Scott Calvert and Urban Decay

Scott Calvert, of the Wall Street Journal

Scott Calvert grew up in a family of dentists. His uncle was a dentist. His maternal grandmother was the first oral hygienist west of the Dolomites. And he had so many dentist cousins that they had their own in-house Tooth Fairy. So it's only natural that Scott would grow up concerned about decay -- but not tooth decay. In his case he became intrigued with urban decay -- the metropolitan caries that beleaguer so many Mid-Atlantic landscapes today.

At the Wall Street Journal whenever there is talk of the Blight of Baltimore or Senescence of Schenectady the editors cry out: "Get Scott Calvert on the story, post haste!"  And he obligingly heads to the city in question to root out the latest municipal scandal or chronicle another crime-riddled neighborhood.

His stories resonate with a fin de siecle nostalgia for the departed glory of great cities now gone to wrack and ruin. Hard boiled and cynical, he yet can give utterance to a yearning for simpler times and gentler people. But no one sees this softer side of Calvert when he is on the trail of a corrupt city poobah or exposing an adulterated fluoride scheme down at the water works. At such times he is a literary Javert, remorselessly running down the facts and figures of another sad example of urban rot and then writing it up with diamond-sharp prose.

His hobbies include vestibule watching, collecting antique wing nuts, and cultivating salmagundi in marble ramekins. 

He has been awarded the Order of Saint Stephan of Hungary, the Heisman Trophy, and the Key to the City of Zanesville, Ohio. And he recently won a Wendell Wilkie Look-Alike contest. 

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Don't Eat the Romaine Lettuce

The warning came just as millions of Americans were preparing for the biggest food holiday of the year. People should not buy or eat romaine lettuce; restaurants should stop serving it; anyone who has it on hand should throw it out and clean the refrigerator immediately.

The stern and sweeping advisory, issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday afternoon, two days before Thanksgiving, caught many people off guard. But the agency said it was acting out of an abundance of caution after 32 people in 11 states fell sick with a virulent form of E. coli, a bacteria blamed for a number of food-borne outbreaks in recent years.  NYT

Don't eat the romaine lettuce; just throw it out instead.

If you insist on serving it your guests may wind up dead.

E. coli is the culprit; it gets into the leaves.

And if it does not kill you, you can still come down with heaves.

Of course, if Uncle Charlie must smoke his foul cigar;

and maybe Cousin Shirley treats your house like some cheap bar --

If that's the case then serve it, in salads and rolades.

And you can watch them writhing in agonized charades.

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WSJ Reporter Tweets Wish to be Fired and Handed Huge Cash Settlement

David Pierce, still unfortunately with the Wall Street Journal

On Tuesday November 20th the personal tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal tweeted this portentous message:

"Someday I hope to get fired from MY job and handed $30 million on the way out." @pierce  

David Pierce, a journalistic wunderkind, had touched a raw nerve among Millennials all over the world, and his apparently whimsical tweet went viral in a matter of hours, spawning the hashtag #Pierceisabsolutelyright 

Today thousands of disgruntled Millennial reporters and tech workers from Silicon Valley to the Rift Valley are working feverishly at making Pierce's dream of a premature and wealthy retirement come true for them.

They show up late, spill coffee on their keyboards, have taken up vaping in the bathrooms, wear novelty neckties that read "Up Yours With Hiawatha's Canoe" and otherwise are working hard at being a disruptive, unproductive and demoralizing influence at their company. Of course, nobody has really thought through just how they will manage to be awarded an obscene cash settlement on their way out -- but Millennials are not very detail-oriented. "Something that MIGHT happen WILL happen" seems to be their motto. 

When polled by TIME/LIFE about this sudden upsurge in Millennial discontent and revolt, a group of 100 office managers all replied, in essence, "They're no different today than they were last week. What's the big deal?"

Pierce himself, unfortunately, has been unable to get fired from his job at the Wall Street Journal and then awarded a sumptuous amount of cash. But he assures his adoring public that he is trying his best to be his worst. 

