Boston has its own parking jokes. In near-burbs like Newton and Brookline, there’s no joking.

In Beantown, for example, many downtown areas have stretched meter times to 8 p.m. from 6. We also have some South End tricks like metered spaces that suddenly turn into resident-permit-only ones at 8 p.m., often with the signs revealing that gimmick largely hidden by common linden branches.

Boston though has this weird by suburban standards idea that meters and on-street parking are for the convenience of residents, visitors and businesses. In fact, the stated concern is that there be adequate turnover at meters to encourage people to use local companies.

Don’t fantasize that this sentiment extends to any of the wealthier burbs. Your warning for predatory parking enforcement are no-overnight and 2-hour-limit parking limit signs where you would expect to see welcome-to (our fair burg) ones.

Brookline has those and they mean it. While they don’t have roving gangs of parking enforcers, they do have some and ticket as freely as they can. Moreover, most restaurants and other businesses with lots in the back contract with relentless contract towing companies who live to snatch cars when the businesses are closed. Ten minutes often means a big ticket, towing fee and the time to retrieve your vehicle. Ptui on you.

Newton though stands alone in its viciousness. It actively discourages visitors from its business districts. They would far rather charge fines than encourage shopping and service usage. They back this up with a huge crew of ticket writers and an unbelievably detailed set of regulations and restrictions.

This came to mind again this morning when the Boston Globe ran a feature on the latest effort to extract every dollar from every vehicle owner who dares to patronize a local business. The city paid $150,000 for three systems to scan license plates and notify passing enforcement crews when a car has been in a space too long.

In the garden city, a chalk mark on a tire to flag a car for a meter man or maid is not efficient enough. Such manual checks don’t churn the fines. You can be damned sure they see that investment as something requiring quick payback, thus tickets and more tickets.

The rules-are-rules types may well love that. Not surprisingly, today’s article quotes some locals as saying it’s not a good idea.

Yet, delve a little into Newton’s thought process here and see the proof of the rabid compulsion. The regs suggest they have made this a moral issue.

Click to the city site and search for parking. You’ll find:

• parking restriction (453 times)
• street parking spaces (341 times)
• parking lot (187 times)
• parking meters (187 times)
• long term parking (150 times)
• municipal parking lots (149 times)
• commercial permit parking (146 times)
• Boston College parking garage (126 times)
• long term parking spaces (123 times)

More telling may be a separate 174-page parking regulation document. There are hundreds of special rules per street. They even have multi-paragraph, per-public school specifications for permits and limits on parking in those lots. Newton is obsessed with parking enforcement in a classic Teutonic way. Only following orders, rules are rules, it’s the law and such come to mind.

Newton doesn’t want you. Newton doesn’t need you. It doesn’t really like residents or businesses. I suspect you can find whatever you need elsewhere and can just drive on through.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, parking, enforcement, Newton

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In what I’ve come to view as my mini-safaris, I got another chance to go on a Boston search over the past few days. This time, it ties into the too much that I know about the grocery biz.

In the years I was a grocery trade magazine editor I saw again and again why stores lose regular customers. We can and do often overlook rude and incompetent clerks; I suspect many of us treat such experiences as free theater while we are on a line. We also are pretty tolerate of high prices; we can justify modest ripoffs as stocking exactly what we want or being nearby.

What we won’t tolerate and consider cause for not returning are OOS — out of stock.

Where’s My Stuff?

It can be something you use regularly and expect to be there. It can be an advertised special. Customers going into a store with reasonable expectations leave steamed and may not come back if what they want isn’t there.

In this case, it was my bone drugs, or really minerals. Since my broken leg and surgery, I’ve supplemented my diet with calcium capsules. My wife is of course a person of the female persuasion and takes them for her own internal purposes.

As we got into our last jug of them, I could have ordered some, but the local groceries have all advertised that their house brands or some major brands were two for one. A quick calculation put that below the unit cost of stuff ordered, including the shipping.

So, it was off to Stop and Shop, which has their house brand, Care One, on twofer this week. Easy, eh?

Not so fast, Calcium Kid!

I amused myself when I had other tasks by careering from one S&S to another to another. I didn’t get my hopes up for any one and that was wise.

First came the rebuilt gem on American Legion Highway in Rozzie. It’s new, has big aisles, and looks efficient. Well, I already knew they were too dumb to put in a fresh-fish counter.

Having lived in lower JP for many years, shopped at the Purity Supreme long before it became a Grossman’s Outlet, I knew that the locals like their fish. Particularly those from the Caribbean are pretty demanding, loved PS’ selections, and still support free-standing fish stores in that same strip mall, in Eggleston Square, Dudley Square and many more places. Why S&S wouldn’t accommodate that speaks volumes on corporate mentality.

That new supermarket has numerous other shortcomings. For example, we buy quarts of non-fat plain yogurt weekly. They badly understock those. They invariably have low-fat plain, vanilla and other variations, but they clearly get as many non-fat plain quarts as the other types. They run out first and I often find none or one there.

