Bruce Horovitz: Is there such thing as 'normal aging'?

Caroline Mayer, with her husband, Ed, visits the Cape Cod Canal earlier this year.

-- Photo courtesy of Caroline Mayer

By BRUCE HOROVITZ

For Kaiser Health News

For 93-year-old Joseph Brown, the clearest sign of aging was his inability the other day to remember he had to have his pants unzipped to pull them on.

For 95-year-old Caroline Mayer, it was deciding at age 80 to put away her skis, after two hip replacements.

And for 56-year-old Dr. Thomas Gill, a geriatric professor at Yale University, it’s accepting that his daily 5½-mile jog now takes him upward of 50 minutes — never mind that he long prided himself on running the distance in well under that time.

Is there such a thing as normal aging?

The physiological changes that occur with aging are not abrupt, said Gill.

The changes happen across a continuum as the reserve capacity in almost every organ system declines, he said. “Think of it, crudely, as a fuel tank in a car,” said Gill. “As you age, that reserve of fuel is diminished.”

Drawing on their decades of practice along with the latest medical data, Gill and three geriatric experts agreed to help identify examples of what are often — but not always – considered to be signposts of normal aging for folks who practice good health habits and get recommended preventive care.

The 50s: Stamina Declines

Gill recognizes that he hit his peak as a runner in his 30s and that his muscle mass peaked somewhere in his 20s. Since then, he said, his cardiovascular function and endurance have slowly decreased. He’s the first to admit that his loss of stamina has accelerated in his 50s. He is reminded, for example, each time he runs up a flight of stairs.

In your 50s, it starts to take a bit longer to bounce back from injuries or illnesses, said Stephen Kritchevsky, 57, an epidemiologist and co-director of the J. Paul Sticht Center for Healthy Aging and Alzheimer’s Prevention at Wake Forest University. While our muscles have strong regenerative capacity, many of our organs and tissues can only decline, he said.

Dr. David Reuben, 65, experienced altitude sickness and jet lag for the first time in his 50s. To reduce those effects, Reuben, director of the and chief of the geriatrics division at UCLA, learned to stick to a regimen — even when he travels cross-country: He tries to go to bed and wake up at the same time, no matter what time zone he’s in.

There often can be a slight cognitive slowdown in your 50s, too, said Kritchevsky. As a specialist in a profession that demands mental acuity, he said, “I feel I can’t spin quite as many plates at the same time as I used to.” That, he said, is because cognitive processing speeds typically slow with age.

The 60s: Susceptibility Increases

There’s a good reason why even healthy folks age 65 and up are strongly encouraged to get vaccines for flu, pneumonia and shingles: Humans’ susceptibility and negative response to these diseases increase with age. Those vaccines are critical as we get older, Gill said, since these illnesses can be fatal — even for healthy seniors.

Hearing loss is common, said Kritchevsky, especially for men.

Reaching age 60 can be emotionally trying for some, as it was for Reuben, who recalls 60 “was a very tough birthday for me. Reflection and self-doubt is pretty common in your 60s,” he said. “You realize that you are too old to be hired for certain jobs.”

The odds of suffering some form of dementia doubles every five years beginning at age 65, said Gill, citing an American Journal of Public Health report. While it’s hardly dementia, he said, people in their 60s might begin to recognize a slowing of information retrieval. “This doesn’t mean you have an underlying disease,” he said. “Retrieving information slows down with age.”

The 70s: Chronic Conditions Fester

Many folks in their mid-70s function as folks did in their mid-60s just a generation ago, said Gill. But this is the age when chronic conditions — like hypertension or diabetes or even dementia — often take hold. “A small percentage of people will enter their 70s without a chronic condition or without having some experiences with serious illness,” he said.

People in their 70s are losing bone and muscle mass, which makes them more susceptible to sustaining a serious injury or fracture in the event of a fall, Gill added.

Seventies is the pivotal decade for physical functioning, said Kritchevsky. Toward the end of their 70s, many people start to lose height, strength and weight. Some people report problems with mobility, he said, as they develop issues in their hips, knees or feet.

At the same time, roughly half of men age 75 and older experience some sort of hearing impairment, compared with about 40 percent of women, said Kritchevsky, referring to a 2016 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Another conundrum common to the 70s: People tend to take an increasing number of medications used for “preventive” reasons. But these medications are likely to have side effects on their own or in combination, not all of which are predictable, said Gill. “Our kidneys and liver may not tolerate the meds as well as we did earlier in life,” he said.

