 77% of Americans ages 18 to 39 said that "retail stores should not be open on Thanksgiving Day so that employees can enjoy time with their friends and family."

Having been a sales girl – as we were called before someone came up with the notion of "associate" – who worked seasonally, I would have hated to have to work on Thanksgiving. Bad enough having to go in and sell umbrellas and writing paper the day after.

But to paraphrase Taylor Swift, shoppers gotta shop, shop, shop.

Me, I'm taking tomorrow off from shopping.

Easy for me to say and do: other than my Yankee Swap item, I'm pretty well done, anyway.
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-14434887162118299482014-11-25T05:01:00.000-04:002014-11-25T05:01:00.108-04:00Title Inflation News from the Hot Stove League
Even though it's the off-season, I always keep an eye out for stories about baseball.

It's winter, and I like having the hot stove league to keep me warm.

With no games to watch, I have been slogging (slugging?) my way through The Kid: The Immortal Life of Ted Williams by Ben Bradlee, Jr.

This was a hand-off from my brother-in-law, whose book club did The Kid. Rick is not a baseball fan in general, let alone a Ted Williams fan in particular, so this tome was pretty much torture for him.

Although it's been torture for me, as well, I am a baseball fan in general, a Red Sox fan in particular, and in my first game at Fenway Park – in Teddy Ballgame's final season – I saw The Kid hit a homerun. So I'm actually finding the book interesting, in a horrifically fascinating kind of way.

After all, it's not every day that you get to read 800 pages about someone who was a pretty awful person, a colossal boor, a roid-rager without the roids, a rip-roaring misogynist, a miserable husband, a pathetic father (can you imagine anyone calling their daughter the "c" word?)  – and someone who believed that Douglas MacArthur was the greatest person who had ever lived.

I'd say off with his head, and that's pretty much what happened to Ted when his son decided that there might be a buck to be made post-mortem selling Ted's DNA or cloning him, and had his severed head and the body from whence the head was severed cryogenically frozen.

Now that I've finished up The Immortal Life, I've been casting around for baseball news, and came across an article on MLB job-title inflation.

It may not be as exciting as news on what Jon Lester's going to do next, but I'll take it – especially as it combines both sports and the workplace.

Since the end of the 2013 season, five of the seven teams that have hired or promoted new people to run their baseball departments have given them lofty titles that don't include the traditional description of the role: general manager. Three of those teams have, in turn, named that person's chief underling the general manager, redefining what it means to have that coveted job. (Source: WSJ Online.)

One team even jumped on the C-level bandwagon – remember the good old days when the only C-level was the CEO, and maybe the CFO? Before we had CIO, CTO, CCO, CMO, CISO…? Before every sales person on earth was directed to sell into "the C-suite", no matter what they were selling? (For some companies, the hope was the person in the C-suite could get bamboozled into buying something that no one who knew anything, and/who would have been the one using the product, wanted, needed or thought was any good.)

Anyway, the Arizona Diamondbacks now have a Chief Baseball Officer.

At this rate, the once all-powerful GM title will soon belong to the intern of the aide to the assistant of the Supreme Baseball Leader.

Being a GM in baseball has always been a pretty meaty post:

…general managers have traditionally been teams' top decision-makers on baseball matters. They make trades, sign free agents and juggle an ever-evolving roster over the course of the season, all while overseeing the scouting and minor-league development operations that are the lifeblood of many teams' success.

But just being called GM alone hasn't been quite enough for a while, and most teams have tagged on some sort of VP (SVP, EVP) designation.

Now, not only are their titles becoming even more prestigious, but they are increasingly devoid of "general manager" altogether. Teams are handing that title to people traditionally known as assistants. The changes may be at least somewhat superficial, but there is a real strategy behind them...

By creating a structure that attracts better candidates for subordinate roles, teams can offer their top baseball decision makers the parts of the general-manager job they like while making it easier for them to delegate other parts. And today more than ever, there is plenty of work to go around.

And I guess there is: analyzing big data, dealing with 24/7 sports press, the care of feeding of a roster of highly paid, often highly strong, athletes.

But whatever's going on, a GM is no longer a GM.

Which reminds me of a couple of title inflation situations I was involved in.

When you work for a small company, one of the benefits is that it's easier to get to be a VP. So I got to be a small company VP.

Then we were acquired by a company where the title VP had a lot more meaning.

While the acquisition was in the works, I sent over a copy of the press release on it to the communications department of our new owners. When it came back, I noticed that my title had been changed from VP to Director. (That VP title may have come hard, but it sure went easy.)

Conversely, a few years later I was a director in a far larger company. In the run up to our public offering, VP titles were being handed out like candy. Most of my peers got them, so I started to figure, why not. So I asked the CMO how come I wasn't a VP. Oh, he told me, if you want I'll make you a VP.

Then I thought about it for a mo' and decided that I'd rather have people asking why I wasn't a VP than asking why I was.

I took a pass, which turned out to be a wise thing to do, as we found out a while later when the company decided it was top heavy and started title-demoting almost all those who had gotten quickie promotions. Definitely a case of easy come, easy go.

Anyway, if the title inflation story isn't exactly burning hot stove league news, it's something. And it's a bit more calming than reading about Ted Williams' severed head.
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-76614746209350882772014-11-24T05:34:00.000-04:002014-11-24T05:34:00.796-04:00The Smoking Lamp Remains Lit in Westminster, Massachusetts
In Massachusetts, usually when there's some sort of pro-environmental, pro-health (known to some as nanny-state) ordinance enacted, it happens in some liberal and/or well-heeled enclave. You can't buy a single-serve plastic bottle of Poland Springs water in Concord.  You can't tote your groceries home in plastic bags on Nantucket. America may run on Dunkin, but it won't be served in a Styrofoam cup in Brookline or Amherst. And they don't call it the People's Republic of Cambridge for nothing.

Then there's Westminster, stuck out there in the middle of nowhere (i.e., Worcester County). Not especially ritzy (median family income a tad below the state in general). Definitely no one's idea of liberal. (In 2012, they voted for Romney (53) over Obama (48) for president, and Brown (63) over Warren (38) for senator, which, electoral wise, makes them kind of double-l losers in that election.)

So it was kind of surprising to read that the town's Board of Health had proposed a ban on tobacco sales, which would have made it the first municipality in the country to do so.

The Board proposal would have put put quite a few items on the verboten list. It would:

…prohibit the sale of any tobacco or nicotine product whether it is intended to be "smoked, chewed, absorbed, dissolved, inhaled, snorted, sniffed, or ingested by any other means." That includes, but is not limited to: cigarettes, cigars, little cigars, chewing tobacco, blunt wraps, pipe tobacco, snuff, or electronic versions of cigarettes, cigars, pipes, hookah, and any other products that vaporize tobacco, according to the proposal. (Source: Newsweek).

I come down solidly on the side of being against smoking. I don't do it. I don't like it. I won't allow it in my home. And that goes for a dip or a chaw or an e-cig vape, too.

I especially despise cigars.

The other day, I was waiting for a walk sign with three well-dressed, early-middle-aged men  - they had the look of fin serv types, maybe in for the Harvard-Yale Game – all puffing away on cigars. I was behind them, but if they'd turned around, they'd have seen me giving them and their stinking cigars the stink eye.

A pox on their Cohibas!

I wouldn't mind seeing a ban on smoking in all public places, including the sidewalks.

And I shudder when I think of what a short while ago it was that we had to endure smoking in restaurants, movie theaters, offices, planes, buses, trains… Gag, gasp, choke. Even during the brief time in my life when I was something of a smoker, I didn't do all that much of it in public. Yes, at work – I was a waitress and we smoked during breaks. And yes, if I were in a bar or at a party. Other than that…

And yet, if folks want to smoke, dip, chew, or vape, they can have at it, as long as they're out of nose and lung range of me.

And, certainly, as long as tobacco remains legal, stores should be allowed to sell it. (This being my philosophical case, I don't see why tobacco shouldn't be advertised, either.)

No one's saying that smoking is good for anyone. No one's saying it should be encouraged in anyway. No one's saying that there shouldn't be special care taken to keep it out of the hands of kids.

But stores should be able to sell it.

Which is apparently what most of the folks in Westminster feel, as well.

Once the ban was proposed, the town folk were fuming, smoke was coming out of their ears, a firestorm was set off…

In light – hah! – of all the pushback, the Board of Health backed off.

The Westminster Board of Health withdrew its proposal to ban all tobacco sales on Wednesday after receiving criticism and outrage from the audience at a meeting last week. (Source: Boston.com)

Vox populi, in all it's full, scratchy throated, rasping rage.

At least one of the Board members – Ed Simoncini – was upfront about why he voted against the ban:

"It is obvious the town is against it and therefore I am against it," Simoncini told the Globe of the proposal.

Profile in courage, maybe not, but at least he's being honest.

So the smoking lamp remains lit in Westminster. The town's citizens and storekeepers can exhale now, and breathe (if they can stand the smoke-filled air) a collective sigh of relief.
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-18498872738708137512014-11-21T04:44:00.000-04:002014-11-21T04:44:00.546-04:00Can STEM girls be pretty in pink? Mattel thinks not.
In the old days, Barbie was just a glamour puss, standing tall in her spikes and striped bathing suit, just waiting for you to pull a ball gown over her head and send her out the door on tux-wearing Ken's arm.

But then Barbie became something of a career gal, with her ambitions growing over time. Stewardess Barbie, meet Astronaut Barbie. Nurse Barbie, meet Doctor Barbie. Secretary Barbie, meet Executive Barbie.

And Barbie can even be a Computer Engineer, pink laptop and all!

Me, I love whenever I hear that more women are finding their way into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) careers – even if they are made out of plastic.

When I heard about Computer Engineer Barbie, I figured that she wasn't the talking Barbie who famously uttered "I hate math" or "Math is so hard." (Leaving us wondering why so many math-headed girls turn away from the subject when the hit middle school. If they're exposed to Barbie's pap, it must feel to them that it's so un-girly to like boy stuff like numbers.)

As it turns out that while Computer Engineer Barbie is really only pretending to be a computer engineer.

Her real skill is to dream up an idea for a computer game, and then get the guys to write it for her.

Nothing wrong with being a designer. Nothing wrong with getting the right folks to implement your ideas. And, yes, there are folks who focus on the idea, or the UI, while others take care of the underlying code.

But being the idea person does not necessarily translate into Barbie = Computer Engineer – especially when she pulls the pale-frail ninny act.. (And in front of her sister Skipper, no less.)

This was what writer Pamela Ribon found out when a friend showed her a book entitled "Barbie: I can be a Computer Engineer." (She wrote about it here. Her post was then published in full on Gizmodo, which is where I saw it.)

In the book, Barbie is fast at work, designing a game "that shows how computers work", not with any pointed headed binary or hex nonsense, but with a cute puppy doing cute tricks.

But, as she tells Skipper, Barbie's not going to code the app, Steven and Brian are.

Steven and Brianna?

Couldn't it have been Stephanie and Brianna? Or Steve and Brianna? Or Stephanie and Brian?

Couldn't Barbie have said something a tad more empowering, like "I'll be coding the core underpinnings, Steven will be doing the UI, and Brian will QA it." This would give Barbie a bit more techie cred, and show that she knows how to get things done. (Even better, Barbie might explain to Skipper that, while she used to do the coding, these days she's a manger, but she still gets to keep her hand in coming up with specs once in a while. Good thing she has underlings like Steven and Brian who can implement for her…)

As if admitting that she can't code worth a damn isn't bad enough, Barbie Computer Engineer, when trying to email her ideas to Steven, gets a blinking screen. She and Skipper try to reboot: no dice.

Fortunately, Barbie – who apparently hasn't heard of Carbonite – has backed things up on a flash drive, which she can use on Skipper's computer.

Or she could use it on Skipper's computer if that darned flash drive wasn't so virus ridden that it takes Skipper's laptop down as well. (Thanks, Big Sis.)

Barbie may be a Computer Engineer, but she's apparently a rank beginner because she's still in a computer class – where we see her next – where it's still okay to ask a question like "if your computer gets a virus and crashes, how can you retrieve all the files you lost?"

The teacher – STEM queen Ms. Smith – explains how to do it, an exchange in which it is revealed that Computer Engineer Barbie isn't aware of security software.

Naturally, after class, Barbie seeks out Steven and Brian.

And, what do you know? Those savvy boys aren't only coders, they know how to make the fix.

Pamela cites her friend Helen Jane here. (Both, by the way, are the mothers of young girls.)

Steven and Brian are nice guys, I'm sure. But Steven and Brian are also everything frustrating about the tech industry. Steven and Brian represent the tech industry assumption that only men make meaningful contributions. Men fix this, men drive this and men take control to finish this. Steven and Brian don't value design as much as code. Steven and Brian represent every time I was talked over and interrupted — every time I didn't post a code solution in a forum because I didn't want to spend the next 72 years defending it. Steven and Brian make more money than I do for doing the same thing. And at the same time, Steven and Brian are nice guys.

And Barbie, as it turns out, isn't.

