La Confidential Review
Avice
Great review of a classic film. A perfect example of a director serving the terrific material and genre without personal over-stylising.
What a cast too!
The Hanson and the casting director deserved an award for that alone.
CMS distributes four quarterly confidential feedback reports each year: an Interim (Partial-Year) Workbook, two Full-Year Workbooks (one each for the baseline period and performance period), and a Performance Score Report.
Reports contain discharge-level data protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). Any disclosure of protected health information (PHI) or personally identifiable information (PII) should only be in accordance with, and to the extent permitted by, the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules and other applicable laws. When referring to the contents of your reports, use the line number.
Beginning in the FY 2026 Program year, the SNF VBP Program is expanding to assess performance on multiple quality measures rather than a single measure. The Early Look Performance Score Report is intended to accomplish three goals for the newly expanded SNF VBP Program:
Although it was officially launched in early 2020, Confidential, a shaped co-polyester string from Solinco, has lived in the shadows for a few years. Much of the information surrounding this co-poly, like the proprietary ingredients used to make it and the names of the players who helped develop it, is confidential. What isn't confidential is the nearly off-the-charts control score our team gave this string. The control comes from a familiar Solinco formula consisting of a stiff monofilament construction punctuated by four grippy edges (think Hyper-G and Tour Bite). The result, according to our team, is the kind of spin-friendly precision that brings the ball down on a dime. Although our crew reported no downsides, Confidential is likely too underpowered for beginners, and it may not win over players who require the plush feel of a natural gut or multifilament nylon. However, for the experienced ball striker who wants a durable co-poly that rewards full swings with pinpoint accuracy, Confidential is hard to resist.
With its firm construction, Confidential is not designed for the player who wants easy or "free" power. It is designed to give experienced players the control they need to take massive cuts at the ball. In other words, it is ideal for Michelle's big strokes. She explained, "Confidential's stiff and low-powered response was perfect for my game. It had the characteristic I look for from strings, which is the confidence to hit out and play without fear of overhitting. Because I tend to lean toward more powerful, stiffer racquets, and I know I can hit out at times, I really rely on my string setup to help with control and keep my balls landing inside the baseline."
Although he found increased power over time, Troy gave Confidential high marks for control. He said, "My impressions on control and power changed somewhat over time. Initially, this string felt very control-oriented, somewhat dead and low powered. I adjusted tension a couple of times, and I finally settled on 47 pounds with a lock-out machine. I thought that the firm low-powered feel had to do with me stringing too tightly, but even when I dropped the tension, the initial hitting sessions felt somewhat firm and very control-oriented. I noticed that the string settled in tension-wise after about 3 to 4 hours of hitting, and I started to find a nice pocketing feel. There was also some added pop to this string as time went on."
With its grippy shape and high level of control on explosive upward cuts, Confidential is built for spin. Needless to say, Troy was impressed with this string's spin potential. He said, "Spin was great throughout the playtest, much like I find with Solinco Hyper-G. I could feel the edges on my fingertips while stringing it in my racquet, but it wasn't overly sharp. I noticed on court that I was getting plenty of grip on the ball, and the main strings snapped back into place with relative ease. Overall, Confidential gave me what I look for in a shaped co-poly, and that was easy access to spin from all areas of the court. When I needed to hit passing shots or cross-court dippers, this string gave me the confidence to keep the ball inside the lines."
Although she doesn't play with a lot of spin, Michelle was impressed by Confidential's bite. She said, "Although I have flatter mechanics, I do access spin at times, especially off my backhand wing. I was definitely satisfied with the grab Confidential offered. I could get the ball dipping down reliably, and I felt like I could change up the pace of a rally by adding a good amount of arc. I often access more spin when I'm on defense and trying to get myself back in the point."
Given its high stiffness level, Confidential is not meant to deliver the plush comfort of a natural gut or multifilament string. In fact, it is precisely this string's firm construction that gives it the connected feel and control that big hitters like Michelle crave. She explained, "I liked this string's firm feel and predictable response on big swings. I felt very connected to the ball, which helped with control. I'm known to string in the high 50s and low 60s, and there are a handful of strings I can name that definitely inflame my arms and leave me a bit sore. I have never had soreness with Hyper-G, and I haven't given Tour Bite the chance I should, so I can't comment on the comfort from that string, but Confidential didn't cause me any problems. I definitely wouldn't recommend this string for someone with arm issues or anyone looking for a soft poly. However, it was a comfortable option in terms of low-powered, deader polys."