Perhaps the biggest emotional impact of reaching age 70 is figuring out what to do with your time. Most people have retired by age 70, said Reuben, “and the biggest challenge is to make your life as meaningful as it was when you were working.”

The 80s: Fear Of Falling Grows

Fear of falling — and the emotional and physical blowback from a fall — are part of turning 80.

If you are in your 80s and living at home, the chance that you might fall in a given year grows more likely, said Kritchevsky. About 40 percent of folks 65 and up who are living at home will fall at least once each year, and about 1 in 40 of them will be hospitalized, he said, citing a study from the UCLA School of Medicine and Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. The study notes that the risk increases with age, making people in their 80s even more vulnerable.

By age 80, folks are more likely to spend time in the hospital — often due to elective procedures such as hip or knee replacements, said Gill, basing this on his own observation as a geriatric specialist. Because of diminished reserve capacities, it’s also tougher to recover from surgery or illnesses in your 80s, he said.

The 90s & Up: Relying On Others

By age 90, people have roughly a 1-in-3 chance of exhibiting signs of dementia caused by Alzheimer’s disease, said Gill, citing a Rush Institute for Healthy Aging study. The best strategy to fight dementia isn’t mental activity but at least 150 minutes per week of “moderate” physical activity, he said. It can be as simple as brisk walking.

At the same time, most older people — even into their 90s and beyond — seem to be more satisfied with their lives than are younger people, said Kritchevsky.

At 93, Joseph Brown understands this — despite the many challenges he faces daily. “I just feel I’m blessed to be living longer than the average Joe,” he said.

Brown lives with his 81-year-old companion, Marva Grate, in the same single-family home that Brown has owned for 50 years in Hamden, Conn. The toughest thing about being in his 90s, he said, is the time and thought often required to do even the simplest things. “It’s frustrating at times to find that you can’t do the things you used to do very easily,” he said. “Then, you start to question your mind and wonder if it’s operating the way it should.”

Brown, a former maintenance worker who turns 94 in May, said he gets tired — and out of breath — very quickly from physical activity.

He spends ample time working on puzzle books, reading and sitting on the deck, enjoying the trees and flowers. Brown said no one can really tell anyone else what “normal” aging is.

Nor does he claim to know himself. “We all age differently,” he said.

Brown said he doesn’t worry about it, though. “Before the Man Upstairs decides to call me, I plan to disconnect the phone.”

'The story of this place'

"Summer at Sailor's Home Cemetery and Black's Creek" (oil on panel),  by Yvonne  Troxell Lamonth, in the joint show, "Unknown Terrain,'' with Constance Bigony, at Galatea Fine Art, Boston, May 1-31.

Ms. Lamonth wrote about her work:

"As the 'City' encroaches on us, pushing in and filling up any open space, a need to make reverent that which remains wild and free becomes critical. Living in Quincy, Mass., somewhat new to me, is a process of discovery. My morning walk with my dog, Wiki has becomes a small journey. Past Sailor's Pond, with its egret tree, Beechwood Knoll Elementary School and around to the Sailor's Home Cemetery path and Black's Creek the landscape comes alive.

"Color, shape, movement and constant environmental changes make capturing the essence a challenge. Working en plein air is a race against time, grabbing for the subtle changes as the channels fill and the clouds subdue the golden sea grass. Now, I am attempting to synthesize the overall experience and glory of this natural wonder. Each day I see more and gather more sensations.

"I hope to tell the story of this place. I visit and revisit certain branches and the way they fall over the field. I am surprised when pale green leaves fall over glistening snow. My awareness becomes heightened when, from my flood zone abode a short distance from the sea, I watch the waves splash over the sea wall bringing water, sand and wind closer to my comfort zone than I had ever anticipated. What comes next?

"My most recent inspirations have come from the imagination of Milton Avery, the seas and depth of Winslow Homer and the earthiness of Lois Dodd. And, of course, I look to the spirit of Marsden Hartley and Helen Torr. Learning from the greats helps inch me along.

"All this is to say, how frightened I am, not just of encroachment of 'City,' but, of our climate being undone by corporate irreverence and profit, deception and greed. How important for us all to have a voice, 'Think Globally, Act Locally.'