When the fix is in and she's able to return Skipper's laptop to her:

…she completely takes all the credit that it's no longer broken! What an asshole!

Barbie: I can be a Computer Engineer is a flip book that reverses to Barbie: I can be an Actress, where:

…Barbie saves the day by filling in for the princess in Skipper's school production of "Princess and the Pea." She ad-libs and smiles her way through her lines, and charms the entire audience. Standing ovation, plenty of praise. At no point did she need anybody's help. She didn't even need lines! Just standing there being Barbie was enough for everyone in attendance. See, actors? It's not that hard. Even Barbie can do it.

Thanks to Pamela Ribon, Mattel has apologized and promises to do better:

"We believe girls should be empowered to understand that anything is possible and believe they live in a world without limits," Barbie's Facebook post says. 'We apologize that this book didn't reflect that belief. All Barbie titles moving forward will be written to inspire girls imaginations and portray an empowered Barbie character." (Source: Huffington Post.)

The book has been around since 2010, and has apparently had a number of ding reviews on Amazon. But it took Ribon/Gizmodo to get Mattel moving.

I'm sure that Ribon and her friend will be looking at future titles, trying to keep Mattel honest here.

Look, there are differences between boys and girls.

Years ago, I saw a video of playgroups – made up of 4 year olds - that were given trucks and dolls to play with. The boys used the trucks to crash into each other; the girls used the trucks to transport the dolls to each others houses.

But that doesn't mean that girls shouldn't be encouraged to become interested in STEM, and to have it acknowledged that they can do it. (And why not let more boys know that they can be nurses and teachers, while we're at it.)

I've been in the technology biz for more than 30 years and, yep, most of those Stevens and Brians are nice guys.

But why can't Barbie be techie, too?

Sometimes life can be so disheartening.

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

And a doff of a Barbie-pink cap to my brother-in-law John for sending this story my way.
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-18297596242791255692014-11-20T04:41:00.000-04:002014-11-20T04:41:00.234-04:00A few words on words
There was a fun little piece over on the WSJ small business blog the other day. In the post that caught my eye, three folks sounded off on the buzzwords that give them, as entrepreneurs, brain cramps.

David Kalt, founder of reverb.com, a musical instrument exchange, is on his third startup. For him the bad word is startup, which he thinks you need to outgrow fast.

Startup might work for the first several months, or perhaps even the first year, of a company's life, but at some point it's time to move on and to become a business. To me, the words "amateur" and "startup" are analogous, as are the words "professional" and "business."

Having spent nearly a decade in what must have been one of the world's oldest startups, I'm with David here. He nails it completely when he writes:

When companies go for years calling themselves startups, it implies they're not a real business, that they're still clinging to the potential of tomorrow because they don't have a very promising reality today.

Please go read Mr. Kalt's full take on startup abuse.

Even though we eventually segued from designating our company as a "startup" to the slightly more realty-based word "restart",I blushed as I read his words. And to think that I spent 9 years, 3 months, and 4 days there before leaving to restart my own career. (They gave me no choice. I was fired after getting into an argument on how we were going to position our latest round of lay-offs to the remaining employees. Advice to those who really want to hold on to your jobs:  Avoid heatedly saying to the startup restart company president anything along the lines of 'You say what you're going to say. I'll say what I'm going to say. And we'll see who they believe.')

Exit strategy is the buzzword that drives Wayne Rivers, an expert on family businesses,  batty.

Since most of my experience was with outfits of the No Exit variety, this word doesn't especially bother me. Yet I can see Wayne's gripe, which is that many folks (mostly those in family-owned businesses) over-focus on their exit strategy, while ignoring the fact:

…that planning an exit strategy requires the simultaneous acts of planning entry strategies and leadership-development plans for those who must replace the departing executives.

Excessive focus on exit-strategy planning indicates to other stakeholders in a family business or entrepreneurial venture that achieving financial security and a high return on investment for the benefit of departing executives is more important than the other aspects of running a successful business, including continuing to deliver high-quality products and services and creating a great workplace environment.The typical exit strategy, then, is built around the financial needs of the departing generation with insufficient attention given to the practical and financial needs of the business itself and successor managers left behind.

My limited experience here was second hand, and not in a family business. The last family businesses anyone in my family was involved in were my German grandfather's butcher shop, and my Irish grandfather's bar. (And how's that for a couple of ethnic stereotypes?) But I did join one small tech company shortly after it had been sold to a larger entity. Right before the sale, the founders – who were known as "the principals" – did what some might interpret as the unprincipled thing and rejiggered the options so that the lesser employees who'd been there almost at the creation would get precious little, while "the principals" would rake in nearly the full pot.

My favorite bad buzzword was suggested by Mary Liz Curtin, who owns and operates Leon & Lulu, a store in Detroit that sells interesting and cool furniture and other house stuff. (The antithesis of Bob's Discount Furniture, I'm guessing.) Mary Liz, quite naturally, seems to think her job is about picking out interesting and cool stuff that people like, and selling it to people who like interesting ad cool stuff.

Seems fairly straightforward, but I seem to have it wrong.

Lately I have learned that I am a curator, with a carefully edited collection. We proudly exhibit a selection of artisanal products, from small-batch vendors, global resources or crowdsourced makers. We have a special synergy with our customers and are proud to be good corporate citizens.

Curator. Artisanal (which, hilariously, I often see as "artesian"). Small-batch. Global. Crowdsourced. Synergy. Good corporate citizens.

Well, she wins today's buzzword bingo, which she definitely aces when she adds:

Lately some of our suppliers have been referring to themselves as our partners in business.

I have only one partner in business, my husband. We became partners by investing our money, working endless hours and sharing the many responsibilities of running an independent business, employing more than 40 people.

We buy from our suppliers as long as their product performs well for us. They sell to us as long as we pay our bills. How in the world does this make us partners?

Partners.

Ah, yes.

In the good old days, everyone wanted to sell solutions, not products. And these days, everyone wants to be and have partners throughout their business ecosystem. (See: us techies have buzzwords, too!)

Now there's no doubt that, if I lived in Detroit, I would be drawn to Leon and Lulu. What's not to like about an outfit that sells cool and interesting stuff, and – frosting on the cake – is named after the owners' pets.

Hell, if I lived in Detroit – and I'm making a wild guess about someone named Mary Liz Curtin here – there would probably be a good possibility that I, or one of my sibs, went to grammar school or high school with her. So, right off the buzzword bat, I'm probably going to know Mary Liz and like Leon & Lulu.

But, from a pure buzzword perspective, what are we to make of the store's description:

Leon & Lulu is a destination lifestyle store featuring an eclectic mix of upscale furniture, unforgettable gifts, and accessories in an environment unlike any other.

I get that destination shopping means that you're willing to go out of your way to get there. (At least I think that's what it means.) And I do like eclectic, upscale, and unforgettable.

But lifestyle store?

Tell me, what isn't a lifestyle store?

7-11 is a lifestyle store for those who crave slurpees.

My neighborhood hardware store is a lifestyle store for people who like to think they're actually DIY handy-folk, but who basically hire someone to take care of anything other than the most rudimentary of repairs. It's a lifestyle store for those who like to go into the hardware store on Saturday and chat with the guys who work there, then pay for their recycle bags or have a key made, and head home to wait for the guy to come caulk the windows.

Bob's Discount Furniture is a lifestyle for those who want to watch football in his and hers faux suede recliners with embedded cup-holders.

And that's Pink Slip's final word on the subject…
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-84689100835164032782014-11-19T04:43:00.000-04:002014-11-19T04:43:00.194-04:00How's this for a hostile work environment?
As a veteran of at least a couple of hostile work environments, I will, of course, be drawn to any headline reading My Boss is Creating a Hostile Work Environment.

My first thought, while clicking through, was 'now there's a sob sister headline if ever.' And, in fact, it was a Job Sister header for an advice column, the Job Doc Blog, on boston.com.

In the question posed, an HR person (apparently the head of HR) wrote about his/her enfant terrible of a leader:

He yells, swears and uses threatening language as "motivation." He behaves like this with senior leaders, or when meeting with junior level employees. I can't stand it anymore. He would never be violent, but this is crazy and no one will challenge him.

In response, the Job Doc said:

As the top HR person, it is your responsibility to bring this behavior and the risks it brings to the organization to his attention. I recognize that you may feel you are putting your job on the line by having this conversation, and you probably are. If you have a board of directors, approach the chairman to see if this behavior is visible to the board. Discuss the positive leadership qualities your boss has and the need for a conversation with him; his behavior needs to change to protect the organization. Offer a solution, perhaps this behavior can be changed with the intervention of an executive coach.

Good luck with this one is all I can say.

No one, of course, should have to work in an environment run by tyrannical, psycho bosses, or for an individual psycho boss from hell.

If most of us have avoided the former, we've likely run into the latter at some point or another.

Many years ago, when I was a wee broth of a blogger – have I really been doing this for over eight years? Apparently so… – I was inspired by Bob Sutton to write about workplace assholes.

No need to repeat myself, but just seeing the headline reminded me of what was possibly the craziest and most toxic place I ever worked, and the grand poobah of all the psycho bosses I ever worked for.

This was in one of my many waitressing jobs and, while we're talking about something that happened over 40 years ago, and while the man in charge is long dead (21 years long dead; when in doubt, JFGI), I am choosing not to name names here. If you're a Bostonian, you can just think Old Boston Tourist Trap. (In fact, I worked at a couple of them.) If you're not a Bostonian, it probably doesn't matter.

Anyway, The Boss – as he was unfondly and fake-respectfully referred to – was a complete and utter tyrant: mean, loud, belittling, nasty, irrational, erratic. It sure didn't help that he was drunk most of the time. It sure didn't help that he was a massive man who used his considerable heft – he must have been 100 pounds overweight – to intimidate and threaten. And it sure didn't help his temperament if, as was rumored, he was incapable of having a normal bowel movement and had to go the doctor each week for what was referred to as his Roto-Rooter.

Man, this guy was nuts.

One of his tricks was to change a rule on the fly, and then start screaming at you if you didn't obey the rule. What he would do was tell the head waitress, who would inform her friends about the new rule, leaving the rest of us out to dry.

One time the rule was that we had to start wearing aprons. (Before this rule was put into place, we all wore napkins tucked into our belted uniforms.) But overnight, aprons were in.

The head gal and all her cronies showed up wearing theirs. The rest of us – mostly college girls – didn't.

This gave The Boss the opportunity to chase us all around the floor, screaming at us – purple face engorged and flying spittle and all - about our deliberately disobeying one of his commands. He fired a few of us on the spot – a common occurrence, by the way – setting up the usual psycho drama in which the head waitress would jump in and beg him to give us our jobs back. Which he always did.

There was a similar instance when the rule about storing extra napkins on our stations was put into force.

Prior to this rule, we were allowed stow extra napkins on an extra chair at the head of our table. (In this restaurant, most of the stations were one long table where parties all sat next to each other.) I can't remember why it was such a big convenience to have our extra napkins so close at hand, but it was.

Then, bang-zoom, it was no longer allowed.

More ranting and raving on the part of The Boss.

More firings on the spot.

You just never knew what could happen on any given day.

If you were really unlucky, it was your turn to wait on The Boss when he had his dinner, an hour or so before the dinner rush.

Dinner was typically a giant platter of tomatoes with an inch of salt sprinkled on them; a gigantic fisherman's fry plate; prime rib; and – to wash it all down – a large tumbler of Crown Royal with an eyedropper of water in it.

God help you if you put in a splash rather than an eyedropper.

One of my favorite encounters with The Boss – which I know I've written about before - was this:

Two young women had come in and ordered the poor man's roast beef special. The poor man's was a thin slice of rump roast served au jus.

When I went to pick it up in the kitchen, one plate held a nice, medium rare, tasty looking piece; the other had four pieces of blackened, dried up end cuts on it.

I told the chef that I couldn't bring those plates out together, as it was for the same party.

He told me to try, but that if one of them complained, he'd swap it out for something that looked decent.

Inevitably, the woman who got the yucky serving refused to take it.

While I was bringing the plate back to the kitchen – which (how modern we were) was "open concept - I was stopped by The Boss, who asked where the hell I thought  I was going. I explained the situation to him.

Game on!

He grabbed the plate out of my hand, stormed over to my table, and started screaming at the women.

Actually, it was kind of refreshing to have him go rip roaring after a customer rather than after one of us, but still…

Needless to say, the women left immediately.

As they gathered their things up, The Boss turned to me and yelled, "And make sure you get the ten cents for the corn bread they ate."

Ah, I could go on…

Fortunately, in professional life, you don't tend to encounter bosses of quite this overtly tyrannical ilk.

But as the Job Doc question suggests, they can and do happen.

Good luck, Mr./Ms. HR.

I think  you're going to need it.

But look on the bright side.

You probably won't ever have to serve your boss his dinner, and have him going into a boil-over rage if there's a speck more water in his Crown Royal than he might have liked.
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-61508951287579818252014-11-18T04:49:00.000-04:002014-11-18T04:49:00.113-04:00Spies are everywhere. (And I do mean everywhere.)
Boston's Dolt of the Month Award for November has to go to the creep who "found" an iPhone on a T-platform and walked away with it it.