This is not hard to predict. I can go on at considerable length about the innovations of the grocery industry in materials handling and inventory control. For the purpose of the yogurt example, the key factor is that the secret is in the cash register. As well as plugging in the unit price for an item, scanning the bar code adjusts the inventory level for the store. They know when they are getting low and can easily run reports on items consistently OOS.

Back to bone capsules:

S&S American Legion — a whole health-and-beauty-aid aisle, but heavy on baby butt products, moderate on makeup and extremely low on vitamins and minerals. They didn’t have squat and there were no places for what I wanted anyway.

S&S Truman Highway — just as masochistic amusement and because it’s a vigorous mile and change walk each way down and up the mysteriously named Summit/Washington/Wakefield street, I checked. This sad little store allegedly will get a larger replacement but is now like a double convenience store. I suspect any New Ager’s medicine cabinet has more minerals and vitamins. No dice.

S&S Dedham — I allowed myself to hope for success at this very large store. They can also run out of my yogurt, but they almost always stock enough advertised specials. They had labels for the big calcium bottles on the shelf, but alas, some other questing sorts had beaten me. A couple of sizes were OOS and there was one bottle of one variety remaining. A twofer doesn’t work with one, which must be why it was there.

I checked a few other where I don’t usually shop, but had reason to be nearby. Harvard Ave. in Brookline isn’t much of a store and didn’t have it. The northern JP one near Jackson has few vitamins or minerals.

S&S South Bay (Allstate Road) — the mother lode is here! I don’t know that I’ve bought any minerals here ever. I’ll keep it in memory. They had several times the shelf-space devoted to their food supplements as any of the others in the chain. I had a choice of numerous capsules per bottle, various milligrams per capsule, and with or without vitamin D.

I came by bike and my selection pretty much filled the spare space in my shoulder bag. It was two 500-capsule jugs. I’m not only set for awhile, I also know where to go next year.

Inventory by Caprice

You would think that Stop and Shop, or any major grocery chain would be more consistent. You’d think that they’d have similar stock store to store.

Of course not and part of that is reasonable. They expect their local managers to understand their customers enough to tailor the stock to their tastes.

You also have to wonder what would make managers in Roslindale figure their customes don’t want a real fish counter instead of shrink-wrapped, maybe long dead, stuff. It’s probably the same attitude that figures their customers don’t want a selection of vitamins and minerals.

At the least, I expect them to read their own weekly fliers. If they advertise food supplements at two-for-one, it’s essential to have a full stock for customers who walk in the store expecting that. If customers get their two of this or that, they are almost certain to pile a cart with all that other stuff. If they don’t, they’re likely to exit with only car keys in hand.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Boston, grocery, calcium, Stop and Shop, shopping

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Try to find filé powder in Shaw’s or Stop & Shop. I tried, along with many other chain and oner groceries in and around Boston.

As always, my quest was successful…through my demented perseverance. In my decades in Boston, I have gone from harrumphing frustration to amusement and enjoyment of the sport of it all.

As the cook around here, I am relentless in pleasing my family and guests. It isn’t always easy in a less than cosmopolitan town. Locale has come to make the ingredient hunts events for small triumphs.

Some of this is my fault for having a wide and deep repertoire  in the kitchen. I have been known to guffaw and simultaneously wrinkle my many-furrowed brow when I mention that I am the family cook. Almost invariably the non-chefs and mere dabblers and meat burners outside ask, “Oh, what kind of food do you cook?,” as though that would be reasonable chitchat. Horse feathers! It would be far easier to list what I won’t, haven’t or can’t cook.

Moreover, having lived in many parts of the country (and Japan) growing up, I got used to a variety of cuisines, groceries, and regional specialties. Then as an adult, I lived a decade in the Village in New York, two blocks from the fabulous Balducci’s produce, cheese, meat and fish haven. In lower Manhattan, virtually any foodstuff and all ingredients are available…right then…right there.

Boston and Cambridge and the area are not like that. There are many styles of restaurants. For ingredients though, you damned well better know your neighborhoods as well as your towns if you are looking for something. That’s kind of cute and even endearing in a provincial way. It’s less wonderful when you want to make a dish you know or have recently gotten a recipe for making. The hunt is on!

In its extreme, I learned this the first year we moved from the apple to the bean. That was 30 years ago and Boston has become more urbane and cosmopolitan since, but as many foods as I’ve had to track down over the years, I have no doubt we remain way behind more integrated cities with less dependency on sub-neighborhoods and cultural niches.

My first shock was fittingly enough, bean-based in Beantown. I worked down on Commercial wharf at Inc. magazine, which was a nice walk from the half of a townhouse we rented from the food and beverage manager of the Ritz. Johnny Carter of Johnny and Bonnie was a serious foodie by passion as well as profession.