"Now that my neighborhood has inspired my art making, it has also become the source of my concern. I have learned about a compressor station being pushed into Weymouth, Mass., that will impact Quincy, Braintree, Boston Harbor and beyond, with toxic chemicals, causing harm to people, animals, the earth and the sea. As I make my small journey each day, I hope others will appreciate their own Mother Earth and take a stand." 

The tipping point

-- Video by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

Negin Owliaei: Striking teachers fighting for much more than raises

Via OtherWords.com

Teachers across the United States are having a moment.

Educators are building on the momentum from West Virginia, where striking teachers won a 5 percent pay raise for state employees. Now the protests have spread to Arizona, Kentucky, Oklahoma and the nation’s capital.

The educators are winning broad public support, but some politicians aren’t pleased.

Teachers are displaying a “thug mentality,” Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin complained. They’re asking for too much, like a “teenager wanting a better car,” according to Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin.

Is it really “selfish and short-sighted,” as Bevin put it, to demand a livable wage?

Teachers have long lived on austerity salaries while seeing their benefits, from pensions to health care, come under attack. They make less than other college graduates in all 50 states, and they’re more likely than other workers to hold a second job.

But better pay isn’t all that’s compelling educators to act. Teachers are using the classroom to fight for their entire communities.

In Kentucky, teachers had to protest to save a critical social-service program, which nearly fell victim to state tax cuts for the wealthy.

Politicians in Oklahoma spent years following the same path, slashing taxes for oil and gas companies while letting schools suffer. Thousands of Oklahomans have shared now-viral photos of the battered textbooks used by the state’s students.

The problem isn’t confined to a few bad actors. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 29 states provided less overall state funding per student in 2015 than they did before the 2008 recession. The result: school conditions so poor that they’re forcing teachers to stand up and demand better.

These teachers are taking notes from Chicago. In 2012, when teachers there launched their first strike since 1987, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said it was a “strike by choice” that Chicago’s kids didn’t deserve. Teachers countered that the real choices harming the city’s kids came from government officials and their corporate backers.

The union released a report pushing for proven reforms that would allow teachers to improve education while reducing inequality. And they proposed progressive taxation measures and closing corporate loopholes to help pay for the services their students needed most.

Chicago’s teachers weren’t just bargaining for their own paychecks and benefits. They were demanding justice for everyone in their classrooms — and for the community as a whole.

Labor leaders elsewhere are following that model.

Detroit teachers made national headlines in 2016 with “sickouts” in protest of the poor conditions in public schools — including black mold, rats, and lack of heat. The city teachers argued that suburban schools in the state would never be left to deteriorate in the same way.

In St. Paul, teachers included demands for racial equity in the classroom in their collective bargaining negotiations, which took place right as Super Bowl festivities kicked off there. How could the state’s corporations fund the Super Bowl, teachers argued, yet not pay enough in taxes to fully fund school districts?

The teachers striking today are using the same arguments. The Oklahoma Education Association has proposed several revenue-raising options, like eliminating deductions for wealthy investors and increasing production taxes on oil and natural-gas companies. All told their ideas would add more than $900 million to state coffers.

Just like the Chicago strike of 2012, the teacher protests taking place today aren’t a “choice,” but a response to one. Politicians chose to slash funding for public schools. Teachers are fighting that decision — and for their communities.

The only selfish and short-sighted thing to do is continue with a broken status quo.

Negin Owliaei is a researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies. She co-edits Inequality.org, where a longer version of this op-ed appeared. 

William Morgan: Specialty license plates are out of control

Automobile owners in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts now have the option of a new specialty license plate. A percentage of the extra $40 fee goes to “support state and local police, firefighters, MBTA Transit Police, EMTs and their families in times of need.”

Who could object to helping first responders? These are the men and women who put their lives on the line for all of us, all the time. But the Massachusetts State Police campaign hat on the plate (think Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Gen. “Black Jack” Pershing, or Smokey the Bear) reminds us of recent disclosures about exorbitant overtime salaries for some state troopers. (Some troopers, particularly on the Logan International Airport detail, have allegedly earned over $300,000 a year. And the troop that covers the Massachusetts Turnpike may be disbanded to discourage further abuses of the public purse.)

Massachusetts state trooper.