Well, finders keepers and all that, but this particular iPhone had just flown out of the hand of a young woman who had either fallen or jumped in front of an incoming train and lost her life.

On the surveillance video taken in the T-station – which I hadn't rally been aware existed, but oh, why not – the dolt-winner is shown covering the iPhone with his foot; putting his hand over his mouth and feigning wide-eyed shock that someone had just fallen/jumped in front of a train; looking around to see if anyone is watching him; and blithely picking the phone up and walking out of the station.

There may not have been any human watching him. Most sentient beings in this situation would have, quite understandably, been focused elsewhere. But there was a camera trained his way, so by the next day, everyone in Boston who watches TV or reads any news, off or online, saw this guy in action.

He turned himself in, and has been charged with larceny.

What Dolt (and Nasty Creep in General) of the Month was apparently not aware of is that spies, in the form of video surveillance, are nearly ubiquitous in public places.

I'm not feeling 100% great about this. Sure it does help catch criminals and, I'm sure, on occasion even deter them. And once you're out of the house, I guess you don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy – and never did have. Still, the idea of über surveillance is chilling. Among other things, I don't want some marketing facial recognition software analyzing what aisles I linger in, what products I hover over, in CVS, and bombarding me with toothpaste and blister-bandage ads.

Just as well I'm in a not-so-desirable demographic, marketing-wise.

I also don't like the idea that someone could be listening in on my phone calls.

Not that there's anyone who wants to hear me yack away with one of my sisters – Homeland Security doesn't care that I finally got elbow patches put on that fabulous sweater I bought 25 years ago – so I don't think I have much to worry about.

And I also don't care if big data is analyzing traffic.

As long as they get a warrant or judge approval or whatever it is they need if there's a bad actor they want to listen in on. Or read the e-mails of.

There's no stopping technology, but we really <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=spy+vs.+spy&biw=1189&bih=517&tbm=isch&imgil=Ymww2zkUUMY6ZM%253A%253BW9Gni0k0ojYWWM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fmaditsmadfunny.wikia.com%25252Fwiki%25252FSpy_vs._Spy&source=iu&pf=m&fir=Ymww2zkUUMY6ZM%253A%252CW9Gni0k0ojYWWM%252C_&usg=__35h9TdeLq6OCJ0DI92-hSXCGcIM%3D&ved=0CDUQyjc&ei=wr9nVKvCHsqZNpWJgTA#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=Ymww2zkUUMY6ZM%253A%3BW9Gni0k0ojYWWM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fimg4.wikia.nocookie.net%252F__cb20130128235359%252Fmaditsmadfunny%252Fimages%252F3%252F31%252FSpy-vs-Spy.svg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fmaditsmadfunny.wikia.com%252Fwiki%252FSpy_vs._Spy%3B701%3B712">do have to be thoughtful and careful about where all the possibilities could take us. A "benevolent" government might only spy on the bad guys. A not-so-benevolent government might decide to cast a cold eye on atheists. (Or Christians. Or Jews. Or Muslims. Or vegans.)

But the spy game could be getting closer to home than the T-platform, the aisles of CVS, or your wireless operator.

As I was reminded by a recent piece pointed out to me by my brother-in-law Rick. On Acting Man -  which has as its main blogger someone who goes by the name Pater Tenebrarum; those of us who had the privilege and pleasure of taking 4 years of Latin will get that this translates into Father of Darkness – there is a post devoted to an article "that discusses the transformation of household gadgets into spying devices."

 Sorry about all the nesting blog begats, but both the blog post and the core article are worth reading. Here's a lengthy excerpt from the article, which is by Michael Price:

I just bought a new TV. The old one had a good run, but after the volume got stuck on 63, I decided it was time to replace it. I am now the owner of a new "smart" TV, which promises to deliver streaming multimedia content, games, apps, social media, and Internet browsing. Oh, and TV too. The only problem is that I'm now afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy.

The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect "when you have viewed particular content or a particular email message." It records "the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content." It ignores "do-not-track" requests as a considered matter of policy.

It also has a built-in camera — with facial recognition. The purpose is to provide "gesture control" for the TV and enable you to log in to a personalized account using your face. On the upside, the images are saved on the TV instead of uploaded to a corporate server. On the downside, the Internet connection makes the whole TV vulnerable to hackers who have demonstrated the ability to take complete control of the machine.

More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a "voice recognition" feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: "Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party." Got that? Don't say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV. You may not be watching, but the telescreen is listening. (Source: Brennan Center for Justice.)

I don't even like the fact that there's a camera built into my laptop. I participate in a lot of online meetings, many of them for a client that sells collaboration software. Some participants like being on camera. Not me. I don't mind if they look at my static picture, but I generally have a Post-it note over the seeing eye, just in case I accidentally activate it.

Not that anything bad's going to happen at these online meetings, or if I'm Skyping with someone, but I just don't plain like the idea that someone could have gained remote control of my laptop and start spying on me in my PJ's, and/or capturing all my keystrokes. After all, last year I had to get remote support on some app or other, and the support rep went to my PC to see what was happening. Supposedly all traces of the visit were eradicated when the session ended, but do I 100% trust that this was the case?

And, no, I don't live in complete paranoia about this. But there is a general creepiness factor – not to mention a particular invasiveness factor – associated with having all these too smart, smarty-pants devices in our houses.

Sure, it would be convenient if I could jack my smart thermostat up remotely, so it would be comfy-toasting or cucumber cool on my arrival when I've been away for a few days. But I refused to activate that part of the device. If I need remote diagnostics done, I'll activate. Until then, if I have to wait a few minutes for the heat or AC to kick in, so be it.

I'm about to purchase a suite of new appliances. Do I really want or need a smart refrigerator? A smart oven? A smart dishwasher? All collecting data on what's in the fridge or what's on the stove and relaying it back to "headquarters"?

 Do I want some marketer gauging my reaction to an ad running on House Hunters International or a Red Sox game?  Or like the fact that "they" will be listening in when I shout at the TV over some election result or another?

Like there's not enough to worry about. Now I have to make sure that there's duct tape over every spy-cam, and figure out how to disable all the voice-recognition gear that might be hidden in a processor in my microwave.

Swell. Just well.

As us atheists say, God, if there is a God, help us.

And you know who I really feel badly for? The kids who are coming of age thinking (or not thinking) that all this lack of privacy stuff is normal, and worth the benefit (hah!) of getting personalized marketing.

As us atheists say, God, if there is a God, help them.
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-55902193157143876412014-11-17T05:59:00.000-04:002014-11-17T05:59:00.047-04:00My landline: kept only so that I can continue to hear the dulcet voice of Rachel from cardholder services
Last week, I actually got two real calls on my landline.

One was from the hairdresser, confirming my appointment. (I confirmed but, alas, on day of, there was a mainline back up in my downstairs bathtub, and I had to wait for the plumber.)

The other was a real-real call, from my cousin Barbara. I let it go to voicemail, then picked up when I realized it actually was a real-real call.

Mostly the calls that I get on that number are robocalls.

Number One is "Rachel from cardholder services", who calls every couple of days. On occasion, I've stayed on the line to tell someone to take me off the call list, but the minute you start talking to them and they realize that you're not a potential scammee, they hang right up.

Seriously, after several thousand calls from Rach, I don't know how I've not fallen off of her list.

Does she think that I'm going to all of a sudden have an epiphany and decide to give out my credit card info to a pack of strangers, and pay them a boatload to consolidate my debt. Oh, wait. I don't have any.

Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

I have so come to detest your voice that, if I recognized it on an ad or voice-recognition-system for a legitimate business, I would not do business with that business.

Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

Are you one of the scammers, or are you an actress who, recognizing that all the legit voice overs go to Martin Sheen, just wanted the work?

Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

What will you do once I give up my landline?

Oh, it's not just you, either.

There are the senior alert scammers, informing me daily that I'm likely to fall in my bathtub, break a hip, and die naked, soaking wet, and alone. Body found only when the water runneth over and someone in the building figures out there's a flood going on, and someone finds that I'm not just circling the drain, I'm plugging it.

Living alone, I am quite sure that, at some point, I will get some sort of alert system that I'll wear around my neck like a scapular so that if and when I do slip in the tub, I'll be able to call for help. (Note to self: make sure there's always a towel within reach to throw over the old body. I'm sure that the EMT's and firemen have seen everything, but I will want to spare them that particular sight.)

But when I do sign up for my alert system, it won't be because Senior Alert has called to update me on the latest senior horror stats. It will be because I've done some research, consulted with folks I know – some of them have gotten these systems for their old folks; no one I know has signed up for one of their own quite yet – and make my purchase accordingly.

Senior Alert. Senior Alert. Senior Alert.

You tell me Press 5 to be taken off the call list, which I've done a couple of dozen times. Apparently this does nothing more than give you a head's up that this is a real number. And Pressing 1… Just like with Rachel of cardholder services' pals, they shake you off pretty quickly, no matter how sweetly you try to explain that you just want your number off their #@$($!!!*#&& call list.

Then there's the "you won a vacation" calls.

Hey, call me back when it's business class to Paris on Air France, and 10 days at a five star hotel – with a side trip to Normandy -  why don't you? As long as I don't have to listen for a time-share pitch. Then we'll talk.

I also get a fair number of calls from a fellow who sounds Indian, but who is, quite peculiarly, named Brian.

Brian wants to help with my Windows security.

Right-0.

My final favorite landline call buddy is the sharp-voiced woman calling on behalf of Newt Gingrich. I can't recall her name, but in my mind's eye she looks a lot like Calista Gingrich, only older, meaner looking, and with even stiffer and blonder hair.

She doesn't offer me an opt-out number. I have to jot down and call an 800 number if I want out.

But I just put the phone down and let Newt rage on about how Obama is a despot hell-bent on destroying the country by opening the borders to a bunch of Ebola-infested ISIS fighters who want to hop on to our medical system for free abortions, after which they will shoot-to-kill anyone who supports gun control. Or some such. I'm only listening with half an air.

Someday they'll figure out I'm the wrong demographic.

Meanwhile, if there's one thing I can say about those calls to my landline: they're on someone else's dime!
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-87095252953614655232014-11-14T04:51:00.000-04:002014-11-14T04:51:00.577-04:00And you think you had a rotten day on the job
Last summer, no longer able to stand looking out through a scrim of dirt, I washed the outside windows in my greenhouse/solarium kitchen. Which is to say I washed them as high up as I could reach with my super-duper, 12 foot extension, aluminum pole window washing device, while standing on the second step of my stepstool.

The answer to how high I could reach was up until the glass curved.

But since the curved glass is well above my lookout point, it was all for the good. Even with a few streaks, the windows look a lot better. Relative to before, they're positively gleaming.

I could, of course, have done a better job if I'd been more courageous.I could have gotten out our gorilla ladder and really had at it.

But I'm not.

There are plenty of things that I could do if I were willing to extend our Gorilla Ladder out to its fullest.

Actually, I am willing to extend our Gorilla Ladder out to its fullest. I'm just not willing to climb it once I've done so.

No, I'm one of those folks with a real fear of heights.

This doesn't cripple me on a day to day basis. Who wants to wash windows, anyway?

But I have had a couple of moderate panic attacks – one in the cocktail lounge on top of the highest building in Chicago that has a cocktail lounge on top, another when I did a canyon hike in Arizona. I never did make it down to tour the pueblos.

I also didn't go look over the edge of Dun Aengus on Inishmore in Ireland either time I was there.

Thanks but no thanks. I'll just hang out here a couple of dozen yards away feeling my skin crawl.

The panic attacks don't put me in a fainting swoon. But I do feel quite a bit of physical, get-me-away-from-here apprehension when they happen.

I've also had a panic attack when doing height-related reading, as when I had to put down a New Yorker article on Philippe Petit, the skywalker who crossed between the twin towers of the old World Trade Center on a wire. Without harness, parachute, or safety net – not that a safety net would do much good from that height.

Anyway, just reading about the exploits of Philippe Petit gave me the willies.<img title="141112145005-07-wtc-scaffold-horizontal-gallery" style="border-top: 0px; border-right: 0px; background-image: none; border-bottom: 0px; float: right; padding-top: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; display: inline; padding-right: 0px" border="0" alt="141112145005-07-wtc-scaffold-horizontal-gallery" src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-NVxT-vbNYAk/VGQIQeH3dUI/AAAAAAAACUI/Ga9cv5IhUTk/141112145005-07-wtc-scaffold-horizontal-gallery%25255B5%25255D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="312" align="right" height="182" />

Height as fear factor came rushing back to me the other day when my sister Trish sent me an email with the subject "nightmare" and a link to an article on a couple of window washers:

…who became suspended 69 stories above the street while working at the newly completed 1 World Trade Center. (Source: NY Times)

When I first took a look, the window washers were dangling there, but within a couple of hours New York City's Bravest were able to rescue them, after:

…cutting a hole through a window near the platform, assembling inside and pulling the workers to safety.