As a longtime poly player and big fan of Solinco polys, Troy predictably appreciated the feel of Confidential. He described, "I liked this string's direct feedback and overall responsiveness. I found it to have a medium comfort level compared to other co-poly strings. I know that Solinco may have been targeting a slightly more comfortable feel with this string, but it is still definitely firmer and crisper in nature. I think that Solinco did a great job giving this co-poly a bit more pocketing and elasticity without making it feel soft or mushy. I wouldn't put Confidential in my top picks for comfort-oriented co-polys, such as Volkl Cyclone Tour, ISOSPEED Cream or Solinco Tour Bite Soft. I also wouldn't say it's as firm as Tourna Poly Big Hitter Silver 7 Tour, Luxilon 4G or Solinco Tour Bite.
All strings lose tension over time, resulting in changes to the feel and playability. Typically, those changes create control problems, but sometimes a little tension loss can be a good thing. Troy explained, "I actually preferred this string after it lost a little tension. It played a little softer and had slightly better pocketing. Like most of the Solinco co-polys I've tested, Confidential settled in nicely and maintained a consistent feel and response for the majority of the playtest. It never got mushy or erratic. I am going on 10 to 12 hours with the 16L (1.25) in my Yonex EZONE 98+, and it is still playing great."
"I was happy with the playability duration," said Michelle. "It felt great for two weeks for sure, and the stringbed played consistently through the playtest. At one point I noticed a tinnier feel, and that may have subsided as soon as the string went dead, but it really didn't affect the playability. Thankfully, the string did not get mushy or trampoline-like, since I hate when that happens. I would say Confidential was above average in terms of playability duration."
Troy - "I think Solinco Confidential is best for the advanced intermediate and higher level player who knows what to expect from a co-poly. This string could be an option for a first-time poly player if they are ready to tinker around with tensions to dial it in. When it comes to a crisp and responsive feel for a poly string, I would put this one up there with some of the best of them, including Luxilon ALU Power."
Michelle - "I love that I'm able to hit out with confidence and can rely on this string to help control my power. I also appreciated the string's consistent playability throughout the playtest. I think Confidential is going in my top three."
Troy- "If you are a fan of Hyper-G and Tour Bite, Confidential is definitely worth a try. It combines a couple of characteristics from each to make a very high performing co-poly. It's a bit more feel oriented and responsive than Hyper-G, but it also feels slightly firmer. It's not quite as crisp as Tour Bite. I would also compare it to Luxilon 4G Soft, Tecnifibre Black Code 4S and Tourna Poly Big Hitter Silver 7 Tour."
Michelle- "Confidential feels a bit more controlled than Hyper-G, which I like because I don't have to string it as high and can still maintain good control. It has great access to spin as well. I think an obvious comparison would be to Luxilon ALU Power, but I personally felt Confidential had better durability and the drop off wasn't as noticeable."
The book was then published for a mainstream audience in 1996, and a golf architecture cult following slowly formed, keen on reviewing courses, placing them on the Doak Scale, and figuring out ranking lists. The original Confidential Guide to Golf Courses started the entire golf course review side of the game in many ways, and those original copies can be found occasionally selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars.
I've never written a book review before. A book report, yes (though even that was fifteen years ago), but not a review. So I'm not sure what to do here, and you'll have to bear with me.
Fortunately, a quick Google search for "how to write a book review" has at least given me a pretty solid crutch to lean on, and if this post doesn't rise to the level of art, well, I'd settle for being thought competent. I'd even be okay with a well, dear, it was his first try, let's not be too hard on him.
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The promise Amy Stewart (of Garden Rant, and also her personal blog Dirt) makes with the title Flower Confidential is that she's going to take the reader behind the scenes in the floral industry. We're going to hear secrets, in other words. And kinda we do.