He said he had never eaten feijoada, the Brazilian national dish and I figured I’d serve that as a get-better-acquainted meal. I knew I could get the sausages and pig and cow parts in the North End on the way home. I had not accounted that the key, staple ingredient — black (turtle) beans — would be a huge deal. After all, I had the North End, the Haymarket and Stop & Shop on the way home.

Well, 30 years ago, we here were even more provincial than we are now. Store after store, whether Italian specialty or chain, most did not have black beans or had ever seen them. Nowadays they are common dried and canned, but not in early 1980.

Such safaris have recurred repeatedly since, but with far greater success. That evening of the feijoada meant substituting the much inferior kidney bean, which did not have the fullness and muskiness required. However, I have learned to plan farther out. I also know which neighborhoods and which stores are likely to have this or that ingredient.

Tracking down items that would be very common in Manhattan has become a real sport and pastime in Boston. Such it was with filé.

I had a couple bottles of powdered sassafras leaves, including one a friend who visited New Orleans brought me a few years ago. When I use it that is generally for gumbo and I don’t need a lot, perhaps a teaspoon or two at the most and putting some on the table for the Southerners to sprinkle on as they might with the various levels of hot sauce I provide.

I sussed out the new Hyde Park supermarket, part of the PriceRight chain.  Every week (starting Sunday and not the herd mentality of Friday), that store has specials, including a couple of loss-leader produce items. One week it might be 97¢-a-pound grapes and the next it might be and was 99¢ okra.

Those wicked green fingers were as flawless as any I had seen or my granddad ever grew and at a great price. So, I churned out a gumbo and used my next to last allotment of filé. Hence, I went looking for replenishment.

As a side note, I disdain those who say a gumbo needs either okra as a thickener or filé for that job and not both. I don’t know anyone from Louisiana or anywhere in the Deep South who agrees.  The word gumbo itself is from an African term for okra. You can be sure the namesake is essential. Filé though does more than thicken the broth. It has a distinctive flavor and aroma. We can taste and smell it. Gumbo is not real without both okra and filé, regardless of the fat used in the roux, the meat or fish simmered, or the broth base.

So with my absurdly, compulsively through process, I walked, biked or drove to store after store and called a few others. I learned a few things, such as:

• the wonderful Hi-Lo Latino market in JP’s Hyde Square has myriad herbs and spices in four places, with lots of Caribbean medicinal bags of leaves or roots, but no sassafras.
• likewise, America’s Food Basket on Hyde Park Avenue not only has a fine  selection of those ugly root vegetables, but it has a huge range of culinary and medicinal herbs and spices in three sections (no filé).
• also, that new PriceRight has a big selection in two places in bottles and bags, but no filé.

After two dozen stores, I was amused by it all. I returned to the internet and tried multiple versions of search terms. Finally with something like “(filé powder)  gumbo Boston Cajun ingredients”I saw the winner. On the fourth page of hits, a food chat site had a comment that included the highlighted phrase “for those in the Boston area”.

Sure enough, a decent bike ride or drive of 12-plus miles took me to the source — the wonderful Marty’s in Newton. Yeah, it’s a wine/booze/beer store, but they have great mustards, chocolates and other foodstuffs. I’m sorry the Allston one disappeared in a lease fight, but one is really all I need.

Marty’s private brands many herbs and spices in a great rack of clear bags. God bless ‘em. I returned with two sacks of filé. Come the next batch of perfect okra, I’m set. I make a totally pleasing gumbo.

Perhaps it’s  true that the worthwhile should be at least a little struggle so you appreciate it. I’m sure I was spoiled by the years in the Village and almost daily trips to Balducci’s. There I’d find exactly what I wanted and needed and then carry my treasures the whole two blocks north. It was satisfying without the thrill of the hunt.

Likewise, I know in Boston I have cataloged hundreds of items with their neighborhoods and stores for sources. I also know that a couple of times a year, I’ll don my virtual pith helmet and pick up my virtual net for the hunt.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Boston, cooking, file powder, gumbo, shopping

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Regular readers here know I came to my crankiness and harrumphing by nurture. Yet, I think I could ease off a bit — if only the world didn’t delivery so many catalysts.

A recurring one rebates on cases of wine. When I get stiffed, I just can’t let it go.

The most recent exchange was over a zin, Gnarly Head, that we like here and buy even when it isn’t rebate season. It was the usual problem and after having been burned more than once, I am on the ready with safeguards.

That’s quite a bit of drama for a small setback. Then again, I was raised by a crank to be a crank. I figured on this one that even if I had ended up losing out on $28 of the $30 due me, the annualized amortization would  be about 8¢ a day. That wasn’t the point.

To the non-drinkers and spendthrifts, it works like this:

• Once or twice a year (generally Thanksgiving/Christmas and around mid-year) some moderate-priced U.S. or Aussie vineyards offer rebates.
• These tend to be a couple dollars off on a bottle or $20, $25 or $30 off on a case of 12.
• A few are obnoxious, requiring the bottle bar-code labels with the inherent soaking and scraping. Most take a clear receipt with the date, price and product.
• Squeeze your information onto an itsy-bitsy form on slick paper and mail it to a fulfillment house.
• Wait a month or two and get your rebate…or part of it.

