Planning for summer guests when prices are rising

Boston Globe

13-05-2025

J.B. /
Millis
There isn't a delicate way, so be upfront about the matter.
Acknowledge the awkwardness of the situation and let people know that you can't afford to provide food this year. Figure out in advance what's easiest: Do you want people to contribute a flat rate? Split the bills 50/50 (or proportionally, if there's more or fewer of them than there are of you)? Do their own shopping? But don't just ask for 'help' with the food bills in some vague way, leaving your well-intentioned friends guessing about what they ought to do; good hosts and hostesses always let their guests know exactly what is expected of them.
Depending on your friends' knowledge of one another, general level of formality, et cetera, decide if it's best to do a mass e-mail (which shows fairness and gets all the information out to everyone at the same time) or individual phone calls (more personal). We're all going to hell in the same expensive grocery basket this summer, so your friends should be sympathetic and willing to chip in. If some of them aren't, consider the possibility that they are not really friends after all.
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Twice now, friends have announced their impending parenthood with mass e-mails with the ultrasound images attached. In my opinion, these ultrasound images are private and something that I would only want to share with my spouse and our closest friends and family. However, since sending these images out to a large group seems to be more commonplace, I'm wondering if I am being too sensitive.
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L.M. /
Boston
Ugh, sounds dreadful to me. I don't even think ultrasounds ought to be shared with 'closest friends and family' unless they ask to see them, as otherwise they leave people wondering what to say: 'My, he certainly has your bumpy occipital bone, doesn't he?' But you don't have to look, of course, nor even make reference to the ultrasounds in your return 'congrats' e-mail, so it's hardly something to get worked up about. Would that all indiscretions were so easily ignored.
You and I may be behind the curve, however. Doctors and psychologists and ordinary people are simply mad for imaging these days, whether ultrasound or magnetic resonance or what have you. I wonder how far this mania will go? Perhaps college students will start sending along fMRI brain scans to accompany their graduation announcements. 'Look how my neocortex lights up when I'm thinking about Kant!' It's possible to take MRI scans of a couple in the act of intercourse—a team of Dutch researchers won an Ig Nobel Prize in 2000 for doing so, and Mary Roach and her husband repeated the experiment for her 2008 book,
Bonk
. Let's hope it doesn't become a trend to send these pictures along with wedding invitations.
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Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a writer with a PhD in psychology.