The Arrow #173

Hello everyone.

Greetings from Edinburgh, Scotland.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say greetings from somewhere over the Atlantic, which is where I’m writing these words. But we’re headed for Edinburgh. And, so far, it has not been fun. For the first time in I don’t know how many years, we’re flying coach class on a long-haul, international flight. I used to fly this way all the time, but then swore I would never do it again. Yet here I am. And on a mileage ticket, to boot.

It’s all an indulgence for my lovely bride. There is no other woman for whom I would make this sacrifice other than perhaps Giusy Buscemi or maybe Annette Funicello (RIP) back in the day. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know what the indulgence is all about.

This may be a shorter version of The Arrow than normal. I have been locked in a deadly battle with Stripe that has eaten up an enormous amount of time and energy. I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to write about anything on the new platform any longer, yet here I am. Going at it again.

I heard through the family grapevine that my beloved baby sister, who is an avid Arrow reader, is tired of my “constant whining about the platform.” If it’s getting to her, it’s bound to be getting to everyone else. So, I decided to quit.

Then I got the email.

MD and I were flying back to Dallas from California on Sunday. When the plane landed and was taxiing in, I scrolled through the emails that had come in during the flight and came across this cheery little missive:

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of earlier versions of this newsletter, the problem arose because the folks who migrated all my subscribers from Substack and set me up on the new platform ended up putting NUTRIDOX LLC in the statement descriptor (a term that I am now very familiar with—it defines what shows up on a subscribers credit card statement) instead of MICHAEL EADES, MD, which was the statement descriptor on the Substack account.

Nutridox is a play on the words “nutritional” and “doctors,” and is the little personal services LLC MD and I use to deposit our writing income into. We’ve used it for many years, and it’s where we deposit book royalties, speaking fees, payment for articles we write, affiliate sales commissions, subscriber payments, MD’s Caddo Bend novel series sales, etc. It doesn’t have a website, so when people saw NUTRIDOX, LLC on their cc statement and tried to figure out what it was, they couldn’t find it anywhere. And, so, figured it was a fraudulent charge and had their bank refuse it. Which I would probably have done, too.

I’ve been working for the last three days almost full time dealing with this, which has left me little time to do the reading and studying I typically do before cranking out The Arrow.

Stripe has given me the opportunity to respond, which is what has taken me so much time. That and dealing with people in the hierarchy of the new platform and with some people at Stripe. I gathered the info I had on what has happened and submitted it to Stripe. So, we’ll see what the outcome is.

I’m sure this situation got triggered by an algorithm, so now that it’s in the hands of a human (I hope) and not an AI bot, it should all work out. But it’s a big unknown right now.

If it doesn’t, I’ll have to move back to Substack. Or yet another platform that doesn’t require Stripe. I have an alternative in mind, but I don’t want to even think about pulling the trigger until this is resolved.

As always seems to be the case in these kinds of situations, the algorithm picked the worst possible time to drop this on me, what with my being gone for a week during which I’m going to be really busy instead of poised at my laptop waiting to respond immediately.

So, if one Thursday in the near future, you see a version of The Arrow in your email that looks different, you’ll know what happened.

From the Mailbag…

On top of the nightmare above going on, for some reason, I’ve been inundated with emails this past week. And with comments through the poll, which I have no way to reply to. So, I’ll add those missives to the ones from actual emails. I always read all the emails, but sometimes—this week, for example—I just run out of time.

As you may recall, I took a lot of heat from about a half dozen readers over my dislike of the movie The Matrix. I had all kinds of people questioning my taste. All of them said The Matrix was their favorite movie of all time, and my dislike of it implied that there was something wrong with me and not The Matrix.

So, I had to laugh when I got this through the poll:

As it turns out, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid happens to be one of my all time favorite movies. Right up there in the top three. So, now I understand how all The Matrix lovers feel. I can’t understand how anyone could not like Butch Cassidy. But there it is. Different strokes and all that…

I got another long email about a bunch of stuff and interspersed was a doubting question about my ability to weld. As you recall, last week I wrote about the kid I thought was an exemplar of America. He was a welder, and I mentioned I had spent a summer as a welder in River Rouge, Michigan.

Here’s the deal.

As part of the curriculum in engineerng school, I had to take five shop classes, each lasting an entire quarter.  Two were welding classes. The first was acetylene torch welding (and cutting); the second was arc welding. There was a class on the lathe and one on various metal working machines. And one on sheet metal work. It was in these classes that I learned how to use the various machines and to weld. It was that experience that got me the job as a welder over part of the summer between my junior and senior year of college.

