Is it creepy to compliment a stranger's clothes?
Cambridge
And this is why people think Bostonians are unfriendly. We're not, but we can overthink things in our efforts to respect others' autonomy.
Complimenting strangers' bodies
is
creepy indeed, but complimenting their actions is not, and dressing is an action. Don't comment on the fit or proportion, as that is essentially a comment about the body (even among friends, the phrase 'body type' ought to be stricken from civil discourse). A simple, sincere 'I love your outfit!' is always acceptable, as is commenting on the color of a piece or the beauty of a well-chosen accessory. Compliment a style maven's coordination kung fu by praising a pairing: 'That tie and shirt look fabulous together.'
I probably don't have to tell you this, but pay attention to the whole person, not only the outfit: Don't bother people whose posture and expression make clear that they are not 'open for business.'
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Stylistas are also workers, parents, allergy sufferers, multi-taskers. If someone is disciplining a toddler, grading papers on the subway, or generally appears distracted, take your mental notes in silence.
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Is it appropriate for a mother-to-be to give herself a baby shower? As this woman's mother-in-law, I offered to throw her one. She refused, but told me I could help pay for the one being planned. I tried to enlighten my son and sent him articles I found online saying that one should never throw one's own shower, and now they are not speaking to me. This is the same woman who said that we could not host the wedding rehearsal dinner because we would not do it the way she wanted—so she held it at her father's house, writing on the invitations 'Bring a dish.' My husband and I did not attend.
Anonymous /
Boston
It is not appropriate for a woman to host her own baby shower —or, for that matter, for a member of her immediate family to do so. If your internet research had uncovered that fact, would you have been less highhanded about 'enlightening' your son about his wife's defects?
I can hardly blame your daughter-in-law for declining your offer, given your snub of the rehearsal dinner. Your offer didn't spring from generosity and hospitality, but out of a belief that doing things properly is more important than doing them compassionately. So what if your daughter-in-law chose to have her rehearsal dinner in a fashion you found déclassé? A truly gracious person would have gone
and
brought a dish.
Your daughter-in-law's behavior is not above reproach. Self-showering is tacky, as was offering to take your cash. But neither of you has much to be proud of. Take a deep breath, stop using etiquette as a weapon, and behave better.
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Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a writer with a PhD in psychology.
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N.J. man creates card game about deadly Molasses Flood of 1919. Its name is making historians uneasy.
Game creator and vintage playing cards expert Paulie Wenger said that while the criticisms are valid, he hopes that the game, his first board or card game, teaches kids about tragic historical events in a more engaging way. Otherwise, young people will probably learn boring, simplified versions of the event from textbooks, he said. 'There's history that's out there that's hard to bring up to kids, and sometimes that history gets left behind because it's too difficult to speak about,' said Wenger, a history PhD student at the University of Delaware who grew up in Southampton, N.J. Advertisement Tragedy notwithstanding, Bostonians have long made passing jokes about the flood, because imagining a 'slow as molasses' tide of the sugary substance often elicits puzzlement, historians said. Some tour guides also use the term 'Molassacre' to get laughs from participants, Wenger said. Still, the new game is making some historians uneasy, such as Stephen Puleo, who wrote the foremost book on the flood, ' Advertisement 'When you make this kind of joke about it, when you look at this in a whimsical way, it detracts from the solemnity of the event,' Puleo said. On Jan. 15, 1919, a giant tank in the North End collapsed, sending a wave of an estimated 2.3 million gallons of molasses through the streets of Boston. Part of the tank smashed into the walls of the freight house of the Bay State Street Railway Co. with enough force to tear the structure apart, seen here on Jan. 20, 1919. Boston Globe Archive North End Historical Society president Tom Damigella said he was baffled that anyone would make a 'funny game' about the flood. 'Families whose grandparents lived through it, I don't think they thought it was that funny,' said Damigella, 78. It's like people would forget about Boston's Great Molasses Flood if @ayo wasn't around. Game modeled on Mille Bornes In Molassacre, Molassacre was modeled on the once wildly popular game Mille Bornes, where competitors play distance, hazard, remedy, and safety cards to road race from Paris to the Italian border. 'Your opponents are tossing syrup slicks, panicked horses, and molasses traps in your path,' according to an online description for the game. Wenger also read Puleo's book and received a few research tips from the Massachusetts Historical Society. The mechanics of Molassacre: Escape the Flood were directly modeled on the classic racing card game Mille Bornes, said creator Paulie Wenger. (Paulie Wenger) Paulie Wenger A sticky debate The name 'Molassacre' and the game's objective — to not perish — insults the tragedy, Damigella said. 'It wasn't a massacre in the first place, that's using a word that doesn't fit the situation, using that word is already misleading,' Damigella said. Puleo criticized the game's description, which says it is 'fast, funny, and full of sweet, syrupy sabotage.' 'That hits a little bit of a discordant note,' Puleo said. Out of respect, none of the 21 people who were killed are represented as characters in the game, Wenger said. Instead, cards feature people who rushed to aid others, including Margaret Emery, who drove the first ambulance on the scene, and USS Nantucket sailors. Advertisement 'Real people died in this event, so I don't want to make light of their suffering,' Wenger said. 'I wanted to highlight some of the heroes from that day.' Damigella said the game appears to do a good job of highlighting those who played a significant role on the day of the flood. 'That's worthwhile because I don't know some of those stories about it,' he said. Paulie Wenger holds up a card pack for the game "Molassacre: Escape the Flood," near the official memorial for the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 in the North End's Langone Park. (Paulie Wenger) Paulie Wenger Remembering Boston history At 1 p.m. on Jan. 15, 1919, more than 2 million gallons of warm molasses flooded the area after a 50-foot-tall, 90-foot-wide metal container on Commercial Street exploded. For the previous four years, the tank routinely leaked and residents worried something may be wrong, Damigella said. Amid complaints, the company that owned the tank had it painted brown to obscure molasses dripping down its sides. The tank's builders never had a permit to build it because there were not laws requiring permits for structures other than buildings at the time, he said. The molasses had been used to make ethanol, which was further processed into a powder that was a main ingredient in military explosives used in World War I, Puleo said. The liquid in the tank that January was cold, and a new shipment of hot molasses had recently been poured inside. The pressure from combining the different temperatures led to the explosion, Puleo said. The tidal wave that ensued was 15 feet high and flowed at 35 miles per hour, historians said. Many of those wounded suffered gruesome injuries, such as broken pelvises and backs, because the molasses carried heavy, dangerous debris like bricks and metal under its surface, Puleo said. Advertisement The US Industrial Alcohol Co., which owned the tank, tried to blame the explosion on an anarchist terror plot against the government, The company also had industrial molasses tanks in Brooklyn, Baltimore, and Virginia Beach, Va., Puleo said. The shoddy North End tank was placed there in 1915 out of political expediency, Damigella said, because many of the neighborhood's poor Italian immigrants weren't citizens and didn't have the political clout to fight the tank's construction. A multiyear class action lawsuit against US Industrial Alcohol eventually secured reparations for victims and led to sweeping changes in US building regulations that still protect people today. 'It really is a shocking name, but then again it was a shocking event,' Wenger said. 'Not only in the horror faced by the victims, but in the way that the company tried to displace blame on Italian immigrants instead of recognizing their own inadequacies.' Claire Thornton can be reached at