Zantedeschia NOID. All the pictures in this post are my own, and all but the mums and carnations are recycled from previous posts. I kind of meant to take pictures of the flower shop's stuff, but never managed to think of it at the right moments.
I would like to find fault with the book, because of ongoing resentment about Stewart's anti-houseplant attitude (she's my nemesis, you know), but I really can't. There are spots I wish she'd gone into more detail about, and of course I'm not sure I like her skipping over live plants entirely, but there's nothing in the book that feels unnecessary. When I started to write this, I felt like the book didn't all hold together exactly -- nothing wrong with it, but the individual chapters felt like they stood alone and didn't really connect to the chapters before or after them, even though when I read through it the first time I didn't notice any jarring transitions. Going back through the book again for this review, though, there is a narrative there: Stewart basically takes us through the process, step by step, from the idea of a particular flower to its actual sale to a customer. So I can't even complain about that.1
In any case, the nine chapters give a pretty comprehensive look at the business, one aspect at a time, and usually with a single central species to illustrate the topic at hand.
The first chapter is about plant breeding, the old fashioned way with pollen, anthers, and camel-hair brushes, and revolves around the development of the Stargazer lily. It's not the happiest of stories, but it's fascinating, and probably my favorite chapter in the book (this being the closest to what I would like to be doing myself -- except for the semi-tragic ending).
Chapter two focuses on genetic engineering, and specifically, the efforts of breeders and engineers to create - for some reason - a blue rose.2 There's also a lot in this chapter about genetics and biology: why one has to trade scent for longevity when breeding roses, what florists do to keep flowers from dying until they're sold (and why those things work), why flower petals containing identical pigment compounds can, nevertheless, be different colors.
Viola 'Cutie Pie.'
With chapter three, we move into the territory of the growers, and there's less of a solid species hook: much of the chapter is devoted to Don Garibaldi, a third-generation grower in California, whose family has been producing violets for a hundred years. Chapter three kind of dances around the idea that it's not really practical for people to grow flowers in the U.S. anymore, because they can be produced elsewhere and shipped in much more easily -- i.e., that the same thing has happened to flower producers that has happened to every other kind of manufacturing job -- but the focus is on the history, back when it was still feasible to grow things here. (Violets are an exception because they're so short-lived that they really have to be produced and consumed in more or less the same place, it turns out, though what this seems to have meant in actuality is that people have just stopped buying cut violets.)
Chapter four highlights one of the few U.S. producers still operating, Sun Valley Floral Farms, in Oxnard, California, and describes large-scale flower production for the first time.
Gerbera jamesonii cv.
Chapter five takes the reader to the Netherlands, for more large-scale flower production, this time of gerbera daisies in hydroculture, and more roses (rosaphobes should probably stay away from this book). This, too, sounded awfully appealing to me, in a weird way: the part I was really jealous of was how clean it all sounded. It's not so much that it sounded high-tech (though it did, and one gets the uneasy sense, reading along in the book, that the world does not have room for any new flower producing companies at the moment, and if it's your dream to start one, you are probably s.o.l.), though I like high-tech: it's that it sounded orderly. Try though WCW and I might, there's only so much grooming, watering and rearranging two people can do in 48 hours a week, and there are always things left undone. I dream of having the time to actually get everything clean and where it is supposed to be.
Rosa NOID.