The trouble comes when the house sends a check for one bottle when the rebate should be for the case. While some may find it silly to chase small amounts of money, cranks don’t.

The facts include that I don’t deal in guilt. I don’t take it and don’t give it. I’m a resolution kind of guy.

In contrast, I think of how successful Scientology has been in taking a neurological theory, engrams, for a long, well-paying ride. That would be when something bad happens, you are gun-shy and alter your behavior, often to your detriment. I see the effect of this as right now on the 12-month anniversary of falling on black ice and breaking two leg bones. I am cautious about patches of slickness. Then again, I don’t hide inside nor do I shake in terrorized anticipation of a recurrence.

I don’t need galvanometers, auditing or paying tens of thousands of dollars to get a grip.

So it is in a much lesser way with tricksy rebates. I have learned to scan my receipt and form into a PDF doc, just in case. I firmly believe that the fulfillment houses are not crooks trying to cheat us plonk tipplers. They don’t benefit by shortchanging strangers. More likely, they handle thousands of squint-producing forms a day. Some they toss into the wrong bin for rebate level. Meh.

I can cite two recent cases, both with successful conclusions. I’d much rather feel as though I had won a tiny battle than been wronged by a bad old vineyard.

In the middle of last year, a Ravenswood deal went awry. I got back $5 on the three-bottle rebate instead of $30 on the case. I didn’t send my complaint to the fulfillment house’s P.O. box, rather I used the customer-service page on the winery’s site.

The head of customer service called me a few days later. She had gone through Lord knows how many forms, found mine, apologized and had a $25 check winging to me. She was very pleasant.

Likewise, but with a twist, I got $2 back on Gnarly instead of $30. When an on-site message to them got no response, I went to parent winery Delicato Wines‘ site, clicked around quite a bit to find the big shots and wrote a USPS-delivered letter to CEO Chris Indelicato. I included a printout of the receipt, rebate form and sad little $2 check (one of the pair cropped above; click for a slightly larger view of them).

We ended up with a nice little email exchange as well, including:

Thank you for the letter you sent regarding your Gnarly Head coupon.  I am a coupon guy myself and nothing makes me madder than when I don’t get my money on a deal.  Although we have a coupon company that has dropped the ball ultimately it is our responsibility to get you paid.  The Gnarly brand manager will contact the coupon company this morning and you should receive your money shortly.

Always time to do things twice but never time to do things right the first time.  Thanks for drinking our wine – we appreciate every single customer we have the quality will only get better going forward.

Cheers

I got my $28. To the point, both companies seem to understand customer service. Not only am I happy to keep buying Gnarly Head, but I’ll surely be trying more of the vinyard’s products. Nice is generally free and pays back.

For me, the pittance for the stationary and the 44¢ for the stamp are a lot better than getting to feel wronged.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, crank, wine, rebate

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Today marks a year since my tib/fib fractures of my left leg and one day short of the surgery to pound 14.25 inches of titanium rod into the tibia thorough the knee. (My misadventure and recovery are more than covered in posts available in this blog’s Health category.)

A sipped a couple of bourbons on the rocks for the occasion. In light of my relatively successful rehab, this is a celebration of sorts.

Yet, this has been a lost year in many ways. I was already pretty depleted after 19 years as a tech writer/editor/manager. The economy and the region’s high-tech industries already were in their own rehab units, with fewer jobs and most employers trying to buy or rent cheap. My last company was one of many sold and dissolved. Then there was that financial meltdown thing. The few employers who had guts and felt personal responsibility to keep their section of the economy perking then seemed to lose all courage and conviction — understandable perhaps, but hard on us contract tech communicators.

I’ve had phone and in-person interviews for contract and permanent jobs, but no offers, just as close as second choice from a long list. That was with a hiatus of several months when I was in hospital, using a walker, on opiates, on crutches, with a cane, and doing other things. Other things included:

• Remembering that I had switched as necessary from newspapers to trade magazines, from one industry to another, to computerized everything, to high-tech reporting and reviews, to telecommunications, to  hardware and software manuals and on and on.
• Thinking about what I would like to write.
• Blogging, podcasting, roughing out food and other articles and books, and church volunteer work.
• Realizing that I turn out computer manuals superior to the vast majority (I know, not too hard, but I do know how to think like a user and like a network admin — very useful and unusual skills).
• Realizing that I could do more manuals and help system well and quickly, but that the thrill was gone.
• Allowing myself some meditation time.
• Accepting that another set of talent in the cooking and broader food categories are more interesting.
• Admitting that trying to switch to food writing would mean establishing myself from scratch…yet again…with all the emotional overhead there.

In my year, we had many other stresses, like a son in a distant college and a move from my long-term Boston neighborhood to another (JP to HP). Fortunately, my wife’s job was stable and sustains us.