--  MSP.news.org

Hermann Göring

-- (Bundesarchiv); MSP.news.org

Aside from the current issues affecting the troopers in their blue Hermann Göring-like uniforms, one maybe should ask why the widows of policeman and firemen need additional funds. And why is a license-plate surcharge the best way to secure those funds?

Yet the trooper license plate is not as egregious as the Choose Life one. Ostensibly, “Supporting the positive choices of life, adoption and safe havens,” this plate is clearly the darling of anti-abortion forces. As such it carries a heavy political message that seems to go beyond raising breast-cancer awareness or supporting the environment. (Virginia is one of the only places I know of with a counter plate: "Trust Women. Respect Choice,'' although perhaps one could imagine the corollary, "Choose Death,''  say, for Hells Angels or the Hemlock Society.)

The proliferation of specialty license plates is out of control, although the New England states lag way behind in the number of options available to its car owners. Several states offer “In God We Trust” monikers, which some might think violates the First Amendment separation of church and state. Kentuckians can mount a black plate that supports the Friends of Coal, while 9/11 memorials, autism awareness and veterans’ tags can be found in most states. Virginia has a “Protect Pollinators” (butterflies, rather than fertility clinics), there are numerous farm-themed plates to buck up agriculture, and in Texas, the Sons of Confederate Veterans sports that not-so-subtle symbol of racism, the rebel battle flag.

As a colony, Massachusetts spearheaded the armed rebellion against British rule. Perhaps, the often-groundbreaking commonwealth could lead the way back to a simpler, no-nonsense license plate – one that does not shout for attention or shill various political causes. And as nod to those folks who believe that license tag has to have some signifier, how about resurrecting the cod plate of 1928 – no motto, no flag, no credos, just the sacred fish.

The wooden "Sacred Cod'' hangs in the Massachusetts House of Representatives chamber, signifying the great importance of the fish to the  early economy and society of what became the Bay State.

William Morgan is an architectural historian, author and commentator on numerous design matters.

UMass Dartmouth event will look at the Blue Economy

This recently came in from our friends at the New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

"The University of Massachusetts at  Dartmouth and the Council on Competitiveness will co-host an event focused on the Blue Economy on Thursday, April 19, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the university’s Claire T. Carney Library, at 285 Old Westport Rd., Dartmouth, Mass.

"The event, 'Catching the Next Wave: Building the Blue Economy through Innovation and Collaboration,' will explore the development of Massachusetts’s Blue Economy, which includes commercial fishing and fish processing, offshore wind, marine science and technology, tourist and other industries. Leading experts in business, government, labor, and academia will speak on innovations and entrepreneurial ventures that will shape the Blue Economy and the collective ability to balance economic imperatives and environmental constraints.

"The event is part of the Inauguration Week activities for Robert E. Johnson, the new chancellor of UMass Dartmouth. If interested, you can view the program and register for the event here.

Great idea, just not here

Chestnut Hill Baptist Church in Exeter.

A lot of people in rural Exeter, R.I., apparently don’t want big wind- or solar-powered electricity generation in their town, which includes small if woodsy landholdings as well as some big estates of rich people. It would be nice if all big solar- and wind-energy facilities could be put on such places as vacant parking lots at closed malls, at Superfund sites and the roofs of closed factories but we’ll need more space than that to move very deeply into a post-fossil-fuel world.

John Scuncio, former police chief on nearby and also rural Hopkinton, touted  solar panels and wind turbines because “when you tie up a piece of property with solar or wind’’ you remove land that could otherwise be developed for housing. But I’d guess that most people in Exeter don’t want more houses or large green energy projects, although they do want electricity, to be generated somewhere.

Exeter is an example of why housing costs are so high in New England:  Legal (“snob zoning”) and informal restrictions on expanding the supply of housing units make existing housing that much more expensive.

'Druidic' Dogtown

Dogtown, on Cape Ann, in 1908.

''The place (Dogtown, in Gloucester, and Rockport, Mass.) is forsaken and majestically lovely as if nature had at last formed one spot where she can live for herself alone.. (it) looked like a cross between Easter Island and Stonehenge -- essentially druidic in it appearance, it gives the feeling that an ancient race might turn up at any moment and renew an ageless rite there.''

-- Marsden Hartley (1877-1943, modernist painter, poet and essayist), one of whose paintings of Dogtown is below, as is a brief history of the place.