Neither of the window washers – Juan Lizama, 41 and Juan Lopez – were injured. But I'm sure that the wait time while they were in their machine gone bad was a nightmare, even for a couple of guys who must not have the fear of heights that I do.

I'm having a heart attack just thinking about it.

Makes even the worst day at work – and I had a few over the years – seem like big nothing, doesn't it?

As for the fire fighters, well, good for them for carrying this rescue off.

I would think that it must be kind of tricky working a rescue at the reincarnation of the WTC, given that 343 jakes lost their lives there on 9/11.

But apparently these guys are stoics:

Asked if working a rescue at the new building stirred any particular emotions, given the history of the firefighters who died in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, [NYFD] Lieutenant [Billy] Ryan said that was not on his mind.

"It's business," he said. "You separate yourself from that."

Me? I can't even separate myself from panicking over the idea of being a dangling window washer or a daring fireman.

Sure glad there are guys like Billy Ryan out there. And the two Juans, for that matter. If they're even in Boston, they can wash my windows. Piece of cake. No dangling infernal machine. I'll even help them launch the Gorilla Ladder.
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-55563712479130033672014-11-13T04:53:00.000-04:002014-11-13T04:53:00.777-04:00Pet friendly
Patricia Marx had an excellent piece in The New Yorker a few weeks back on the new pet-owner trend in which those who can't stand being separated from their furry or feathered friends have them arbitrarily declared support companions. This enables them to bring their animals anywhere they damn well please: grocery shopping, out to dinner, trains and boats and planes.

Personally, I enjoy animals, and am, in particular, a dog lover.

Recently, I saw a sign that read something along the lines of: in an ideal world, all dogs would have homes, and all homes would have dogs.

True that…

While having a pup isn't right for me just now, I look on my dogged up neighbors with envy, find myself petting at least one strange dog a day, get myself over to the off-leash area on the Boston Common on occasion to watch the canine frolic, and spend as much time possible chilling with my black lab nephew Jack – who really is the world's cutest and sweetest dog ever.

But I don't think that dogs – other than service dogs - let alone other non-human members of the animal kingdom  – belong everywhere.

Others think otherwise.

As Ms. Marx has it:

What a wonderful time it is for the scammer, the conniver, and the cheat: the underage drinkers who flash fake I.D.s, the able-bodied adults who drive cars with handicapped license plates, the parents who use a phony address so that their child can attend a more desirable public school, the customers with eleven items who stand in the express lane. The latest group to bend the law is pet owners.

…As you will have observed, an increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments, cohabiting with them in animal-unfriendly apartment buildings and dormitories, and taking them (free!) onto airplanes—simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being. No government agency keeps track of such figures, but in 2011 the National Service Animal Registry, a commercial enterprise that sells certificates, vests, and badges for helper animals, signed up twenty-four hundred emotional-support animals. Last year, it registered eleven thousand. (Source: The New Yorker)

One woman that Marx wrote about went a-traveling with a large mutt – which, unlike true service animals, was untrained. Doggy Dowrong crapped in the aisle on a US Airways flight.

The plane had to make an emergency landing halfway cross country so that things could get cleaned up.

Some are flashing their "emotional-support card" and bringing their pooches into restaurants, where they allow their pets to climb on the table. (Something you never see a true service dog doing.)

Although restaurants and other businesses aren't required to allow an emotional support animal into their premises, if someone's waving their emotional-support card in their face, for the most part they cave in. Who wants to risk a legal wrangle? And who's up on the laws?

Service dogs, on the hand, are the real deal:

The I.R.S. classifies these dogs as a deductible medical expense, whereas an emotional-support animal is more like a blankie. An E.S.A. [emotional support animal] is defined by the government as an untrained companion of any species that provides solace to someone with a disability, such as anxiety or depression.

E.S.A.'s are covered by the Fair Housing Act and the Air Carrier Access Act.

So any old animal who's gotten a however-bogus certificate of E.S.A.-ness can live down the hall and get on your flight.

But that's it.

Years ago, I shared a flight from Cleveland to Boston with a woman who was traveling with a howler monkey. I have no idea whether the animal was classified as an E.S.A. I don't think we had them back in the day. Back then, we only had "seeing eye dogs".

But I can say that they don't call it a howler monkey for nothing. And the monkey's uncle – or, rather aunt – spent the entire flight in one of the two toilets trying to provide emotional support to her howler.

Anyway, Marx wanted to check out just how bogus a racket E.S.A. credentials are, so she:

…decided to go undercover as a person with an anxiety disorder (not a stretch) and run around town with five un-cuddly, non-nurturing animals for which I obtained E.S.A. credentials (one animal at a time; I'm not that crazy).

Her first E.S.A., sporting an E.S.A. badge she found on Amazon, was a turtle. She took it to the Frick Museum, where she was told that no animals need apply.

So she took out her certifying letter, which stated that:

Ms. Marx has a turtle that provides significant emotional support, and ameliorates the severity of symptoms that affect her daily ability to fulfill her responsibilities and goals. Without the companionship, support, and care-taking activities of her turtle, her mental health and daily living activities are compromised. In my opinion, it is a necessary component of treatment to foster improved psychological adjustment, support functional living activities, her well being, productivity in work and home responsibilities, and amelioration of the severity of psychological issues she experiences in some specific situations to have an Emotional Support Animal (ESA).

She has registered her pet with the Emotional Support Animal Registration of America. This letter further supports her pet as an ESA, which entitles her to the rights and benefits legitimized by the Fair Housing Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. It allows exceptions to housing, and transportation services that otherwise would limit her from being able to be accompanied by her emotional support animal.

There are, apparently, all sorts of folks who have some credential or another – think certified clinical social worker – who'll chat you up on the phone, give you a remote diagnosis, and bless your use of your animal of choice. Marx talked to a social worker and got her snake certified, then modified the letter to cover a turtle, too.

Mostly you don't even need to talk to anyone. You just click on a couple of forms, and your animal is good to go. (All for a fee, of course.)

During her period of E.S.A. exploration, Marx took:

A turtle to the Frick and elsewhere – including a Christian Louboutin shop

A snake to an apartment open house and to a Chanel boutique;

A turkey on the Hampton Jitney and to a deli;

An alpaca on Amtrak from NYC to Niagara Falls, and to a historic site "showcasing the nineteenth-century home of the painter Frederic Edwin Church;"

A pig to Boston on JetBlue for tea at the Four Seasons.

Rarely was she turned down or any more than mildly challenged.

People with genuine impairments who depend on actual service animals are infuriated by the sort of imposture I perpetrated with my phony E.S.A.s.

Service dogs (and other true service animals: some folks use monkeys to take care of tasks in the home) do real work for people with real impairments.

Who can blame them for being ticked off?

A lot of those claiming that they need their pets for emotional support don't really. And many of them are just out and out faking it.

I understand that animals can and do give plenty of comfort, and that they can understand plenty of what's going on, emotional-wise.

When my sister's dog Jack, who was very fond of my husband, came into our condo for the first time after Jim's death, Jack looked around for a bit, figured out that Diggy wasn't there, let out a little moan, sighed, and plopped on to the rug, head on paws, facing away from us.

Jack sure knew something was going on.

And just seeing comfort animals around does give comfort. After the Marathon bombings, a group came to Boston with a few golden retrievers to walk around giving comfort. They did.

But most folks, however emotionally needy they may be, don't need to have their pets with them all the time. And if they do, maybe they should consider just staying home.

They're exploiting the system, and, of course, denigrating and insulting those with real issues, who gain real, and genuinely needed, support by having their animals with them.

It's a lousy things to do to the animals, too.

Every time I see him, I get plenty of emotional support from my canine pal Jack. But I'd never insult him by ordering some bogus certificate online, and slapping a fake official vest on him, so I could bring him into a restaurant.

Not that I'm completely above faking it as needed.

When we were seniors in college, and living off-campus, my roommate and I had a dog. A German shepherd.

One night, we got a call that her mother, who was recovering from breast cancer surgery. Mrs. B help that she wasn't getting from her support team (Joyce's eccentric aunts). We had to get to Rhode Island. Quickly.

I can't remember why Joyce didn't just go on her own. I do know that she wanted me for emotional support in what was going to be a tough situation.

In any case, we decided to chance taking Grimbald on the bus from Boston to Providence.

I put on a pair of sunglasses, and away we went.

So sometimes you really do have to fake it.

But that was then - 40+ years ago - and it was a one-time emergency situation.

And this is now, when the world is so me-me-me that a lot of people don't give a damn about whether their little wants impose on the wants and needs of others.

Shame on them. And bravo to Patricia Marx for being something of a dog-whistle blower here. (Wish I'd run into her and the pig when they were walking around Boston Common.)
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-56945318531684603612014-11-12T05:23:00.000-04:002014-11-12T05:23:00.190-04:00Goldbricking
There was an excellent little column a few weeks back in The Economist on what it terms "one of the world's most popular, if unrecognised, sciences: skiving."

"Skiving" not a word that's recognisable recognizable to you?

Well, it's Brit for shirking, slacking off, or (my personal favorite, as it was a word that my father used) goldbricking.

The first principle of goldbricking cited is:

…the ancient jacket-on-the-back-of-the-chair trick: leave a coat permanently on display so that a casual observer—a CEO practising "managing by walking around", for example—will assume that you are the first to or arrive and the last to leave. (Source: The Economist)

While this may be an hoary practice, I was unfamiliar with it until I worked at Wang.

Two guys in my group, one with a cubicle adjacent to mine, the other kitty-corner, would arrive at work bright and early, drape their suit coats over their chair backs, and head down to the cafeteria, where they would have breakfast, chat a bit, and read the newspaper.

Wang was a matrix organization, and we were all product managers. So we could be anywhere in the Wang Towers: meeting with our techies, with QA, with tech writing, with marketing, with sales, with the release engineers.

Our boss would drift by a couple of times a week and asked if I'd seen either "Don" or "Ken", and I'd just noncommittally respond that "they were around somewhere."

Let him figure out for himself that somewhere was the Wang caf.

At least it was the Wang caf before lunch.

After lunch, "Don" and "Ken" would generally head to the gym for a workout, cagily leaving their jackets in place.

This duo's goldbricking ways eventually caught up with them, and they were both let go in one of the clockwork lay-offs that Wang held.

My Wang days were pre-Internet.

Oh, we had computers, and email (internal), but the time wasting opportunities that the 'net provides – and the ability to pretend to be working while "doing your shopping, booking a holiday or otherwise frolicking in the cyber-waves" were in the future.

What might "Don" and "Ken" have done if they could have stayed in their cubes while slacking off, rather than having to drag themselves down to the Wang caf?

Why, surely, they would have mastered the:

… high-tech version of the jacket trick: program your e-mails to send themselves at half past midnight or 5.30am to give your managers the impression that you are a Stakhanovite.*

Well, I've never programmed an e-mail to send itself after hours, but I have on occasion gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, woken the laptop up, and fired off a 2 a.m. email or two (unleashing my inner Stakhanovite).

The downside of having a technology gateway to creating a Potemkin Village illusion – just wanted to get a Russian allusion of my own in there – of being on the job 24/7 is that, these days, your company may actually be monitoring your Internet search activity, reading your emails, checking your IMs, and even keeping track of your keystrokes.

The third principle [of goldbricking] is that you should always try to get a job where there is no clear relation between input and output.

It's noted that while this may be most readily accomplished in the public sector, it's not unknown in the private sector, however vaunted it is for efficiency and wringing the fat out.

In "The Living Dead" (2005), his memoir of life as an office worker, David Bolchover says that the amount of work he had to do was inversely related to the size of the company that he worked for. He started his career in a small firm where he had to work hard for no title and low pay. He ended working for a big company where he had a grand title and a fat pay packet but did almost nothing. Mr Bolchover was not a member of the brotherhood: he asked his bosses for more work and, when they failed to oblige, filled his idle hours by writing a management book.

Hey, I could have written that book. Why didn't I? Oh, yeah…

The final goldbricking principle is to be ambitious: get promoted so you can get your minions to do all the work.

Having been a manager, I will note that managing can be both exceedingly demanding in general and an enormous pain in the arse in particular. It would probably drive you crazy if you didn't manage to keep a bit of real work on your schedule.

Personally, I was never much of a goldbricker, although I guess you could call all those lofty bull-sessions with colleagues, where we gabbled about what we could do to save the product, the division, the company, the world could count as goldbricking. In some cases, we were not above getting meeting room and bringing in pads and pens so that no one could question our work purpose.

Mostly, if I was at work, I actually wanted to get something done.

But because I admittedly did plenty of bull-shitting – most but not all work-related – I always ended up working longer hours.

Which I guess is consistent with all the blather about folks working such long hours these days not being quite as true as it might seem:

…as Roland Paulsen, of Sweden's Lund University, explains in "Empty Labour", an example-packed new book, innumerable studies suggest that the average worker devotes between one-and-a-half and three hours a day to loafing.

And with that, even though there's no one here to see it, I think I'll drape my jacket over the back of my chair and goldbrick off into the sunset.