So there I was yesterday at the Boston Media Makers meeting putting out a group query about how to promote myself as a food writer. I got one biz card and I’ll put a query to the group. I’ll ask video blog/group founder Steve Garfield about the video blogging he does for his food-writer wife friend Nina.

I already blog here and there and podcast over here (coming up on three years of weekly poddies).  I remain intrinsically shy, but I don’t feel I have any shame left and no longer mind blushing. I think even I can self-promote.

I have the article concepts and roughs. I have a couple of books in various forms of preparation. Moreover the best part of a move like this would be the unqualified comment. As a tech writer, I always felt I had to say something to the effect I wrote computer manuals and help systems, knowing it wasn’t exactly writing writing.

There’s nothing like a lost year, is there?

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, broken bones, recovery, writing, career, Boston Media Makers, food writing

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Just let the term roll around in your cranium — space salesman.

From my many days as a magazine writer or editor, I knew dozens of them well. To a one, they had limitless ambition and zero shame. They sold advertising in inches, fractional and full pages, spreads and more. That was the space they sold.

Of course, what they really sold was both hope and fear. Advertisers anticipated that targeted displays of their products or services would bring sales and profits (hope). They also knew too well that their competitors would aim for the same customer in the same magazines, and just maybe grab market share if they did not match their ad quality and quantity (fear).

From my newspaper days, I had see similar drives by the soft goods/alcohol/toy and other advertisers. Chums in broadcast said it was much the same there.

This mass and ubiquitous selling of the intangible only works when media successfully sells its own value. Controlled-circulation magazines, for example, first prove they have only great potential customers reading their freely distributed issues. They get subscribers to qualify, which generally means filling out a postal card claiming to be in the business, thus a target for advertisers as well as worthy to read about the industry. As important, the magazines pay auditing companies to verify their circulation in numbers and qualification.

Trust Us

Then they set their ad rates to match the alleged value of say 32,000 or three or 100 times that subscribers, a.k.a. readers representing companies just waiting to buy your stuff.

TV and radio were much the same, with the added wrinkle of target demographics. They could claim the best age clusters or zip codes of audience and such. Then each show would be its own product offering so many of this and that and so much market share in a time slot and day.

We all knew it was kind of a house of cards or more accurately like the emperor’s new clothes. The claims that the space or time really translated into advertisers’ sales and profits have always been spongy. Except where advertisers can include a rebate coupon or such that they can actually count, who can really attribute greater sales to a particular ad placement.

What advertisers do know beyond coupons is that certain ad campaigns are more effective than others. They rarely have a control group that can isolate the effectiveness of placements in one medium or one network or magazine. They are too busy with scattershot advertising (fear again).  On the other hand, if they switch campaigns and see a big uptick or plunge in sales, pow, zap, that’s almost tangible!

So, to that PepsiCo of the headline, it is blowing off the Super Bowl, says the AP. That’s gutsy, surprising, risky, and maybe trendsetting. You can be damned sure that other advertisers — beyond sugary drink makers — are paying attention.

For background:

• Pepsi has advertised at the SBs for 23 years
• Its chip folk, Frito-Lay will have spots in this year’s game
• Last year, it spent $33 million on SB ads
• Those ads this year should average $3 million per 30 second spot

A Million Here…

Pepsi along with FedEx was plain about its reasoning. Those companies said ads were too expensive. Moreover, Pepsi’s Nicole Bradley said, “In 2010, each of our beverage brands has a strategy and marketing platform that will be less about a singular event and more about a movement.”

Instead, the company will concentrate on online efforts. You can buy a lot of online presence for the millions it would have spent in the highly competitive, even mind-numbing, SB ad undercard.

We are to look for its Pepsi Refresh Project beginning in January…on the net.

So there is Pepsi charging off almost solo on its own safari. If it brings back higher customer poll numbers and even holds or gains market share domestically, that will be huge. Others would be sure to follow. Perhaps the absurd SB ad costs might drop and some companies might say they have brand recognition and no longer want to spend there, rather they might look more to online and heavens above, print.

I don’t drink soda, or tonic as we say up here. I get my bubbles from seltzer, ale and occasionally champagne. Yet, I have a 16-year-old Mountain Dew doer and from business curiosity, I’ll be watching.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, PepsiCo, Super Bowl, advertising

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To paraphrase Patrick Henry, the next gale that sweeps from the West shall bring with it a hell of a snowstorm…

In early February 1978, the Northeast got it, cripplingly so and in two waves. Boston and New York City in particular were paralyzed. I wouldn’t move to the former from the latter until the next year. In 1978, I saw cross-country skiiers high above the normal road level poling by my West Village windows.

Then I went to work.

My wife and I worked in mid-town a little over a mile apart, she at Scholastic Magazines and I at American Management Association HQ in the publishing part, AMACOM. Unlike trolley and car dependent Boston, New Yorkers moved by subway. The underground was just fine, thank you very much, even though sidewalks were more a hidden concept than anything visible.