Rupert Murdoch, putative owner of the Wall Street Journal, is quoted in the London Times as saying "That young pup Pierce? Not bloody likely we'll be letting him go anytime soon; and if we do the only thing he'll get on his way out the door is a set of Pentel Graph mechanical pencils!" 

In his spare time, when he's not plotting to be ejected, Pierce enjoys collecting wooden nutmegs, and refurbishing elevator cables. He drives a vintage 1933 Stutz Bearcat and is grooming an army of thrips to take over the world. 

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Timericks. Tuesday. November 20. 2018

WASHINGTON — President Trump defied his intelligence agencies and ample circumstantial evidence to declare his unswerving loyalty to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, asserting that the crown prince’s culpability for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi might never be known.   NYT

Since Trump doesn't like to place blame

except when he's losing the game,

he'll back the crown prince

with barely a wince,

no matter the alibi lame.

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Canned pumpkin filling tastes better, Ms. Parks says. But it has a dark secret. It is made from a sweet gourd with yellowy orange skin known as the Dickinson pumpkin. Ms. Parks and others argue that the Dickinson is no pumpkin, however. They call it a squash.   WSJ

My pumpkin pie is made of squash?

That is a felony, by gosh!

When you can't trust a pumpkin can

it's time to quit and move to Cannes.

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No matter what you call it — overtourism, overbooked or a foreign invasion — it’s the same squeeze: A handful of destinations around the world are under siege by too many tourists. The stampede is having a deleterious effect on the culture, environment and spirit of these places. Locals are getting pushed out. Foundations are crumbling. Tourists are complaining about other tourists.   WaPo.

A tourist who went to Paree

was treated like a detainee;

so Venice he tried,

but "scio!" they cried  --

he drowned himself in the Dead Sea.

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"In my day we called it codswallop."

Mayor Michelle Kaufusi's Search for the Lost Danite Mine

Michelle Kaufusi, Mayor of Provo, Utah

Michelle Kaufusi comes from sturdy pioneer stock. Her forebears crossed the plains on Parcheesi boards during the dead of winter, determined to find a new home where they could work, worship, and juggle chainsaws in complete freedom.

As a child, Kaufusi displayed natural ability as a leader. Instead of just playing with dolls, she lined them up and harangued them on the importance of self confidence and encouraged them to study the hard sciences at their doll schools. She herself became a dab hand at Recombinant Memetics by the tenth grade, and spearheaded a NASA program that sent mint-frosted brownies into space to see what effect weightlessness had on their calorie count.

A successful entrepreneur, Mayor Kaufusi opened the first organic plectrum shop in Provo, which she later sold for an obscene amount of money to the Mirisch Company.

Running for Mayor of Provo in 2017, her platform included a promise to bring more wealth to Provo through prudent, sound financial management. Consequently, as soon as the polls confirmed her as the first woman Mayor of Provo, she set off into the mountains around Provo looking for the Lost Danite Mine. 

This rich deposit of silver ore was supposedly discovered by one Jacob Jacobson back in 1867 while he was lost in the mountains during a blizzard. Seeking any shelter he could find, Jacobson allegedly stumbled into a cave full of gold nuggets the size of savoy cabbages. After the blizzard passed, he packed his mule with a dozen or so nuggets, which he brought to the assayer's office in Provo, where a gang of rowdy Danites seized him for spitting on the sidewalk and trussed him up. He pleaded with the Danites to let him down and he would reveal the whereabouts of his fabulous gold mine, but before they could unloose him he was carried off by a fit of the fantods. To this day, no one really knows if there really is a mine full of giant gold nuggets, or where it might be.