I had a bunch of people ask for the gazpacho recipe and had a couple of recommendations.

Someone told me we should use Marfa tomatoes, which I had never heard of. And someone else recommended Kumato tomatoes, which I do know about and love.

Here is the recipe for Gazpacho Andaluz:

I had forgotten that MD had put it up on her blog years ago. Now you’ve got it in two places.

Ah, and just when I thought it was going so well.

Cut to many hours later…

In Edinburgh right now cooped up in a tiny AirBNB that allegedly David Bowie lived in when he was just getting started as a musician.

The trip that started so well ended up being a nightmare. We lost internet service, then there was another plane at the gate when we got to Heathrow. Heathrow itself was a zoo. (Word to the wise, never, ever fly into or out of Heathrow if you have any other choice.)

I was supposed to have almost three hours before our connecting flight to Edinburgh. With all the Heathrow hassle, we ended up getting to our gate with not enough time to hit the lounge. Then the flight to Edinburgh left late due to some issue. Took forever to get our bags, then we couldn’t connect with the car guy who was getting us. (We finally did find each other.)

We had to go to a place to pick up the key to get us into our digs. The people who arranged the car gave the driver the address for the pickup. When we got there, a sign was on the door telling us to go to a different address to get the key. The driver was pissed, but took us to the other place, which was not close.

We finally got into the apartment, but hours later than anticipated. And there was an event we had to attend early this evening, so we had to wash the road grime off and change and were about to fall asleep on our feet. (It’s difficult to sleep well in coach; I’d forgotten.)

In an effort to wake up, we decided to walk the two miles to the event, which we did. It’s cold here, so that was bracing and got us through the evening. [The bride adds that it was truly a lovely walk, even if brisk, because everything is greened out and all the flowering trees are in their fullest glory.]

The big issue that hit during all this running around looking for keys was that Stripe responded to the material I sent them informing me that it was no go. The risk for Stripe was just too high. I was ‘done’ on Stripe.

I emailed the folks at the platform, who appear to have some sway with Stripe, and told them that 98 percent of the paid subscribers on the new platform were the same paid subscribers on Substack, and Stripe didn’t have a problem with them then. What changed to make it too ‘high risk’?

During the evening event, my phone was blowing up with the back and forth over all this, because it was still business hours in the US.

So, I’ve decided to reluctantly take this week off to deal with all this. This will be the first time in 173 weeks that I haven’t cranked out a full Arrow.

I’m going to stick up the Odds and Ends I’ve been collecting so far, and call it a day. It’s 11:55 UK time, and I haven’t slept for about 36 hours.

I’ll be back next week with a full edition. I don’t know what platform it will come on, but it will come. One way or another.

I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to keep things as they are and that Stripe will be reasonable. Otherwise, I’m going to have to migrate everything to a new platform while I’m here in Scotland. Pray for me!

Odds and Ends

The lowest average pay people would be willing to accept a new job is much higher than I thought it would be.

Israel sends subtle notice to Iran that they (the Israelis) can penetrate Iran’s air defense system at will. Which is doubtless why Iran didn’t strike back. Interesting.

Tools for spotting deep fakes in the news. But will they work?

This story seems to border on the fraudulent to me. I would love to examine the hands of these folks. The heavy calluses, if present, would tell a lot.

Photo showing the iceberg that supposedly sank the Titanic.

One for the dog lovers. Especially those trying to come up with a name for a new puppy. 100 medieval dog names.

I’m going to go ahead and put up the poll, not so I can be judged, but so you all will have a means to respond. And there is the comments section as well.

CODA: You are not going to believe this. While MD was vetting what little I wrote, I went to put my phone on the charger. Before doing so, I checked my emails one last time. And there was a short missive from Stripe telling me they’ve re-evaluated, and everything is okay and my Stripe account is “in good standing.”

Please do me a favor. If you have any issues with your account, contact me by replying to The Arrow or at mreades at proteinpower dot com; if you get doubly billed, If you unsubscribed and got billed again, If you see anything on your credit card statement you have an issue with, please contact me. I can deal with it easily in the backend of Stripe. Thanks very much in advance.

And thanks for putting up with my whining today. You, too, baby sister.

Okay, that’s about it for today. Once again, sorry for the lack of about 5,000 words. Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

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Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Really, thanks. If you got something out of it, please consider becoming a paid subscriber if you aren’t yet. I would really appreciate it.

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