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

*And, yes, I had to look it up. It's defined here, but I'll give you the short bit:

…the Stakhanovite movement was…a propaganda tool of the Soviet Union that started during the first Five-Year Plan that gave recognition to the "little people" who over-fulfilled quotas or did an excellent job on their [work] site, or something of that nature. It was named after Aleksei Grigorievich Stakhanov, who broke the Soviet Union's record for coal extraction in a single day.

 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-46677697274825311012014-11-11T05:10:00.000-04:002014-11-11T05:10:00.291-04:00Veterans Day 2014
Although I am not a veteran, I am the daughter of one. (And the granddaughter of another. Of course, when celebrating veterans, it's more my father and his four years in the U.S. Navy in Big WWII that are in buddy-poppy mind. After all, my veteran grandfather served in the Austro-Hungarian Army – i.e., the other side of the trench – during WWI, a war that, even by imbecilic war standards was pretty damned imbecilic. Perhaps the only good to come of it was Veterans Day itself. That and, from a personal standpoint, the fact that it was probably what prompted my German grandparents to get the hell out of Austro-Hungarian Dodge and book passage on the next boat to Ellis Island.)

Although I am not a veteran, Pink Slip does enjoy an occasional holiday-in-the-middle-of-the-work-week kind of a holiday, so I'm taking it off.

But I didn't take it off in 2012, so here's a link to a perfectly good post from that year's edition of Veterans Day. It all still holds.

Some things are, of course, worth repeating, and one is to wish a Happy Veterans Day to all the vets out there.
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-68279616013874513052014-11-10T05:15:00.000-04:002014-11-10T05:15:00.032-04:00Diamonds are forever? Diamonds are a girl's best friend? Diamonds can be made out of peanut butter, too?
Last week, my cousin Babs and I went up to the cemetery where our parents are buried and planted tulips.

The tulips are to tide things over until we get out to the cemetery sometime around Memorial Day and throw some geraniums and azuratam out there. (While I think of it, we may have to add the grave our our great-grandparents, Matthew and Bridget Trainor, to the geranium list. The ancient cousin who was tending their grave has passed on.)

Anyway, Babs and I made our usual joke about being the last generation that will visit family graves. A dying breed…

It almost goes without saying that there are plenty of enterprising young enterprises coming up with ideas on just what to do with the bodies as, inevitably, we kick our personal buckets.

This year, of course, the what to do, what to do question hit pretty close to home. In fact, it did hit home. And what my husband and I decided to do with his ashes was bury most of them, scatter small bits in a number of different places, and send some on a spaceflight. (The small bit list is about 2/3's through, and the space shot took place a few weeks ago.)

But this strewing of the ashes approach is already becoming old hat, and many people are opting for turning ashes into objets.

One such outfit is Algordanza, a Swiss company that has come up with a:

…process of having the ashes of a loved one made into a memorial diamond.

Using a combination of machines and complex scientific process, the staff at Algordanza separate the carbon from the deceased's ashes, then convert the carbon into graphite, and use specific temperatures and pressure to create a diamond "seed."  (Source: SF Globe)

While the cost ain't cheap (about $5K) it's less than most burials.

And, let's face it, it sounds pretty exciting. Almost as exciting as the Superman episode where Superman crushed a lump of coal into a diamond.

In truth, before my husband died, I might have rolled my eyes at the idea of a memorial diamond or other jewelry, but now that I have my little Connemara marble urn sitting there, waiting for Jim's space shot ashes to get returned, I will have to quote Good Pope Francis here: "Who am I to judge?"

Algordanza has certainly glommed on to current marketing lingo.

In today's fast-moving world, globalization and increased human mobility has made it increasingly difficult for loved ones to properly upkeep, maintain and visit a traditional tomb or grave site. (Source: Algordanza)

If I had a dollar for every time I've used the words fast-moving, globalization, and mobility in a marketing piece, I could reach into my pocket and pay for a Diggy by Algordanza diamond out of pocket cash.

And then there's a mumbo-jumbo section, the likes of which has not (as yet) made it into my tech marketing speak:

Memorial Diamonds are also imperishable heirlooms which can be transmitted down for generations. In this regard, they can also be psychologically highly beneficial: to be passed down from one generation to the next, the giver has to be willing to let go, an important step in the healing process.

All I can say here is that, when something is transmitted down through generations, as often as not the giver has no choice about letting go, as they have already been let gone, so to speak.

But it's all very interesting, so I googled around for a bit more info, and found an article in the Smithsonian from earlier in the year. And learned out that, when it comes to creating diamonds, there's nothing holy about cremains:

They [labs] these days can take any carbon material, whether it is the remains from cremation, charcoal, graphite, peanut butter, what have you, and retrieve elemental carbon," says [Gem News editor Gary] Roskin. "And it is this carbon that they then use to create a gem-quality diamond."

Peanut butter? Say what? (Choosy mothers choose Jiff for their created diamonds.) And speaking of peanut butter, when it comes to cremated created diamonds, you are, more or less, what you eat. The color of the diamond will depend on how much boron you have in you. Which depends on your diet.

If you want a blue diamond, almonds and dates are apparently the thing.

And if the ashes include someone's dentures or a prostheses, the diamond will have less purity. (I can see someone being cremated with their dentures in, but wouldn't you think they'd removed the wooden leg?)

What it all comes down to in the end is that there's really not much difference – other than the DeBeers marketing machine – between man made and man mined diamonds.

While naturally-occurring mined diamonds are generally worth more than those burnished in a lab, any distinction between them, he explains, exists as more of a social construct than anything. "Whether created by Mother Nature or by a human in a factory, a diamond is a diamond," he emphasizes. "In fact, most of your created diamonds are of better quality than a lot of the mined diamonds you might find in the jewelry stores of those large big box retailers that sell the $99 tennis bracelet."

Anyway, my plans for my husband's remaining cremains do not include a tennis bracelet. We still do have a couple of places left on the post-bucket list. No big hurry. Things will keep.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks, and a jangle of the $99 tennis bracelet I don't have to my friend Valerie for sending the SF Gate article my way.
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-41077817249884609332014-11-07T04:52:00.000-04:002014-11-07T04:52:00.516-04:00The Prince and the Pauper
No, I really don't follow The Royals all that closely, but I couldn't help but pick up on a recent news item, in which it was revealed that Prince William the Fair had done a brief stint as a common workingman in one of The Great Homes of England.

William did his Downstairs, Upstairs bit in 2005 at Chatsworth House, a stately home in Derbyshire.

Rather than spending his fortnight there going to the hounds, changing for dinner, and striding around the topiary, the Prince went Underground Boss and actually did some work.

All this was revealed in The Housekeeper's Tale, a memoir by Christine Robinson who worked at Chatsworth for 40 years. If you're not familiar with Chatsworth, or the only association you have with the name is Dobie Gillis' rich pal Chatsworth Osborne, Jr., it was the stately home of  Deborah, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.

Deborah was one of the Mitford sisters.

Not the one who wrote about The American Way of Death. That was Jessica.

Not the one who was best buds with Hitler and his pals. That was Diana.

Not the other one who was best buds with Hitler and his pals. That was Unity.

No, this is the one who married Andrew Cavendish, who got to be the Duke of Devonshire after his brother Billy, who was married to JFK's sister Kathleen, was killed during World War II. Debo is that Mitford sister.

Anyway, Christine Robinson, who worked for Debo all those years has let us in on Prince William among the people. (Queue Fanfare for the Common Man.)

She says: "He spent a week working around the estate and made sausage rolls and mince pies.

"Then he spent a week at the house, dressed in overalls, drinking tea and eating fish and chips with the rest of the housemen and joiners.

"We were staging a ballet in the theatre, but discovered the stage was too short and had to be extended.

"He was carrying planks of wood through the shop dressed in workmen's clothes.

"The look on visitors' faces was priceless, most obviously thought to themselves, 'That joiner is the double of Prince William.'

"When two old ladies came straight out and asked him he admitted he really was the heir to the throne.

"He was, of course, charming." (Source: Express.UK)

Well, I'd be pretty darned charming, too, if I knew that I wasn't going to be spending more than a week making sausage rolls and mince pies, if I knew that I wasn't doomed to spending the rest of my life eating them because, as a joiner, that's all I'd ever be able to afford to eat. (Not to mention, all I'd ever be able to gum because of the terrible quality of the dental work I'd gotten.)

And I bet there were a few moments there when he thought 'wouldn't it be nice.'

Maybe not 'wouldn't it be nice to be a joiner or a sausage roll stuffer'. But 'wouldn't it be nice to be the Duke of Devonshire.'

Sure, I'd have to worry about how I was going to keep the pile that is Chatsworth afloat.

But I'd be rich enough. Invited to all the best parties and weekends. Wear bespoke hunting boots. Speak plummy English. Ski in Gstaad.

And not have paparazzi following every move I make. Not have to go to all those ribbon cutting ceremonies. Not have to accept all those curtsies. Not have to put on the royal face and wave the royal wave from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. Not have to put on the crown and the ermine trimmed cape.

Oh, a royal's lot is not a necessarily a happy one.

And you have to hand it to the Prince that he was actually willing to get his hands a tad bit dirty.

Bet he wasn't fooling any of the fellow joiners and minced pie makers.

They'd know a toff when they saw one.
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-71661948970872408552014-11-06T04:21:00.000-04:002014-11-06T04:21:00.405-04:00I wasn't going to say anything, but gimme a break
As those who live in the Boston Metro are WAY MORE THAN WELL aware, Tom Menino, our former mayor, died last week.

I certainly feel plenty of sympathy for his family and friends, especially for his wife, Angela, who has now joined the club that no one wants to be a member of.  It was a cancer death, so my sympathies are especially acute.

Mayor Menino was only 71, and had just left office in January after serving as mayor for twenty years. So he didn't get much of a retirement in, which seems to be an especially lousy thing to have happen to anybody.

So, yes, I feel plenty of sympathy.

And yet there was so much over the top-ness surrounding his passing, as much as I understand and appreciate the need for collective experiences - celebrating a World Series trophy, mourning a public figure's dead – this one quickly began leaving me as cold as, well, you know.

I wasn't a particular fan of Tom Menino one way or the other.

I mostly voted for him, but not the last time he ran, when I was experiencing Menino Fatigue. Plus hizzoner, while not quite keeping an Enemies List a la Richard Nixon, did maintain a shit-list that became public a few years ago. And my brother the union guy's name appeared on that list. As it happens, I could not bring myself to pull the lever for someone who had shit-listed my brother, so he didn't get my vote last time around.

But in many respects he was a good mayor, deft at the mechanics of fixing potholes, a supremely gifted political organizer,a man of the people who paid attention to the neighborhoods and not just downtown.

Although critics might say that he was looking for votes there – after all, he needed to replace mine – he had an excellent reputation in the minority and GLBT communities, including refusing to walk in the St. Patrick's Day Parade when they pig-headedly decided to ban gay-identified marchers. A matter of votes, surely – more positives than negatives in standing up to parade organizer  Wacko Hurley - but also a matter of principle.

Beyond that, he was a tremendous supporter of organizations providing services to the homeless – and those homeless folks weren't out there voting in droves. I got to see for myself that his care for the poor and homeless was something coming from Tom Menino's heart.

But, my oh my oh my, to hear the local pundits and other assorted media folks droning on and on about Tom Menino, one would have thought that we were witnessing the passing of some amalgam of Jesus Christ, Superman, Mother Teresa,  and, why, even JFK (the old sainted JFK, before everyone realized that he was the poster boy for free love with spies and Mafia molls).

If one had just blown into town, and turned on the TV while the coverage was at its height, and one had never been to Boston before, and didn't know anything about our town, it would have been easy enough for one to come away with the impression that:

Tom Menino was responsible for making Boston an academic hub. (St. Thomas of Hyde Park, pray for us.)

Tom Menino was responsible for turning Boston into one of the leading medical centers in the world. (St. Thomas Menino, pray for us.)

Tom Menino was responsible for turning Boston into a bio-tech mecca. (St. Tommy of Roslindale, pray for us.)

Tom Menino was responsible for all the outdoor cafes in Boston. (St. Thomas of City Hall, pray for us.)

Tom Menino was responsible for making Boston a world class city. (Hizzoner the Politico, pray for us.)

Tom Menino was responsible for making Boston a post-racial love fest. (St. Thomas of Dudley Square, pray for us.)

Seriously, I know these guys had to fill dead air time – there's only so much you can say when you watching a line of thousands snake their way through a howling Nor'easter into the doors of Faneuil Hall to attend someone's wake – but if you even half-listened to these announcers, you could easily have come away with the impression that pre-Menino Boston was an archipelago of wattle and daub hut encampments. Each encampment was populated by a singular tribe, who mostly stuck to themselves, leaving only for forays to Filene's Basement and, of course, to hurl beer bottles (empties) at each other.

Come on, people.

Harvard University was here (actually in Cambridge) before Menino was mayor.

Mass General was here before Menino was mayor.

The Whitehead Institute for bio-medical research was here (actually in Cambridge) before Menino was mayor.

It was possible to eat outside before Menino was mayor.

Boston, because of its age – ancient by U.S. standards – has pretty much always punched above its weight. We're a relatively small city that most people have heard of, we have a lot of good schools and hospitals, and we get a lot of tourists.