But Mayor Kaufusi is confident she can find it. She intends to turn over the entire contents of the mine (minus a modest finder's fee) to the city of Provo for a new water filtration plant, the eradication of Chinese chestnut trees, and to build dozens of fountains throughout the city that squirt lime jello all year long. Since taking office she has led dozens of expeditions up into the mountains, providing everyone with picks and shovels -- and she has usually returned with just as many people as she went out with. Not always, of course; but you can't make omelettes without losing a few eggs along the way. 

She plans on publishing her autobiography this coming spring, tentatively entitled "The Hand Lotion's Tale." 

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Elizabeth Dwoskin and the Elusive Algorithm

Elizabeth Dwoskin, of the Washington Post

A graduate of the Colombia Graduate School of Journalism, Ms. Dwoskin went to work for the Washington Post several years ago specifically to hunt down the elusive Algorithm. 

Up until she began her determined quest, the fabled Algorithm was merely an urban legend, a bogeyman to scare children away from their smartphones. But now, thanks to her remorseless research, we know that the Algorithm is out there -- and plotting against us.

Ms. Dwoskin has tracked down the facts needed to convict the cagey Algorithm of several crimes against humanity. Such as its role in the rising tide of robocalls that inundate our cell phones to such an extent that -- excuse me, my phone is ringing: Yes, hello? What? Send ten thousand dollars by Western Union or I'll go to jail? Is this a real person? Thought so. Dammit.

Now, where was I?  Oh yes. Crimes against humanity, such as pushing so much fake news on social media that it makes Trump look like Honest Abe. And unleashing Twitter bots to inflate the number of followers on certain flim flam accounts into the hundreds of thousands. Yo mama, Katy Perry. 

Thanks to Ms. Dwoskin, it looks like the Algorithm's days are numbered. Soon as it can be tracked down and brought to justice at the Hague (assuming it doesn't seek asylum at the Embassy of Ecuador) the world will undoubtedly breathe a collective sigh of relief. And Ms. Dwoskin will add a Nobel Peace Price to her already substantial collection of awards, citations, and rainbow scrunchies. 

When Ms. Dwoskin is not saving the world from algorithms and AI, she likes to whittle cream cheese into chess pieces, and mend broken Tinker Toy sets for orphans in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

She likes to bring homemade Norwegian krumkake into the newsroom every Tuesday and Thursday to share with her colleagues. 

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The latest polls are all a sham

The latest polls are all a sham;

statistically, who gives a damn?

I'm sick of numbers thrown about

as if they somehow conquer doubt.

Statistics don't prove anything;

they're simply scientific bling.

Interpreting their connotation

is confusing our poor nation.

If you want to prove your point

and not put my nose out of joint

just say that Trump is all agin it,

and I am for it in a minute!

Vidhi Doshi in Wonderland

Vidhi Doshi, of the Washington Post

As a student at Oxford University in England, a young Vidhi Doshi ran across a bronze placard that told of a certain Charles Lutwidge Dodgson who had taught mathematics at Oxford more than a century earlier, and was commemorated as an outstanding author.

Giving the matter no further thought at the time, Ms. Doshi went on to finish a brilliant BA in History at Oxford; she then accepted a one year Lectureship in Oriental History, with the understanding that at the end of that time she would be free to pursue a different career if she chose. But what career would that be, she wondered to herself. She had no clear conception of what she wanted to do with her life.  

Her rooms at Christ Church were old but comfortable. One day she noticed a loose brick in the antique fireplace and tried to push it back in place. The brick fell to dust, revealing a scrap of parchment brown with age. On it was written:  "All the world has gone down the Rabbit Hole -- all I did was report about it. Signed Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, otherwise known as Lewis Carroll." 

Intrigued, she took the scrap to a sub-librarian. He, in turn, excitedly told her something of Alice in Wonderland and begged to be allowed to put the scrap of parchment on display. Ms. Doshi gave her consent, and then spent the next several months studying the works of Lewis Carroll, including The Hunting of the Snark as well as the Alice books. 