Most AMA employees lived in the sticks suburbs. They were stranded. A subset of us in town struggled our way to the subway stations and the short distance to the HQ on the other end. The Scholastic/AMA attitudes to the loyal do-bees holds a management lesson.

In perspective, this AMA had long been addicted to rewards on the cheap. Their main business was providing educational programs for executives, with an underlying motive. Companies paid for the managers to take a trip to the site, charge some meals and hotel, and just maybe come back a tad better at what they did for a living. Companies understood that the price was a bargain — it was a one-off that didn’t add to the base salary package and thus have to be built on annually.

Not the Same

At Scholastic, the slogging workers who kept the shop open got catered meals and when all returned public acknowledgment from the big shots — plus a bonus. At AMA, we got (beat, beat) ta da! a Plexiglas paperweight.

Click on the thumbnail above to have a closer view of this 5.5 x 3.5 inch treasure. Revel in its power.

I had forgotten until we moved recently. I found it along with several similar tchotchkes.  I now vaguely remember keeping it for its absurdity value.

AMA’s president, Jim Hayes, appears on it in the form of his stock signature. Come to think of it, there were so few of us in the storms, it would have been a small thing for him to sign the cards individually before each was encapsulated for “short-term eternity”.

Nah, we at AMACOM often heard that it was a great place to be from…that it looked good on the résumé. That was true enough. Yet, like soldiers, slaves, peasants and other minions, we did not get our rewards in our daily lives. We had lower wages than others in Manhattan for similarly skilled writing, acquisitions and editing. For many of us, the from AMA could not come too soon.

On the other side of Fifth Avenue, Scholastic treated its loyal snow workers as though they had done the company a favor. On our side, we had “demonstrated commitment to the AMA spirit of service and quality (and thus were) deeply appreciated.”

We can measure the depth of that appreciation today in the 5/8th inch of plastic. The message was that we did what was expected of us.

Take What You Get

I had a slightly more personal stake in the paperweight as well. Many months, I played that same James L. Hayes in my small, subservient way. Most of my work was on the monthly magazine, Management Review.  I acquired and edited some main articles, was totally responsible for the separate little magazines inside in their domestic and international editions. Also, many months, I ghosted Hayes’ president’s column in the front of MR.

He was a charming and affable fellow, a perfect association president, and a great spontaneous speaker on general management subjects. Alas, he was an awful writer. To his credit though he knew that and certainly had enough managerial skill to be sure that a couple levels below him was enough talent to take care of that for him.

Hayes was fond of my ghostwriting. My references and quotes from ancient Greek and Roman as well as more modern European writers and philosophers made him look well read and analytical.  There really wasn’t any harm in such veneer, as underneath, he knew the business theory that AMA members craved.

Those snows of nearly 32 years ago long ago melted. The paperweight remains. In its little paper box (no expensive lid, thank you very much — just a plastic bag), was an unsigned note on embossed AMA note paper. It reads:

This plaque speaks for itself. I hope that in the years to come, it will be a reminder to you of my deep appreciation for your outstanding efforts in the winter of ‘78.

I am reminded and chuckle once more. The snows were deep, the appreciation shallow.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, Boston, New York City, AMACOM, Scholastic, Jim Hayes, blizzard, paperweight

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For those of us who walk without a claque cheering each step, Tiger Woods’ temporary retreat is somewhat refreshing. We can hope he inspires other sinful billionaires and multi-millionaires.

While his adultery offenses seem to be in the civil, not criminal class, he shares much with disgraced quarterback/dog fighter Michael Vick. Both were on top the world, on top of their game. Both had lost their ability to see cause and effect — odd for bright folk. Both stand to lose considerable money from direct sports earning and endorsements.

Also, both came around to sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

In Woods’ case, his contrition may well be a gambit to restore his halo and general glow. In theory, he could return as the world’s best-ever golfer, chastened and somewhat humanized, ready to deposit those absurdly large checks as a fallen and risen hero.

It is more difficult to sympathize with Tiger. He is far beyond set up for life. There is no way he could have the time and attention to spend all his millions upon millions.

Yet whether his willingness to swap a polo shirt for a hair shirt publicly (including on his self-promotional site)  would be meaningful…if it serves as a societal model. He or his publicist leads on his site with:

I am deeply aware of the disappointment and hurt that my infidelity has caused to so many people, most of all my wife and children. I want to say again to everyone that I am profoundly sorry and that I ask forgiveness. It may not be possible to repair the damage I’ve done, but I want to do my best to try.

Contrast that with the more standard fare from criminals and klutzes. At its most risible, then President Bill Clinton ask us to parse the meaning of is in efforts to avoid personal responsibility for his adulteries.  More typically and seriously, pols on the take or violent criminals pull out the old, “I’m innocent until proven guilty,” “Everyone deserves a fair trial,” and “Because I bargained and was not convicted of the crime, I am totally innocent.”

Personal responsibility has been blown away in the gusts of obfuscation and nitpicking.

