We left Mark the previous week planning Operation Poinsettia. This past week, we watched Caroline and hubby Honest Ernest complain to Violet Cheshire about Cherry’s interference with their attempt to eradicate the hive of bees. Through guileless honesty or naïve ignorance, instead of just letting Cherry move the bees and then waiting for the check in the mail, the couple blamed Cherry for their failure, provoking Violet to revoke the contract and withhold their pay. Cherry, who happened to stumble into this ad-hoc anger management session, was easily suborned by Violet (with an unspoken agreement to overlook Cherry’s actions) into offering false testimony to support Violet’s underhanded reasoning. This exposed a willingness in Cherry to put her job over her integrity. But this collusion now lays her open to extortion, if not dismissal, for being corrupt.

Ironically, it is Caroline and Ernest who have the moral high ground here, however contemptable they personally are. They had a (presumably) legal contract and attempted to fulfill it, only to be stymied (on possibly illegal grounds) by Cherry and Mark. Instead of accepting payment for something they did not do, they sought redress with Violet. They wind losing out, but getting a half-hearted hint for more jobs. And Cherry thinks she has saved her job. My question to all this is whether Jules Rivera had this in mind. While you ponder that, check this out:

okay, not the usual “let’s talk about pandas” routine, but a replay of the blockchain-nft connection to climate change, brought up several weeks ago when Diana was fretting over the misuse of her salary by her so-called friend and employer, Professor Bee Sharp. It’s quite right and fine to bring up the subject, one that I think most of us truly were not aware of. And that’s good. But it would also have been helpful for some suggestions for what we can do about it.