The ghost town known as Dogtown is divided between  Gloucester and Rockport. Dogtown was first settled, as a farming village, in 1693,  with the name said to develop much later from dogs that women kept while their husbands were fighting in the American Revolution. In the mid-1700s as many as 100 families inhabited Dogtown, which was stable until after the American Revolution.

Most of the farmers in  Dogtown moved away by the end of the War of 1812 and the area became known for its  rather creepy beauty and huge boulders.

Mobile patent-medicine clinic

Work by Stephen Martin in his joint show  with Sorin Bica, "Identity,'' at Fountain Street Fine Art, Boston, through April 29.

The gallery says that Mr. Martin "is a mixed-media artist and sculptor who works primarily with antique photos and found objects to fashion unique human stories. His work is about reclamation; while he incorporates found objects to form the 'ground' of the pieces, the figurative element is of primary importance.

Llewellyn King: Teaching liberal arts alongside the trades

The American College of the Building Arts, in Charleston, S.C.

-- Photo by Jason W. Kaumeyer

Innovation and entrepreneurism, these are strains of the American Dream. That dream is simple: to be self-employed, to own your own business, to be answerable to customers and not to bosses, as well as to make a better living and to enjoy the benefits of the tax system that favors business.

It may be fundamental to the dream, but students pouring out of universities are, by and large, unprepared to follow the business-of-their-own dream. We do not create in the educational system people equipped to launch companies that create jobs and protect the fabric of our society, giving it strength and texture.

At the base of the educational tower, students graduating from many high school systems are poorly equipped for little more demanding than fast-food service or day labor.

Graduates of liberal arts colleges have to seek jobs in large companies or in government. It is darn hard to start a history company or a sociology service, or to incorporate as a geography business.

In short, the liberal education system is skewed against entrepreneurship, particularly against small startups where sweat equity is the principal financing and where a single skill can be the foundation of a healthy enterprise.

I once heard a speech by one of the founders of Intel in which he said there was a difference between small business and new business. Quite.

It is small business that interests me. The little enterprises that are the essential ingredient in free enterprise, the source of creativity and, not to be forgotten, the source of happy and fulfilled lives. The pursuit of happiness can be entwined with the pursuit of self-employment in work that the worker loves.

When I first learned of a small college — minuscule, you might say, because there are fewer than 100 students — in Charleston, S.C., I was gladdened— and when I learned that about a third of its graduates had gone on to start their own small businesses, I was ecstatic.

The institution is the American College of the Building Arts. Its mission is not to create entrepreneurs, but to meld together trade crafts and liberal arts.

Entrepreneurism is a byproduct, an unexpected bonus.

The combining of the liberal arts with skilled artistry is a potent concept at a time when there is an extreme shortage of craftsmen, and a real dearth of those who reach the master level, both men and women.

About a third of the student body at ACBA are women. In two days reporting at the college, I found women doing complex forgings in the blacksmithing department, chiseling stone in the masonry classes, and doing timber-frame construction.

The same students, away from the forges, chisels, hammers and saws are to be found studying Charles Dickens’s  Hard Times and the Industrial Revolution or puzzling over Palladian concepts in the architectural drawing class.

If I sound enthusiastic about this concept in education, it is because I am.

My father was a blue-collar worker and small businessman, but he missed in his life, which was hard, the joy of literature, the stimulation of art and the wonder of the theater. He missed the liberal arts. For myself, I miss the satisfaction that he got from making a decorative gate in wrought iron or putting up a barn.

I find the idea the liberal arts can be taught alongside trade craft to be stimulating. ACBA President Colby Broadwater III, a retired three-star general, acknowledges the college is so small — it came out of a shortage of skilled artisans to do restoration after Charleston was hard hit by Hurricane Hugo, in September 1989 —that it is less than a grain of dust in the stone carving room compared to big universities. But it is important, a frontier in education.

“Who said artisans shouldn’t be educated?” says Broadwater. Quite so.

I might add, “Who says they shouldn’t build craft skills into businesses?”

They are chiseling, hammering, plastering and sawing a new kind of educational future in a very small college.

On Twitter: @llewellynking2

Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. He's based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

Barry Schiller: A vision for better commuter rail service and links in southern New England

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

MBTA locomotives in South Station, the inbound terminus of commuter  rail lines from the south of Boston.

We all know Rhode Island benefits from its proximity to Boston, which provides our residents and businesses access to markets, jobs, entertainment, medical services and schools. But we are held back by problems related to getting there and back.