Chapter six: if you can't go high-tech and enormous, go medium-sized and move your operation to Ecuador, or Columbia. At least for roses. (Yes, roses again.) Stewart glowingly describes roses of three colors (pink/white/green), roses the size of baseballs, roses displayed in perfect spheres four and five feet in diameter, the rose equivalents of high fashion and gemstones. And she's really very good: her description of 'Limbo' (a green rose) was so hyperbolic that I tried finding a picture on-line, though I wasn't able to come up with anything that gave me a clue of what she was talking about. (When I eventually did, much later, find a picture of 'Limbo,' I was actually kind of disappointed: I was envisioning a kind of pistachio ice-gream green, not chartreuse.) The set-up in this chapter is skillful: she tells you about all these absolute marvels of flowers coming out of Ecuador, and then she makes you feel bad for wanting one: oh yeah, and the typical monthly wage for a flower farm worker in Ecuador is $150. And one other thing: they dip the flowers, flower, stem and all, in fungicide, and they employ children,3 and the children do the fungicide dipping too, and have various neurological problems, and sexual harrassment is rampant, and so on in that vein. And then she flips it back around on you again, noting that whatever its shortcomings, people need to have jobs or they don't eat, and what would you have Ecuador do, wreck one of the very few obvious and prospering industries in the country to ease your conscience?4
Chapter seven opens with this tension still very much intact, but Stewart ignores it and takes us to Miami, where we look around at the airport, and the flower import inspection facilities, which is pretty much just as exciting as it sounds. The chapter gets more interesting as it goes along, though, eventually circling back around to the question of how to buy flowers without exploiting people in other countries. The answer seems to be to buy flowers certified as organic and Fair Trade and so forth, and Stewart does a good job of, having raised tension in the previous chapter, dispelling it in this one, by telling you what the various certifications mean, and without being preachy or tedious.
NOID mums.
Chapter eight is where the going gets strange. Stewart first covers the Dutch flower auctions, the weird process by which flowers by the millions are brought into the Netherlands, bought and sold, and then flown back out again to their buyers. It's a little ridiculous-sounding, but it's also kind of the logical end result of a country that takes flowers as seriously as the Dutch do. The psychology of this chapter is very weird: Stewart asks some perfectly sensible-seeming questions about, you know, why on earth anybody would need to fly millions of flowers from the growers across an ocean to be auctioned off, only to have to fly them back out of the country again, why this whole auction system is necessary at all, and she doesn't really get particularly good answers. It's unclear whether the Dutch were failing to understand Stewart or Stewart was failing to understand the Dutch, but it reads like somebody was obviously not understanding somebody. Chapter eight is also where we see Multi Color Flowers, a company that buys up flowers, dyes them, and then resells them to exporters. And it doesn't have to be dye, either: it could be paint, it could be [shuddering] glitter, it could be whatever there's a demand for. There are more questions than answers at the end of that bit, too.
Anthurium 'Florida.'
Chapter nine is the only part I had any real prior connection to: nine is where we get into retail. I knew something about this already, from the flower shop attached to the garden center where I work,5 though there was still a lot in this chapter that I hadn't considered before. The general trend seems to be away from flowers, for funerals and weddings and so forth. People would still buy flowers for friends and relatives in the hospital, but of course hospital stays are getting shorter and shorter as HMOs become more and more able to dictate the conditions of care. In the remaining cases where people might still buy flowers, there's increased competition from grocery stores and discount retailers like Wal-Mart. So regular florists are being pushed to come up with new ways to compete, either by moving into more specialized territory (becoming more experimental and artistic) or by trying to convince the population in general to buy more flowers, for more occasions. Either way, I think the profession is pretty screwed, though there will always be people who manage to do well anyway. Stewart also notes that florists are maybe not as up on what their customers actually desire as they could be -- but I'll let you read the book for that part.
Rosa NOID.
Stewart then includes a small epilogue specifically about Valentine's Day, a smaller afterword about flower certification and the floral industry's efforts to drum up support for local retail flower shops, a page and a half of tips on caring for cut flowers, and then some statistics and notes. Just to cover anything you might possibly want to know that had been left out.
It's an admirably complete book. There might have been just a little bit about houseplants in there, considering that houseplants go pretty much everywhere that cut flowers do, are bought and sold by the same people, and have many of the same problems. I mean, one gets the impression that Stewart had to work to avoid talking about them (or, perhaps, that she stuck her fingers in her ears and started yelling "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" every time the subject came up6), which is not exactly surprising but still disappoints. (She could have at least given me something about orchids: I know they're occasionally sold as cut flowers.) It remains a good book, full of all kinds of interesting information, and even though it probably looks like I've given you all the good stuff in the review already, I assure you that I have not.
Dianthus caryophyllus (carnation) assortment.
And just to point it out -- Christmas is coming up. If you know any aspiring flower breeders or florists or wedding planners or gardeners or immigrants to the Netherlands, you could do a lot worse than picking them up a copy of Flower Confidential. Seriously.