How refreshing (and cost saving) it would be if criminals accepted their guilt and took their punishment. Think a 1930s or 1940s movie with the malefactor thrusting his wrists out for the handcuffs, saying, “You caught me copper!”

On the other side, a matching huge need is for slate clearing afterward. Except for these piqué-collar transgressors like Woods, the larger society would dog criminals into continued poverty and to their death. Whether it’s our CORI laws that keep punishing ex-cons or the unwillingness of employers to hire them, we have also lost the concepts of rehabilitation, restitution, and payment of societal debt.

Even in prison, convicted criminals are targets of the self-appointed self-righteous. It is not only winger columnists and bloggers, ordinary folk speak of “country clubs” where prisoners can access books, TVs or adult-education courses. Somehow the loss of liberty, the right to vote, the power to earn income, and the contact with family and friend is not enough punishment to many who have all those privileges.

The idea of two or 10 or more years of prison as the penalty for a crime is to repay society and ideally to come out a chastened citizen ready to behave appropriately.  How did larger society lose that and demand perpetual punishment after the sentence served?

Regardless, Woods and Vick are on the big-shot end of the seesaw. As needed, they got and bought the high-end, nitpicking, plea-bargaining lawyers. They can emerge from court ordered or self-chosen exile to making more in a year than most people can fantasize about for a lifetime.

While that makes it difficult to be too sympathetic, wouldn’t it be great of Tiger’s confessions and acceptance of his resulting loses reinforced this as a trend? Just try not to be too cynical about the possibility that this is a ploy to hasten his return to big bucks and adoration.

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, contrition, Woods, Vick, responsibility

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Confusing Doctors Again

Not much funny about breast cancer, eh? However, the medical community is giving us a big yuk on mammogram schedules.

Like the ending of G.I. Joe cartoons, the moral of the episode invariably included, “And now we know…and knowing is half the battle.” In this case, the U.S. Preventive Health Task Force announced new guidelines for routine breast-cancer screenings. Fundamentally, instead of annual mammograms from 40, the new rule would be every other year from 50.

Alas for the medical community, this is only the latest care that exposes its frailty, its reliance on fungible vetting for diagnosis and care. Truth be told, most doctors have as much to do with medical science as pop journalists do. They wave the current perceived wisdom, call, “Aha!,” and congratulate themselves.

So in the media including talk shows, they find women to say this is putting their lives at risk. They find doctors who say they are confused. They find researchers who were behind the previous perceived wisdom implying that a massive die-off of U.S. women will follow. A few alarmists also say this is all insurance companies need to deny annual breast-cancer screens to women who want them anyway.

The joke here is that this is common, if less dramatic and less discussed, in the profession. With a herd instinct, nearly all non-specialist doctors have to rely on the best guesses from the most accepted reports and studies. That means they end up continually circling back pretending that each change of diagnostic or treatment protocol is a breakthrough and G.I. Joe style new knowledge.

I became aware of this first when I was in elementary school. My mother ran Red Cross chapter, putting her in charge of and teaching first aid, home nursing and such, with the accompanying textbooks. I remember her alternately laughing and complaining when the national organization revised those manuals every year or even less as the American Medical Association changed its mind.

One trigger was burn treatment. It was cover or leave exposed to air and use gooky medicine or let it form a scab on its own. Back and forth it went with one major reputable study after another.

With the imprecision of care and the reality that most primary care physicians — PCPs or what we used to call general practitioners or family practitioners (GPs or FPs) — are not particularly good diagnosticians. They reply on plugging symptoms into their experience or searching software or a book for the most likely fit. In all likelihood, they end up treating symptoms with drugs and never diagnose anything. That means 1) the body cures itself, 2) symptom relief is coincident with improvement, or 3) yet another patient on a long-term regimen of a drug which may or may not address the cause of the complaint.

We really can’t fairly call that medical science. Yet, we do cut docs some slack here. Much of the time they are pretty much the best health gamble around. We know they are not likely to discover or cure underlying causes, particularly of chronic problems. We also know that the system requires them to move a lot of patients through, so that they really don’t have time to muse or deeply investigate or even research beyond reading current medical journals. They aren’t scientists.

Moreover, they are easily misled by extrapolations from the research on which they rely. An obvious example is the silly reliance on body mass index (BMI) for individuals. While useful as a broad-brush measurement for big groups, it is often invalid per patient. Thin looking folk with little muscular development may have fine BMI but have organs swimming in their fat. Athletes with well developed muscles are often obese or overweight by BMI while being very healthy and having a great body fat level, much more meaningful than BMI.

It is easy to see how PCPs can fall back on the lazy solution of BMI though. Plug in a height and weight and there’s a number for comparison. Doctors worthy of their oaths would look at and palpate patients. They would take the same two measurements, but put them into a hand-held body-fat analyzer instead (those are very accurate and inexpensive at $25 to $50). Then nutrition and exercise recommendations would be meaningful. Oops, let’s not forget that most PCPs know little about diet or exercise.