As for post-racial paradise?

Well, things are certainly better (or so it seems to me) than they were when busing came to town in the 1970's. But do all the laurels go to Tom Menino?

Which is not to say that he doesn't to have touched a lot of people in ways that his predecessor Ray Flynn may not have. One poll taken a couple of years back showed that 50% of the people in the city had met Tom Menino at one point or another.

Okay. We're tiny town -  650K population – so it wasn't exactly like doing a meet and greet with everyone in New York City.

Still, it's pretty impressive when you do the arithmetic. It averages out to meeting and greeting 32,500 people a year while he was in office. That's a lot of handshaking. (I met him a couple of times. We both went to PT at the same place.)

And Tom Menino was certainly a lot warmer and more approachable than Kevin White, Ray Flynn's brooding and aloof predecessor.

But enough with the All Hail, Thomas Menino already.

Anyway, what really sent me over the edge was an article that appeared on boston.com on the day of his funeral – and, yes, I did stand outside my house when the cortege drove by, and I did watch a bit of the funeral itself – that read "Tom Menino Sounds Like the Greatest Grandfather Ever."

I don't have kids, and, ergo, have no grandkids. And since one of my grandfathers died when I was 1, and the other died 25 years before I was born, I am no one's idea of an expert on grandfathers.

And, yes, I'm sure that Menino's grandkids loved him.

But, honestly, the folks I know who are granddads think they're pretty darned good at it. And the folks I know who have granddads think that their granddads are just swell.

I wasn't going to say anything, but this one just sent me right over the top.

So I'll close with one of Mayor Menino's favorite expressions: Gimme a break!
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-12011501941252526482014-11-05T04:15:00.000-04:002014-11-05T04:15:00.354-04:00DJIA: surprisingly, it's (still) pretty darned industrial
I recently read about a study of the companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrials.

Not surprisingly, there's a lot of volatility in that group, and there are very few companies that have remained on it forever.

Of the original 12 companies comprising the industrials, General Electric is the last man standing.

The other originals - some of which still exist in some way, shape, or form as part of something else -  for the most part, seem pretty quaint.

The American Cotton Oil Company. The Distilling & Cattle Feeding Company. Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad. (Which sure sounds pretty vertically integrated, doesn't it? Fully integrated would be Tennessee Coal, Iron, Railroad & Passenger.)

Today's list, at least to me, seems to have remained surprisingly industrial.

I don't know whether I was expecting all GOOG and FB sorts of companies, but there were actually a lot of outfits that actually make something tangible, and in many cases at least vaguely industrial, on it: 3M, Boeing, Caterpillar, Chevron, Cisco, DuPont, Exxon Mobil, GE, Intel, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Nike, Pfizer, P&G, United Technologies.

Then there are the behemoths that sell stuff: Home Depot, Wal-Mart. And the companies that we snack on after an exhausting trip to Home Depot or Wal-Mart: McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

There are entities that help us pay for our wares – American Express, Goldman, JP Morgan Chase, Visa. There's one that insures us, in case we're in a car accident on the way to or fro. (Travelers.) And one to take care of our health, once we're in that accident. (United Health Care.)

There are companies that help us order online if we don't feel like risking an accident: AT&T and Verizon. But no automotive giant to get us there if we want to drive. No Ford, no Chrysler, no GM. (We could, however, have flown on our shopping trip with Boeing, or bulldozered our way into the parking lot with Caterpillar.)

And then there's Walt Disney to round out the list.

Although they are responsible for the manufacture of an inordinate amount of tangible crap, they are not exactly industrial. Industrious, surely – heigh ho, heigh ho, it's off to work we go – but industrial, hardly.

It was kind of fun glancing through the companies that've been dropped out over time. Talk about a snapshot off what made the American economy go: American Beet Sugar, Baldwin Locomotive, Hudson Motors, International Shoe, Remington Typewriters, Wright Aeronautical, Studebaker, Texas Gulf Sulphur, Victor Talking Machines.

(Texas Gulf Sulphur and Victor Talking Machines: they sure don't name companies like they used to.)

Don't know what prompted me to look to the DJIA as a possible blog topic.

Could've been something I heard from the Radio Corporation of America…

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

Source of DJIA info: Wikipedia (original and current list), Quasimodo (complete list of members over time).
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-64155554491891283092014-11-04T05:59:00.000-04:002014-11-04T05:59:00.484-04:00Sayonara, Hello Kitty? Not so fast.
I'm not an especially big fan of Hello Kitty.

Sure, it's cute and a bit quirky. And I do like pink well enough.

But enough is enough, and if there's one thing I know for sure, it's that my new kitchen – which I am hoping miraculously appears where my old kitchen was, now that I have a mental image of it – will not include a Hello Kitty crockpot, microwave, or grill.

My new bedroom look – which I am hoping miraculously appears where my old bedroom is, now that I have a metal image of it – will not include a Hello Kitty bed, mirror, or chest of drawers.

My new bathroom look – which I am hoping miraculously appears where my old bathrooms are, now that I have a metal image of them – will not include a Hello Kitty toilet seat, bathmat, or toilet paper.

No, I'm never going to get all that enamored about a cartoon character, especially one that has no mouth. (What's this supposed to mean? How does Hello Kitty talk? How does she eat? How does she bite? Spit venom?)

And then there's the disturbing associations that crop up between Hello Kitty and pedo culture. (Let's not go there.)

But, as iconic cartoon characters go, you have to give it to Hello Kitty. Her branders know how to brand, her marketers know how to market, her merchandisers know how to merchandise.

And I'll take Hello Kitty over generations of Disney princesses.

They may not be as wan and insipid as they once were – recently they've taken on an increasingly alien creature look – but those Disney gals remain a bit syrupy and chirpy for my tastes. (Even back in the day, I preferred Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan's Wendy to Cinderella and Snow White. At least Alice and Wendy got to have adventures that didn't involve rescue-by-prince.)

Mostly, I've gotta go with Hello Kitty, voice-less and all.

But the market has a mouth, and it's speaking, and Hello Kitty – who's advancing into middle age, turning 40 this year – is getting pushed around a bit. Not surprisingly, the poor dear is getting frozen out by none other than:

Princess Anna and Olaf the Snowman. The popularity of the Walt Disney animated movie Frozen has hit Sanrio [the company that owns Hello Kitty licensing], especially in the U.S., where children who once might have asked their parents for Hello Kitty merchandise are instead favoring products with the Disney characters. The Frozen effect is one reason Sanrio's stock price is down 28 percent this year, compared with a 2 percent increase for the benchmark Topix index. (Source: Business Week.)

Me, I think it's too early to say sayonara to Hello Kitty.

I doubt that Princess Anna and Olaf the Snowman have the staying power of Hello Kitty, which has at present some 50,000 products available in her name.

And Hello Kitty even had her own convention this year, which Anna and Olaf did not. Plus hotels continue to go up in Japan with Hello Kitty rooms. Not to mention that Hello Kitty's inscrutable visage is quite popular in China, where there's a lot of room for growth.

But Disney is, of course, no slouch when it comes to keeping its pipeline full of characters-du-jour, while holding steady with iconic oldies like Mickey and Winnie the Pooh. And I surely see more adults wearing Tigger sweatshirts than I do in Hello Kitty gear.

Hard to pick a rooting favorite when it's one company turning kids into lifetime crap consumers vs. another company turning kids into lifetime crap consumers.

So I don't necessarily want Hello Kitty to win anything.

I just think it's too early to write her obituary.

I suspect that this cat has a few more lives left. (And, yes, in case you're wondering, it is possible to get a Hello Kitty coffin.)
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-72161045045927216872014-11-03T06:20:00.000-04:002014-11-03T06:20:00.178-04:00Neiman Marcus Giltz-alog, 2014 Edition
Well, the weather outside is frightful – a demi-rager with plenty of wind and those gloopy big flakes of no-stick snow – and, while I don't have a fire to make it delightful, I will take the opportunity to start thinking about Christmas.

I used to pride myself by being done by Labor Day, and wrapped by Thanksgiving, but I'm not so compulsive these days.

I still pick things up as I see them throughout the year, but sometimes that backfires, and I just plain forget I've already gotten someone a gift. (Generally stumbling on the original idea after I've wrapped what I've just bought.)

With no desire to step toe outside – which leads me to believe that my recently-acquired, One-a-Day Long Walk habit won't withstand the rigors of a New England winter – I thought I'd thumb, at least metaphorically, through the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book 2014, with its sixties-ish, retro-ish cover – think silver tree with turquoise or pink balls – and the promise of all sorts of expensive goodies, little and big, once I look inside.

Oh, I'm not interested in the pedestrian stuff, like the faux-fur gloved ice scraper ($35) – I think my mother had one of these, although hers didn't come from NM, and there's a safe bet that it didn't cost $35. And that mink backpack ($7,830) holds little appeal. My Patagonia will do me just fine.

No, I'm heading straight to this year's real luxury items, the Fantasy Gifts, which start with the $35K Tanqueray shaker.

Well, shaker isn't quite accurate, what this is is:

The world's coolest cocktail making machine. Recreated from a nineteenth-century drawing under the meticulous guidance of spirits impresario Jason Crawley, the 6'-tall Imperial Shaker oozes authenticity, from its cast iron, brass, copper, and silver materials to the elliptical shake (versus a pedestrian up-and-down shake) created by the crank.

And since Neiman claims to be as much about the experience as it is about the object, this one includes a starter (one-year – "not to exceed four cases") supply of Tanqueray, and a "personal cocktail education session for up to twenty guests with a Tanqueray mixology expert is included."

If you want to up the gift ante, there's a $425K a trip to the Oscar's Vanity Fair party, with the requisite Chateau Marmont dinner and loaner jewelry.

With all of its Crazy-Luxe gifts, NM makes a charitable donation, and most of the hefty price tag for this one ($400K out of $425K) goes to Neiman's own charitable foundation.

So the question is: does the purchaser get the deduction?

And if not, I just don't get it.

But, hey, I'm not a rich Texan now, am I?

For $475K – only $5K of which goes to charity, so who cares about the deduction – the House of Creed in Paris will design a signature scent for you. You get a fancy-arse trip to Paris so they can pick up your scent, and:

A few short months later, a fragrance nonpareil will arrive at your doorstep in 24 14-karat gold-gilded six-liter flacons and 12 14-karat gold-accented leather atomizers featuring your bespoke scent.

Gets me thinking about what my scent might be. Old books and chocolate? Who wouldn't want to have 24 six-liter flacons of that?

If you chose the bespoke scent, you could use the gold-accented leather atomizer to spray a bit of it around your new $95K, limited edition Maserati Ghibli, the next item on the Fantasy Gift roster.

Then, gee whiz, there's a locket…As a kid, I'd always wanted a locket…Gee whiz…

So who could begrudge me if I chose to fritter away $100K on one designed with me in mind? (Other than those who might rather inherit that $100K than deal with the disposition of an ugly locket, and they know who they are. Speak up if you're not down with my signing up for this bijou.)

Although never for Mardi Gras, I've been to New Orleans a couple of times. Glad I've checked it off my list: really liked the bread pudding; enjoyed my ride on a streetcar named Desire, found the shotgun houses interesting. But Mardi Gras is to me, more or less, a leaping, screaming, flaming nightmare. And I'll take my leaping, screaming, flaming nightmares at a distance, thank you, happy to watch them summed up on the evening news.

No, I'm just as happy if I end up my life without laissez-ing the bon temps rouler-ing while tossing plastic beads off a parade float, and watching while a bunch of drunks scramble after them. But if you've got $125K in loose change sitting around…

Although the thought of my husband and I ever in a million years racing around in his and hers Quadski duos – a hybrid of jet ski and ATV – did make me laugh. And even though you don't need to buy the two – you can just get a "hers" – I'll pass on the Vilebrequin, $50K Quadski. Maybe Zipcar will have them someday, and I'll be able to take one out for a spin for $11.50 and hour.

Anyhow, I don't think those suckers go all that fast, and speed's the real thing, now that I think of it.

And if speed's your thing, you can get a 1:32 scale model of your favorite track.

I, personally, don't have one, but I suppose an enthusiast would, and for $300K, that scale model would be his. Because in NM-ville, this is definitely a boy-toy:

Iconic structures, pit crews, period slot cars, and more help get you into the action while integrated track cameras capture and display it on mini screens. Need help revving up the crowd? Racing legends, such as Vic Elford and David Hobbs, will cohost your inaugural race night party. Gentlemen, start your engines.

Vic Elford? David Hobbs? Be still my heart. Hope that whoever buys this one invites me to race night.

With its next fantasy gift, NM brings the cost down to mere stocking-stuff level, with a $25K 3' tall silk flower-tailed peacock. ($65K if you want to spring for the 6'-tall outdoor version.)

Also on the stocking-stuffer end of the scale, there's a $55K linens trousseau.