And thus was born her resolve to become a journalist so she could report on how the entire world, as Dodgson wrote, has gone down the Rabbit Hole. Her stellar career as a reporter has seen her interview many a Mad Hatter and Queen of Hearts, as well as humbler characters similar to Bill the Lizard and the Dormouse.

Today, as the India correspondent for the Washington Post in New Delhi, she often finds herself repeating that famous quote from Alice as she writes her stories:

"Curiouser and curiouser!" 

Ms. Doshi replied to this profile by email, thus:  

I replied to you on Twitter. I love this so much. I'm wondering whether to frame this and put it on my wall. The only factual error in it of course is that I went to St Peter's and not Christ Church. 

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Here I am again

Here I am again, scribbling my blues away. I can't shake the depression that has lately settled over me; it robs me of my appetite and my interest in cooking and even in writing. So I force myself to write this, to put down what I feel and what I do, and what I can't feel and what I don't do and what I don't have and don't want. Fasten your seat belts; it's going to be a bumpy ride.

I unload all this weary baggage on you because I don't have a companion I can open up to, and I do not trust therapists or psychologists. I've seen plenty of 'em in the past and they tried to have me committed to the State Mental Hospital and actually did have me put away in the Psychiatric Ward several years ago after my bladder stone operation. It was hell; so I'll never use their services again. Admitting you're depressed is still like admitting you robbed a bank -- you get sent to some kind of imprisonment, no matter what they call it. I'd rather just feel rotten until the cloud lifts -- which it always does after a few days or weeks. Maybe after the endocrinologist sees me and operates on me the chemical imbalance I'm sure I'm suffering from will right itself and my depression will be much less. I sure hope so.

In my prayers lately I've opened up to Heavenly Father how lonely and abandoned I sometimes feel. Even admitting it is mostly my fault, it is still a degrading way to live, without friendly company. I'm not talking about the physical aspect of it, but the real fun I used to have with Amy, and later on with Joom, when we would tease each other and hold hands and tell each other our dreams and our sorrows. To look into another person's eyes without fear of rejection or estrangement, to see in their eyes a curiosity and an eagerness to know more about me and to accept me as I am -- that is probably the best part of a marriage relationship here on earth.  

How well I remember coming back from a circus tour, and having Amy beg me to just hold her, to fold my arms around her and tell her how much I missed her. She would weep and then give me such a tremendous bear hug that my ribs almost snapped. We would spend hours just sitting together, drinking each other in and caressing each other's backside and neck and shoulders and pulling each others hair through our fingers. I used to have pretty long hair, y'know -- it was my clown wig. 

One Sunday evening, after all the dishes were washed and kids put to bed, she and I sat together on the old swayback couch my mother gave us as a wedding present and watched "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" with Rex Harrison. At the end of the movie the ghost, the ship captain that had guided and bedeviled the widow Muir through most of her life, comes back one final time when she is old and ill, on her death bed. He gently lifts her up, and she is suddenly young and beautiful again -- and he leads her off into the shining heavens. That scene completely broke down all my normal reserve, because I felt so very strongly that that was what was going to happen to Amy and I -- I would come back for her through Death's veil and carry her pure and lovely spirit back Home to where our love would never wane or be twisted by earthly misunderstandings again. Amy had to get a roll of toilet paper for me to dry my eyes and blow my nose. I told her about my intuition, and she did not mock me or offer any contradictions -- just smiled so sweetly and gave me a peck on the cheek and then asked me to take out the garbage. Those are rare, rare moments in a man's life -- when he feels loved enough and safe enough to open his heart to his companion.

I recall a different time, much later, when I was on the beach in Thailand with Joom. The full tropical moon floated above us like a Loi Krathong lantern as we walked through the hissing surf, bits of driftwood and broken shells scrapping at our sandaled feet. We sat on an overturned palm trunk to eat sticky rice and sweet beans roasted in a bamboo tube, while I told her stories of the Moon -- how it was made of green cheese and that there was a Man in the Moon who watched over lovers and other crazy people. She told me the Thais thought the Moon was a giant rabbit. 