So we are stuck with a system that hurries docs along, encouraging them to be reliant on easy ways out for diagnosis and treatment. We end up with increasingly unrealistic guidelines in many areas, while the population gets widely wide and heavy. Those guidelines have not resulted in greater longevity either, we struggle around 17th in the world, despite our disproportionate health-care cost and use of prescription drugs.

Treat Cause or Symptom?

A real solution would be a hard one, finding and treating underlying causes for conditions. As our system is now, that would happen only if considerable research was done asking such questions as is the mid-term and long-term outcome for patients better with treating symptoms pharmaceutically or changing the underlying cause of their problems. In a country where nearly all medical research is funded directly or secondarily by drug companies, you can imagine how likely it will be for such massive studies to occur.

In many areas, the research that our docs rely on seems misused as well. Consider for one, the famous Framingham Heart Study. It is a massive, on-going and very useful project, even though it has the limit of covering only men, only in a age range, and with rebutted results in the British Medical Journal among other places. Yet is is a hook to hang a medical hat on and as such used for various guidelines.

One such is that acceptable blood pressure has dropped from 140 to 130 to 120 to 115 upper number, for example. One effect is from the study that the recommendation is that over 90% of men should be on anti-hypertensive drugs by 60.

You needn’t be the worst cynic around to question the relationship between drug companies, doctors and that guideline. Think in contrast if PCPs worked with patients to reduce body fat, up potassium intake, reduce stress and such. would the patient be better off than a remaining lifetime of one or more drugs?

What would G.I. Joe say? Maybe, “Well, we’ll never know and not knowing leaves us unprepared for the battle.”

Cross-post note: I have other medical rants here. This one will also appear at Marry in Massachusetts.

Tags: massmarrier, harrumph, doctors, mammogram, health care, doctors, diagnosis, drug companies, guidelines

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For those of us who worked business and trade magazines, BusinessWeek’s disgrace will take come adjustment. In today’s Financial Times is a little piece on the bottom of a page about McGraw-Hill shopping the once dominant book for $1.

That doesn’t have the emotional pull to many, not as powerful as daily newspapers collapsing. Yet to me, it’s as striking in its way as a car maker going down.

For a couple of terms, in the business press, we tend to refer to:

• book, which outsiders could call magazine
• property, which non-publishing sorts would call a book
• trade magazines, generally monthlies or weeklies devoted to specific industries like construction or restaurants
• business magazines, which can cover trades but tends to be more financially and managerially oriented, like Inc. or BusinessWeek
  
• editor, on a magazine can mean that, but generally senior editor or such means a writer who gets more title than money

I worked them all. I did a big handbook for McGraw-Hill (for corporate directors), was on the staff at Inc. and Management Review, wrote for computer and electronics pubs, as well as construction and materials handling ones. I began to know BW folk when I worked at the New York HQ of Conover-Mast, which Boston-based Cahners bought to triple its size.

BW is where writers hoped to go to get lazy and overpaid. Several from Conover-Mast ended up there when Cahners tried to move our books to Boston and Chicago. Some writers went to the dark side, public relations, but most scuttled back ashamed later to return to trade or business press writing.

The Conover-Mast books tended to have a rivalry with equivalent McGraw ones, and sometimes titles from other houses. At Construction Equipment, where I worked, we tried to catch (and successfully passed) Construction and Highway and Heavy Construction in both ad pages and revenue, as well as writing awards.

I worked for a great writer, John Rehfield, who inspired us to greatness in our little trade maggy ways. He was a civil engineer, but he was both enormously funny and a facile writer. He was an astounding anomaly in a field where most editors know their business but have a terrific problem putting that knowledge into intelligible words. In fact, when John offered me the job, I asked why. I had come out of newspapers and the only construction expertise I had was as a carpenter’s helper for two summers in college. That brought a big laugh as he put a hand on my portfolio and waved his arm toward the editors beyond his office. “You’re a writer. I can teach you anything you need to know about construction. I can’t teach an engineer how to write.”

When Cahners moved CE to Chicago,  I stayed in New York with the energy and publishing. Many Conover-Mast writers found other companies as well. A few ended up at BW. While I never had much interest in a job there, they sure did like the money and prestige of sailing on McGraw’s flagship.

And now, any one of them could buy the big book for a buck. It’s circulation is still over 900,000, but ad revenues have plunged with other print media’s and it loses money…ever week, as the expression goes.

It’s had a great run. I think of comparisons such as Digital Equipment Corporation. Some might say DEC failed as it went from mini-computer giant to subset of Compaq and then HP and then to nothing. I say despite founder Ken Olsen’s stupidities about personal computers and other blunders, DEC paid a lot of salaries and shareholder dividends for decades. It was successful for most of its run, as has been BW.

Like Greek myths, such tales can be sad. The Titans and heroes have their flaws or lose out to the next generation. Maybe it is better to turn to Latin — sic transit gloria mundi..

Tags: harrumph, harrumpher, BusinessWeek, Cahners, Conover-Mast, McGraw-Hill, Rehfield

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