And to think that I'd been considering replacing my tatty sheets and towels at Bed, Bath and Beyond…

It's still miserable out, so I think I'll tuck the virtual NM Christmas Catalog under my very real pillow and take a nap. (Isn't that what the extra hour we just got granted is for?)
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-40130071403400248832014-10-31T04:09:00.000-03:002014-10-31T04:09:00.073-03:00What I'll be going out as (and what I hope to get in my bag)
Of course, I will not actually be going out as anything.

And since I won't be going out as anything, there will be nothing in my bag. Since I won't have one.

But my sister lives in Salem, and I'll be heading up there and, in the spirit of good fun, I will be in costume. But in the spirit or little or no effort, it actually won't be that much of a costume.

Not much of a stretch, but I will be going at as an old lefty: jeans, turtle neck, army shirt (authentic Viet Nam era, once belonging to my former brother in law), bandana, and dangling earrings. (Not big hoops: in the spirit of little or no effort, I was too lazy to go out and scout some up. But the ones I have are sufficiently hippy-ish. They'll pass.)

I wish I still had a pair of Dr. Scholl's sandals around…

I thought I had a bunch of old buttons – boycott grapes, get out of Viet Nam – but they seem to have disappeared on me. I was able to find a McGovern for President pin, and an Uppity Women Unite of recent vintage but 1970 sentiment.

I have an artsy necklace that looks like it was purchased in a head shop but which I actually bought at Lord & Taylor in 1970 – so it's definitely era-appropriate -  and have hung onto since.

I was going to make myself a picket sign, but I don't want to lug it around. ('What have you got?' the answer uttered (sneered?) by Marlon Brando's character in The Wild One when asked 'What are you protesting?')

Anyway, I suspect that most people won't know I'm in costume, since what I'm wearing won't be that much different than what I'd be wearing.

While I won't be going door to door trick or treating, I will be giving out candy at my sister's.

Her town of Salem is the epicenter of trick or treat, and my sister lives just off Salem Common. Given that Halloween is on a Friday this year, she can expect upwards of 300 ghosts and goblins Spider Mans and whatever the name is of the Frozen princess who has most favored princess status. So giving out candy is an all-hands effort there. (We all spell each other handing out candy, hanging out drinking wine, and hanging out keeping the dog calm. Jack does not especially approve of Halloween.)

While I am on handing-out duty, I will admit that I will occasionally put one of my hands in the goody basket, seeking out a Butter Finger.

I don't know why.

Butter Finger is not my favorite candy ever.

But it sure is my favorite Halloween candy ever.

I will no doubt snag a little boxeen of Junior Mints while I'm at it, as well.

Another Halloween fav: M&Ms. (But that probably shouldn't be on the Halloween list, as M&Ms are actually something I buy in real life, in real size.)

Anything chocolate is good, of course.

But there are a couple of must-avoids: Starbursts and Jolly Ranchers. (I used to put Skittles in that category, but actually have grown to like them. Not enough to choose them over a Butter Finger, but definitely requiring no avoidance dance.)

If I were going out, I'd be thrilled with Hershey's miniatures, especially a Mr. Goodbar. With a Tootsie Pop (but not a Dum-Dum). With a York Peppermint Patty. With a (wrapped) Twizzler.

No thanks to an apple, a popcorn ball, a salty snack. It's Halloween: Sugar 'r Us.

No thanks to a Sugar Daddy or Turkish taffy. I have too many fillings to worry about yanking out.

Ah, Halloween.

While Halloween is supremely excellent in Salem, it is also pretty darned good in my neighborhood in downtown Boston.

Lots of folks decorate their homes and, because those homes are old and in a gaslight neighborhood, everything looks kind of spooky to begin with.

If the weather's decent, especially given that it's a weekend, the hordes will be out, thronging the streets. As my neighborhood is so concentrated, things will in some ways be even crazier than in Salem where the overall crowds will, no doubt, be larger.

Folks always say that, after a loved one dies, 'the holidays are the hardest.'

I always have to laugh at this one.

My husband hated most holidays, and preferred not to celebrate any of them.

He put up with my hosting Christmas Eve, but after my aunt and my mother died, he pretty much stopped "doing" Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

So, as a matter of fact, the holidays won't be the hardest.

But because it was all about kids, Jim very much enjoyed Halloween. For a number of years, when we lived in an upstairs flat in a massive  townhouse that had kids downstairs (who became like a niece and nephew to us), we'd go out with them.

After those guys grew too old for trick or treat, we began to ratchet back and forth, every other year, between Salem and The Hill (with a few stops in Boston's Charlestown neighborhood along the way).

Which all makes Halloween the one holiday that will be a bit tough on me this year.

In Jim's honor, I will see if I can snag one of his favorites: a Snickers bar or a box of Good 'n Plenty.

And since part of Jim's ashes were shot into space last Thursday, I suppose we might say that he will be going out – symbolically speaking – as an astronaut.

Whatever you're going out (or staying in) as, Happy Halloween.
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-35911845786909870322014-10-30T04:38:00.000-03:002014-10-30T04:38:00.606-03:00Note to Blake Francis: we don't need this kind of marketing, and we probably don't need Need, either
There once was a marketing day, long, long, ago, when even a pokey, crummy, obscure tech company could get an audience with a tech journalist.

You might be a pokey, crummy, obscure tech company, and you might well stay that way, but journalists couldn't afford to completely ignore you because, on occasion, one of those pokey, crummy, obscure tech companies actually emerged from the slough of despond of underfunding and eroding tech edge, and became a large, crummy, non-obscure powerhouse.

There was something called a "road show", and, when your pokey, crummy, obscure tech company had a product release, your PR firm would set up interviews/demos with all the leading tech publications and industry analysts – conveniently grouped in Silicon Valley, Boston/128, and the NY Metro (Long Island and Connecticut) – and you hit the road.

The goal was to get them to write something about you. And mostly they did.

You then paid the publication a lot o' money to reproduce those articles on slick paper, so that you could use them as collateral. One of the reasons you spent time with the analysts was so that they'd agree to take a call from a journalist who was writing about you, and give them a quote.

No matter how banal and neutral, a quote from an analyst was a good thing. Maybe even better than a quote from a customer. (What did they know? Probably nothing if they were daffy enough to buy our products.)

Anyway, one of the reasons those analysts played nice was that they were hoping that you'd pay their firm a lot of money to read what they had to say about your product and those of your competitors, knowing that whatever bucket/quadrant they placed you in, you could spin it up into something positive. Hey, we all knew that the niche designation meant double-L loser, but what the hell.

That was the way the world work in the years B.I. – Before the Internet.

But with the Internet, marketing started to have less and less control over the message, and product information. So you were no longer such a great source for journalists.

Meanwhile, tech companies proliferated, so journalists could be a bit more selective. Analysts, too, got cannier at figuring out who was going to spend any money with them, and started spending less time with the cheapskates.

One of the marketing techniques that became popular once the journalists got pickier and choosier was to send out something that would their attention. Something in a box. Something that they'd open. Something that seemed like a present.

You only sent these to journalists, never to an analyst, who positioned themselves as above reproach and bribery.

One dimensional mailer I sent to a select group of journalists was a Jenga set. (It actually had a vague connection with the product messaging.) This campaign didn't exactly stop the presses, but it did get us a couple of interviews (and stories) that we might not have grabbed otherwise.

But sometimes you can get carried away, attention grab-wise, as has happened when one Blake Francis decided to ply a bunch of tech journalists with a goody basket. One of the writers Francis was trying to pitch and woo was Kristen Brown of the SF Chronicle, who wrote:

A few weeks ago, a startup founder showed up in the lobby of The Chronicle after hours. He told me I hadn't responded to his e-mails. And he wanted to get my attention.

He delivered his pitch, along with a wicker basket filled with sexually suggestive gifts: the sex toy [a vibrator], a tube of K-Y Jelly, raw oysters and Tequila.

It definitely got my attention. But it didn't seem like his choice of swag had anything to do with his company, Need, a question-and-answer app where users anonymously ask each other for advice on everything from babysitters to boyfriends. (Source: SFGate)

A particularly tasteless thing to do, especially to a female journalist, given all the concern about sexism in the tech sector (which Brown gets into in her column.)

Anyway, Brown called Francis on it:

When I first questioned Francis about why he chose to send me oysters, Tequila and a vibrator, he responded that they were all products recommended on Need. Attached to each item was a tag featuring a screenshot of the app with the conversation in which the product in question was mentioned. Francis said that he had sent the same swag to other male and female journalists.

But people in the Need community have also recommended solar phone chargers and stores for buying high-quality letter paper, as well as doled out advice for first date spots in Berkeley. I pointed these things out to Francis and he recanted a bit. He told me the company just picked items they thought would "stand out."

"In retrospect we did not use good judgment," he said.

Retrospect, unfortunately, is usually too late.

Lack of judgment or not, I suspect that Blake Francis is just delighted with the press he's gotten.

After all, a lot more folks have now heard of Need. So, mission accomplished.

Other than the fact that, now that we've heard of it, I suspect most of us are asking ourselves just what the hell we need Need for.

I mean, do we really need a place where we can ask a question  - and have our "friends" answer it anonymously - when we're thinking of purchasing a dildo?

Need is a fun and easy way to exchange anonymous recommendations with friends. (Source: Need)

I'm all for easy, but I guess I'm just not much fun. And I will always trust a recommendation that's got a name on it before I'd go with one from "A. Friend."

Anyway, I checked out some of the sample questions Need was answering, and they seemed like just the sorts of questions that a) you ask a friend non-anonymously (as in "any thoughts on where we should honeymoon") and/or b) search online for (as in "I have a bloating/gas problem").

I just do not see any value at all here.

Then again,  I'm shocked by ads for Angie's List that have people touting it as a place to find a pediatrician for their newborn.

Sad commentary on society that you wouldn't have anyone in your life you could ask for a recommendation for something of such importance.

It will be interesting to see whether Need ends up being yet another pokey, crummy, obscure tech company, or whether someone decides that they're all that and a bag of chips and gobbles them up for a couple of billion.

Why don't I go over to Need and ask?
 Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-71016312143034438512014-10-29T03:19:00.000-03:002014-10-30T10:32:49.758-03:00A shout out to Music Maker. (Let their voices be heard!)In this day and age, it's hard at times not to fall into the trap that equates artistic greatness and talent with financial success. The trap that tells us that "the market" (that brutal, unrelenting, but inherently – ahem - impartial beast) will somehow discover all there is to discover and reward it appropriately.

To some degree, the market does do a lot of weeding out for us. Really terrible actors will generally stop getting good roles, no matter how many casting couches they fall onto. Really dreadful, wooden artists whose works fall flat on the canvas, emitting no spark of the divine, of coherence, emotion, skill or wit, won't end up on the walls of MOMA for long. Really rotten musicians won't sell out the big arenas year after year, and the purely manufactured hokum acts won't tend to have staying power.

Not every artist will be to everyone's taste, and we can all point to plenty of those with less than stunning talent who make it big, whose most stunning talent appears to be making a stunning amount of money without having anything any modicum of real talent.

Still…

Not that I can't come up with well-populated lists of folks who've made it big who I don't think have all that much to offer, talent-wise - and maybe because I am a reader-writer, my longest sub-list is that of writers - but the majority of those who "make it" in some sort of artistic, literary, whatever endeavor are not what my father used to refer to as "no talent bums."

The converse is no so true.

The only great writers aren't the anointed ones with seven-figure book deals and full page ads in The New Yorker. The only legitimate artist isn't Jeff Koons. And just because you're not selling out arena shows doesn't mean you're not a great musician.

If you don't trust my word, look and listen no further than this video, from PBS News the other evening:

Although it looks like you're going to the full show, clicking on the video should theoretically get you to the segment on the Music Maker Relief Foundation, a.k.a., Music Maker, . If that doesn't work for you - or if the segment starts in mid-stream - this link will take you to the page where Music Maker has posted it.. (Between the app I use to write my blog, and Blogger, where it's published, there doesn't seem to be a clean way to successfully embed a video. I've been crazing around with HTML, and it kinda/sorta works...)

Anyway, I know about the Music Maker through my brother-in-law, who has served on its board for the last several years.
Music Maker is a non-profit:

…founded to preserve the musical traditions of the South by directly supporting the musicians who make it, ensuring their voices will not be silenced by poverty and time…
Since our founding in 1994, we have assisted and partnered with over 300 artists, issued over 150 CDs and reached over a million people with live performance in over 40 states and 17 countries around the globe.
Music Market is the life's work of Tim and Denise Duffy, who have devoted their considerable talents and energies to the organization for the past twenty years.

Yes, Music Maker does plenty of handouts – some of those they help our so poor, old, and infirm that they really just need a case of Ensure and the heating bill paid – but it's model is really to get the artists they support to do paid gigs.

Early on in their 20 years of supporting their artists, the Duffys learned that, while these folks "lived in abject poverty…when we asked how we could help, they didn't ask for money, they wanted a gig."

The Duffys' experience evolved into the Music Maker model, a model based on their realization that:

…it was easier to help an artist earn $500 than to raise $500 to give away, and the earning usually involved an artist doing what they love best: performing. Better yet, this most often results in a crowd watching the show, keeping the art form vibrant and our culture enriched.
Which is not to say that they still can't use flat-out donations, which can be made here. Better yet, you can shop their catalog and support their musicians directly here.