She was a lousy kisser, never putting much passion or effort into it -- so after we had locked lips for just a few seconds I pulled back to look into her bleary brown eyes. They were always bloodshot, she told me, because of her hard life as a young woman. She claimed that she gave birth to both her son and daughter while working in a rice paddy -- cutting the umbilical cord herself and stoically taking the child to her mother's house and then going back to work transplanting rice shoots. But then, almost every Thai woman I've ever known has said pretty much the same thing -- if true, those rice paddies should be littered with mewling newborns nine months out of the year.     

That night Joom's cloudy brown eyes held nothing but love and affection for me. I don't know what she saw in my eyes, but she curled herself around me and called me her Santa Claus. I could smell the stale coffee on her breath and feel the salt tang of the stiffening ocean breeze on the back of my neck. I was happy; Joom felt my happiness, which made her happy -- we sat on that palm trunk for hours, as the Moon drifted away and the ghost crabs came out to hunt for gobs of dead fish washed ashore. A moment of surpassing bliss whittled from time into a memory I'll forever cherish. 

Those are the kind of moments that I deeply miss and yearn for.  Thank the good Lord that writing about them like this has lifted my gloom appreciably; now maybe I'll eat the rest of my breakfast before tacking the Hungarian Goulash I have to bring to the Potluck this afternoon. 

I am a man that has both loved and been loved -- and for today at least that knowledge lifts my spirits more than any pellet of Valium or Vicodin can do. 

  

Jonathan Cheng, of the Wall Street Journal, Hunts the Origin of Poutine

Jonathen Chang, of the Wall Street Journal

A graduate in History from Princeton University, Canadian Jonathan Cheng takes antiquity seriously. With his broad archival perspective, he makes the perfect reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he has earned the Ludwig von Drake Award for Pensive Reporting five years in a row.

Because of his Canadian heritage, Mr. Cheng has taken upon himself the challenge of chronicling the history of Poutine -- that calorie-crammed, starch-infested, gravy-swaddled ethnic dish that not only is served at most major hockey arenas but actually tastes like most major hockey arenas. 

Mr. Cheng became enamored of the subject as a child, when he would follow the wandering cabanes a patates from town to town, fascinated by their deep rich smell and the traditional cry of the driver: "Excelsior!"   His parents, horrified that he would grow up with Poutine as an idee fixe, becoming an itinerant Poutine Bum, forbade him to ever sample the stuff. Naturally, as a rebellious adolescent, he did partake of the forbidden fruit, so to speak, and now has Poutine flown in from CanLan Ice Sports Arena in Toronto to his office in Seoul once a week. 

His research so far has revealed that the origin of Poutine probably occured in 1955 near the town of Drummondville in the Centre-du-Quebec region. Mr. Cheng was instrumental in having the Canadian Intellectual Property Office put up a brass plaque stating this discovery on a telephone pole outside of the major Canada Post store in town.

But Mr. Cheng's celebrated Poutine research has not been all skittles and beer. There are dark forces at work, wishing to discredit his discoveries. The neighboring towns of Warwick and Princeville are determined that the accolades of Canada and the entire world should be theirs for inventing Poutine -- and they have launched a smear campaign against Mr. Cheng, manufacturing canards and fake news to the effect that Mr. Cheng prefers Tater Tots over Poutine, and regularly pours ketchup over his Poutine, eschewing the brown gravy. This recently led to a lynch mob from the Canadian Embassy in Seoul converging on Mr. Cheng's office, wild-eyed and reeking of Molson, ready to string the intrepid reporter up. Luckily it was Mr. Cheng's day off and he was holed up at the Hello Kitty Cafe safe from the howling mob.

Mr. Cheng is also engaged in reenacting the Battle of Guju using miniature models carved from horse chestnuts. These are on display at the Tate Gallery in London. 

Mr. Cheng replied to his new profile by email, thus:

Um, thank you! This is...wonderful!

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