Congratulations, Fall River !!1!

The rivalry once had something to do with high school sports, but those Business Club extracurriculars sure paid off better than windsprints. New Bedford can no longer cast a long dark imaginary shadow of relative success over its neighbor to the west.
A Fall River-based corporate chain of motels (that provides Little Debbie™ products as their Continental Breakfast) has won the emptiest victory of Ever by destroying the only chunk of New Bedford historical significance that hasn't yet been sold for a dollar or sunk into the harbor. Or lost at sea. Or bought by out-of-town interests. Or anxiously hidden away by jealous caretakers. Or burned to the ground. Or smashed to make room for a discount supermarket.
"It took some finagling," says some guy I'm sure probably exists. "But we got TIFs and a $250,000 loan, and we got in on the waterfront by circumventing or ignoring all that preservation crap and we wrecked a big whaley-boily burny-firey thing that some smartypants called a tryworks."The tryworks -- part of the Baker-Robinson whale oil refinery that's going to wake up someday this July as a beige-and-powderblue dining hall conference center -- is pretty much wrecked, as shown in this picture by David Oliveira of the Standard-Times, which was featured in an enigmatically terse Jack Spillane blog entry.
Perhaps the most satisfying achievement for B.M.C. Durfee High School alums, however, is knowing that the soon-to-be-mildewy no-tell crashpad is named "Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott," a name that -- not counting the 'Inn' or ampersand -- has nothing at all to do with "whaling" or "The Whaling City." (Plus, that's what New London CT calls itself, anyway.)

-with special thanks to Carol Steinfeld,
whose investigation is actually a serious one.

Still the pensive spring returns

Admittedly indolent in its commencement, this year's Kitchen Phal Season began with this promising bit of progress:Not bad for the day before the Oscars™, but this is the real world smacking you in the area.
For those who have forgotten my other calling -- tamer of and dealer in Pacific, Asian and Subcontinental flora -- I offer this reminderance: Your Thirdmate spent a few seasons (until economic realities set in) enjoying the warm humidity of greenhouses and hot co-workers in Winter and the hot absurdity of chauffeuring exotic plants to Manhattan in an oversized luxury van in Summer. After seeing these charming epiphytes -- the plants, not the hot co-workers -- in their natural setting, the apartments of the advantaged and the shops of the mad, how could I not continue to surround myself with the colorful pornography of orchids?
One of my least special-part-resembling flowers from the Orchidaceae family, our kitchen phalænopsis (who, incidentally, resents italicization) had decided to splash our galley this weekend with chartreuse and fuchsia.
A very Eighties color scheme, I know.
But I saved these particular plants from a dank death in a corridor at the hands of municipal maintenance workers.
Like every other topic I address here in The Journal, my opinions vis-à-vis orchid culture are the result of intervals spent in back-breaking and mind-bending travail in the employ of accomplished lunatics and world-class narcissists who would certainly be impounded in the Cracker Factory if they weren't recognized -- at least by themselves -- as possessing skill or knowledge at whatever it is they've decided to focus their raving loose-screw obsessiveness on.
A complicated Gypsy curse ordains that I develop business relationships with sociopaths and cranks, all of whom take credit for the results of my hard work without recognizing, complimenting, or recompensing me properly for it.
Oh, waitaminnit... That's just what "employment" means.
So, there is no Gypsy curse. (Except that I still cannot explain why it is that I have no aptitude for card games or playing the concertina.)
Orchid culture is not the fussy compulsion often depicted in popular media. Notice, if you dare, how often phals appear on office desks in teevee series, without notice or mention. They're just tossed there as cuttings, stuck in those shiny rocks and often surrounded by weird twirly stick-things. And they're probably silk.
Unlike this lovely hybird that eventually brandished this premier bloom:And so, here's The Orchid Lady of the Silent Screen, Corinne Griffith:

An orchid, robed in cloth of silver and glimmering chiffon

I'll explain.
Later.

(This presentation features Corinne Griffith)