I am a big fan of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, an incredibly talented group of musicians who are on the younger side of the Music Maker catalog age distribution. They are also not among the abjectly poor and needy musicians that Music Maker more generally supports. But they are dedicating their careers, and their extraordinary talents, to roots music. And if there's a more beautiful, poignant and soulful song than "Leaving Eden" out there, I've yet to hear it.

With Music Maker, Tim and Denise Duffy are doing something so meaningful and important.
The world needs more of this than we do yet another twerking and tweeting Beyoncé wannabe, that's for sure.

Maybe they never get to sell-out the stadium. Maybe they never get to pay the NFL for the privilege of doing the Super Bowl half-time show. Maybe they never get the glitz and glamour.

But how wonderful to be reminded that there are so many brilliant, talented, dedicated musicians out there. Sure makes listening worthwhile.Maureen Rogershttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-60295222113998171632014-10-28T05:09:00.000-03:002014-10-28T05:09:00.658-03:00Pumpkin rager
Things have pretty much calmed down, but last week the biggest dealio on the local news was the Pumpkin Fest riots in Keene, New Hampshire.

Keene, for those who aren't familiar with it, is a quite pleasant little city. I've never spent any time there, but I've driven through a few occasions, as it's on the way to Bellows Falls, VT, where my husband hailed from. (We almost stayed in Keene once, after a pre-Internet fiasco with a B&B we'd booked in Vermont. When we rolled in on our way back from a nice stay in Burlington, we found that our B&B – advertised as 'walking distance to town' – was miles off the beaten path, and at the end of a long, unlit dirt road that included passage on a rickety old covered bridge. Once we got there, we realized that the scenario had 'nervous breakdown' written all over it, and decided to head back to Boston. But we almost stopped in Keene for the night before deciding that what we really wanted was our own bed and a double order of dun-dun noodles from Mary Chung's.)

Among its other attributes, Keene is the home to Keene State College, which I take it is also known as Keene State Party School. It's apparently been that way for quite a while. I read somewhere that, way back in the nineties, in those quaint pre-social media days when students threw keggers, not ragers, the school started shutting down over the weekend  closest to St. Patrick's Day, when – as every New Englander knows – the green-beer induced vomit just spews.

Besides being the home to Keene State, Keene had for years hosted a Pumpkin Festival, showing off things like the most carved pumpkins ever, and featuring family fun.

Well, students being students, they wanted in on some of that fun, only their fun would be away-from-the-parents style fun.

For the last few years, Pumpkin Fest has been drawing bigger and bigger crowds of drunken 20-somethings. But this weekend was over the top. A few square blocks near the college were filled with thousands of people chanting obscenities, tearing down street signs, lighting fires. SWAT Teams marched through the streets in Kevlar, shooting pepper balls, tear gas and foam rubber bullets. (Source: NPR)

The mayhem associated with Pumpkin Fest – thanks to Keens State students and their pals – has been escalating to the degree  that when Homeland Security gave them the opportunity to grab on to an armored personnel carrier, the Keene town fathers seized the chance. One of their stated reasons was to ensure that they could adequately police the Pumpkin Fest, which got the attention – and raised the mirth level – of Steven Colbert, among others.

I promise NOT to off on a tangent about the dangers of militarizing the police force, and whether every community needs a SWAT team (if you have one, you'll use one, which is not necessarily a good thing). These are things that I'm completely in terror of.

In any case, I really don't think that hundreds of drunken, out of control, imbecilic college kids – even though they're hurling bottles at cops, starting fires, and turning over cars – need to be taken down by a tank. (Shields, batons, and plenty of arrests, on the other hand.)

But riot these a-holes did. (The kids, not the cops.)

And, since there's no such thing as a par-tay unless there's a public video made of it and posted, arrests are now starting to be made of those who hurled bottles, etc.

But just as the riot can safely said to be alcohol-fueled, it's also likely that social media played an accelerant role:

…city and state officials are laying at least some of the blame on social media, and they've named one small party-hosting company.

That party-hosting company, one FinnRage, is the "brain" child of a Massachusetts college student, one Trevor Finney, who, it seems, desperately wants to be an entrepreneur. And what with things like selling cookies in the dorm at 2 a.m., or typing/writing papers for $$$, so old-school, so done, young Master Finney looked to the Girls Gone Wild experience and figured that this model could well be his entry into the marvelous world of fame and fortune.

So he set up a business, FinnaRage TV, that runs campus parties. Part of the package is that he shows up to film them, making sure that the partygoers get to show all the world just how raging cool they are. So far, he's been the host with the most for free, but he hopes to turn it into a lucrative (of course) business. After which, I suppose, at some point he grows up.

In the weeks leading up to Pumpkin Fest, FinnaRage promoted a party with a poster showing a scantily clad woman standing in a field of pumpkins. FinnaRage TV traffics in plenty of suggestive content. Their website is full of videos of people chugging beer, grinding on the dance floor, and in one instance, smoking a bong through a gas mask.

Aspiring entrepreneur Finney doesn't think any of what happeend at Keene is his fault:

"We were put in the middle," says Trevor Finney, the 20-year-old owner of FinnaRage TV. "I got shot by a rubber bullet. Like…I…this is the last thing that I wanted."

Wah, wah, wah

"FinnaRage is about having a good time. It's about the unique experience that we bring," says Finney.

I suspect that it will be hard for anyone to make FinnaRage culpable for the Keene Pumpkin Fest Riot, even though he may have given the party riot a running start.

But it's probably a good thing that Trevor Finney wants to be an entrepreneur.

Unless he takes down his website, makes his Twitter feed private, and does something to improve the results when you search on his name, this kid is not exactly helping his chances of getting a job with a bank or insurance company. That is unless the hiring managers are no longer prigs, but are now all rager wannabes.

Not that he would want to be some lackey, some management trainee, some no name, no fame no one who ekes out a decent albeit humble existence, and never gets the splash car, the fancy pad, the media buzz, the mega-blunt…

Not that there weren't drunken debacles when I was in college. But the riots in those days actually had a bit more purpose than putting drunken narcissism on display.

And while Trevor Finney's figuring out how to cash in – surely this has all put FinnaRage on the map, and schools outside of New England will start clamoring for his services – I don't suppose that the admissions yield at Keene State is going to be all that great this year. Not if those boring old non-raging parents have anything to do with it.

Yet another reason to be glad I'm not young anymore…
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-10329278.post-19837063358167501082014-10-27T04:37:00.000-03:002014-10-27T04:37:00.396-03:00You can get anything you want, at Alice's Breastaurant (excepting Alice)
Until I came across an article about Twin Peaks, I had scant awareness of a restaurant category informally referred to as "breastaurants".

Sure, I had heard of Hooters. There used to be on in downtown Boston, in fact – not surprisingly, near the TD/Boston Garden, where the Bruins and Celtics play. Nor surprisingly, it didn't last.

The rap on New England is that "our girls" are just not as sexy and pretty as the ones in locations where Hooters and the like seem to flourish. And it is true that we don't tend to go in for the big hair, gleaming teeth, fake tan, beauty queen look. No, New England beauties are more apt to be the bluestocking, madam librarian types. (You have, of course, seen enough old movies to know what madam librarian looks like when she takes off those glasses and lets down her hair.)

But I like to think that breastaurants don't succeed in these parts to the same degree they do elsewhere is that we are, in general, a more advanced, refined and high-minded civilization, where our lusty young men want to get to know a lusty young woman for her mind. (Of course, just because I like to think this does not in any way, shape, or form mean that it's true.)

Maybe breastaurants haven't taken off here because nine-months out of the year, whatever skimpy outfits the waitresses wore would have to be covered in fleece.

Anyway, since they're not all that prevalent in our landscape, I was only vaguely aware that the breastaurant represented an entire eating and dining category – similar to the sports bar (of which this area has a surfeit), and that Hooters has, in fact, become one of the tamer variations on the team, their once provocative costumes were now the category's equivalent of the Lanz nightgown. And that Hooters has sunk so low, breastaurant-wise, that it is now considered a family place to dine which, I guess, puts it in competition with just about every other mediocre chain restaurant out there.

The newcomer is Twin Peaks (ho, ho – or is it no longer okay to say 'ho, ho'?), which sounds like a complete an utter throwback, where:

Before each shift …managers line up waitresses and grade them on their looks. The women get points for hair, makeup, slenderness, and the cleanliness of their uniforms: fur-lined boots, khaki hot pants, and skimpy plaid tops that accentuate their cleavage. (Source: Business Week)

All very important in the breastaurant biz, or as it is also known "the attentive service sector." (What else might be in that category? Pole dancers? "Escorts"? Home health aides?)

For my first waitressing job, our uniform was a prim white short-sleeved shirt with a pleated front, a clip on dark brown bowtie, a dowdy, knee-length dark brown polyester skirt, and an orange cotton apron. We were issued one uniform – which most likely had already been worn by someone who'd quit – which (it goes without saying) had to be washed every night. We also had to wear a hairnet and lipstick, and had to make sure that our name tag (first name  only) was positioned far enough above the left breast so that no wisenheimer would ask 'what's the other one named? Ho, ho! (It was definitely okay to say ho-ho back in my Big Boy waitressing days.)

A senior waitress inspected us for hairnet, lipstick, and nametag violations, but there was no point system. (The article doesn't say what the point system at Twin Peaks translates into: a better station? a raise? the possibility of accumulating too many demerits and being fired?)

Anyway, at Big Boy, if it weren't for the lipstick, we could have been mistaken for postulants in some order of nuns with a motherhouse in the Southwest. But we were a family restaurant – underscored by not serving any alcohol – and, while this was in the age of the mini-skirt and hot pants, restaurants did not for the most part specialize in sexy waitresses. If you wanted sexy, you went to a bar or to the Playboy Club and ogle the bunnies.

Needless to say, bluestocking little old me wasn't likely to find work in a place that went in for sexy. I was young enough, for sure. But other than that…

While at Big Boy, most of the waitresses were young – certainly all under thirty when I was there when I was 18 and 19 – when I worked at Durgin-Park and the Union Oyster House, the average waitress was probably in her late fifties, with a range from twenty (me) to eighty (Bertha, Flo, Gussie).

Fortunately, we didn't have to push any cutesie-named dishes. (Big Boy did have a sandwich called the Brawny Lad, but that was about it.) But at Twin Peaks, the menu is pretty much wink-wink, nudge-nudge:

Their job, between serving sports-bar fare with names such as "well-built sandwiches" and "smokin' hot dishes," is to beguile the mostly male customers, flirting to get them to empty their wallets. They may also have to fend off patrons who've washed down too many of the house beers, including the Dirty Blonde or the Knotty Brunette.

Ah, the wit level. If I weren't so old and creaky I'd be ROFLMAO.

Meanwhile, Twin Peaks is laughing all the way to the bank, and last year was "the fastest-growing chain the in the U.S., with $165 million sales."

Some of those $165 million in sales are due to pressuring the clientele into upsizing their orders.

When someone orders a beer, they're asked:

"Do you want the man size or the girl size?"

Which is further described as a "little, 10-ounce baby beer."

Aw, hell. What red-blooded 'merican he-man would order a girl size baby beer? Those are for lefty girlie-men who probably carry murses, and who more than likely prefer Chardonnay to a Dirty Blonde, anyway.

While Twin Peaks reputedly has better food than the standard chain fare, industry analysts say that it's the waitresses that are making the difference. (Twin Peaks restaurants on average gross more than Hooters, or another breastaurant competitor, the Tilted Kilt.)

The chain gets the waitresses discounts at gyms, tanning joints, and nail salons. It gives them tips on styling their hair and using makeup and offers them a diet menu to keep them from gaining weight. The best performers are invited to pose, in some cases topless, for the annual Twin Peaks calendar. DeWitt calls his employees "weapons of mass distraction."

On the one hand, the money's probably a lot more than what a waitress could make at a Big Boy. On the other hand, the waitresses have to put with degrading comments and drunken advances from a bunch of yahoos.

Not that I was ever a Twin Peaks kind of gal, but, looking back on a post-waitressing career that has been based on my intelligence, I do believe that  - those ancient Durgin-Park waitresses aside – work based on something other your looks has a lot more staying power.

Maybe the Twin Peaks waitresses go on to "real" careers, and view putting up with a couple of years of dimwits ordering Dirty Blondes and making lewd comments to put themselves through college as worth it. It does beat being a lap dancer or a call girl.

Still..

Anyway, I was wondering what type of young woman (beyond one who's attractive and busty) goes in for breastaurant waitressing, and I came across this line from one of the calendar girls for one of the chains, who in her statement on her hobbies wrote:

I love bungee jumping and making pottery with my hamsters.

I choose to think that this is one young woman with an excellent sense of humor. On the other hand, if this is for real, I guess New England just doesn't have many breastaurants not just because of our bluestocking lookers, but because of the absolute dearth of bungee jumpers who throw pots with their hamsters.
 Maureen Rogershttp://firstname.lastname@example.com