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1 If I'd really wanted to find fault with the book, I could take my cues from the Amazon reviews: Stewart is criticized for her omission of seed production, for her lack of photographs (which I'd guess was probably the publisher's fault, not Stewart's: she mentions taking lots of photos in the text, but color plates are expensive and jack up book prices, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the publisher had vetoed photos in the hopes of selling more books), for "rambling in the middle," and (from a reviewer called "Informed Citizen") for sounding emotional, or for promoting organic gardening (the horror!), or something -- it's actually kind of hard to tell what "Informed Citizen's" problems are, though I wouldn't be surprised if psychiatric medications, and possibly lead-based paint, were involved at some level.
2 Everybody acts kind of baffled throughout, at the idea that anybody would want one, but even if they were never particularly good sellers on their own, I foresee a huge demand in the U.S. around Independence Day, if at no other time. The contortions we have to go through sometimes at work to pretend that a group planting is red, white and blue, when it is very obviously red, white, and dark purple (this is particularly the case with petunias), is kind of astonishing the first few times you see it. Stewart's attitude wavers during the course of the chapter, variously viewing the idea with disgust and finding it possibly intriguing -- in the end, she seems to settle on the perfectly sensible approach of, well, I'll decide whether I like it when I see it.
3 She doesn't come right out and say this, and it's conceivable that it's not actually the case, or that it used to be the case but isn't anymore, or that it was only the case with a few bad growers, or whatever. But still: UNICEF has reported that six percent of Ecuadoran children between the ages of five and fourteen are engaged in child labor of some kind or another, and Stewart also notes that "Even children who claim not to work in greenhouses can give a surprisingly detailed account of how the work is done, leading one to believe that at the very least, they have spent a great deal of time there." It's not clear whether this is her own observation or whether she's paraphrasing UNICEF, but whatever the case, there does seem to be something a little hinky about the whole situation. Where there's smoke, there's child labor, or something like that.
4 Actually, no, this is probably my favorite chapter, and it's mostly because of the way Stewart does this. Just when you think the whole thing is going to be boosterism for the Ecuadoran flower trade, out come the UNICEF statistics. And just when you think she's gone off into bleeding-heart liberal territory, ruining roses for you forever, she yanks you back in the other direction. Global economics is complicated, and it's to Stewart's credit that she manages to acknowledge this in an even-handed, fluid way. (Or at least I thought it was even-handed.)
5 In a rare reversal of gender stereotypes, the garden center is run by the boss, and the flower shop is run by her husband. I don't have a lot of direct contact with the flower shop, though the greenhouse and flower shop overlap on certain things. Like for example, the flower shop has a table of seasonal blooming plants (mums, Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, azaleas, so many cyclamens it makes me sick, gerbera daisies, the vile rieger begonias, etc.) in the greenhouse, which are their responsibility to keep groomed and watered and stuff. However, I've discovered that if I actually rely on the flower shop to watch their table, I still get yelled at for not keeping that table properly watered and groomed. Also, the flower shop sells and delivers a fair percentage of the green plants (particularly Spathiphyllum, Dracaena deremensis 'Lemon-Lime,' and Ficus elastica) for office-warmings and sympathy plants. They have the extremely annoying habit, which we've discussed repeatedly, of taking flowers off of the greenhouse plants, especially the Anthurium scherzerianums, rather than buying them from their suppliers as needed for arrangements. This is particularly offensive when it comes to the Anthuriums, as I have usually spent a couple weeks anticipating the opening of the flower, and then I come in one day and it's just gone. It also makes it, as you could imagine, harder to sell the Anthuriums in question if they are never actually in bloom. (The flower shop's excuse is that Anthurium flowers are expensive, and they usually don't need them very often, so there's little call for them to buy a whole box at $7 a stem or whatever it is, especially not if we happen to have one right there. This seems reasonable, but if that's going to be how it is, then the flower shop should get and maintain a few of their own Anthuriums as stock plants, and leave the ones that are for sale alone.)
6 Yeah, I'm still a little bitter.