The roads are increasingly congested, and that slows buses too. There are accidents, and parking can be tough. Highway improvements are sometimes environmentally destructive and very expensive. For example, the Rhode Island Department of Transportation may spend about $300 million just to redo less than a mile of I-95 in central Providence. And we know we should reduce gasoline consumption, which drains money out of the local economy and contributes so much to greenhouse-gas emissions.

Amtrak Acelas are quick, but also expensive. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) commuter trains provide access and we are “on track” to add a Pawtucket-Central Falls station so that those communities can better access Boston and the rest of the state. The MBTA also brings Massachusetts folks to Rhode Island, including a significant number of “reverse commuters” without clogging our roads and Massachusetts folks also use it to get to our airport.

But the trains are relatively slow, often taking about 70 minutes to go the 44 miles from Providence to Boston. Though there are 20 trains each way weekdays, and there can be inconvenient gaps between trains, more than 2 hours apart at times. And the service isn’t very reliable about being on time.

So a regional group called Transit Matters has developed a vision for how the commuter rail could better serve the region’s economy and environment. After looking at best practices elsewhere, notably Philadelphia and Paris, its main recommendations include: electrification; high-level platforms at all stations; more frequent service; free transfers to local buses and subways; infrastructure improvements at a few bottlenecks.

On the Providence line, where there already are electric wires used by Amtrak, we would need additional wires in just a few stretches, notably the Pawtucket layover yard. That would make those nearby happy not to have diesel-engine pollution or noise. Electric engines are quieter and cleaner, and accelerate quicker, speeding up trips. They are more reliable and last longer than diesel. After startup capital costs they have lower operating costs.

High-level platforms, missing in eight of the current 15 stations on our line, also speed trips by quicker boarding at stations, especially for those with disabilities. The time to get to Boston could be reduced to about 46 minutes. Speedier trips use equipment and labor more efficiently and would also generate more revenue by attracting more passengers.

Long term, Transit Matters recommends a rail tunnel connecting North and South stations in Boston. This would have many operational advantages, avoid the need for an expensive expansion of South Station, and connect Rhode Island to the North Shore and northern New England, and connect them to us!

There are obstacles, including finding the capital funds to do all this, harder with the Trump administration hostility to both our region for not voting for him and to trains with their highly unionized workforce.

The environmental community, though interested in promoting electric cars, has mostly ignored electrifying our commuter rail. It’s also a challenge to get two states, the MBTA and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) to all work together and coordinate. But, there are a lot of benefits.

Barry Schiller, a transit rider and longtime transit advocate, is a former board member of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority.

Get out there and look

"I

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding,
But when I walk, I see that it consists of three or four hills and
   a cloud.

II

From my balcony, I survey the yellow air,
Reading where I have written,
‘The spring is like a belle undressing.’

III

The gold tree is blue.
The singer has pulled his cloak over his head.
The moon is in the folds of the cloak.''

-- "Of the Surface of Things,'' by the late Wallace Stevens, Hartford insurance executive and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.

They avoid empty niceness

"Vermonters are not only charmless of manner, on the whole; they are also, as far as I can judge, utterly without pretense, and give the salutary impression that they don't care ten cents whether you are amused, affronted, intrigued, or bored stiff by them. Hardly anybody asked me how I liked Vermont. Not a soul said 'Have a nice day!'"

-- Jan Morris, British writer

Coping with the Clutter Crisis

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal 24.

With the rapidly swelling population of people 65 or over, you can bet that the Clutter Crisis will intensify as elderly people strive to simplify their lives, which might include living in a smaller home. There’s been  quite a spate of stuff in the news media lately about the anti-clutter industry, probably because of the flood of new retirees.  The industry causes some clutter itself with its innumerable books, consultants and anti-clutter plastic boxes for sale.

Years ago, as my children were going off to college, I wrote a piece whose title I’ve long since forgotten for The Providence Journal about trying to get rid of stuff that had piled up over the decades. Flotsam and jetsam.

We’ve made some progress but of course more stuff has flowed into the house in the intervening years. Now we have resumed the clearing out process.

It’s mostly tedious but coming across old pictures, toys, kids’ books, etc., raises pangs of nostalgia  and regret. And you always think that a child or grandchild might be interested in keeping such items. But that’s rarely so. It’s just more stuff for the dumpster or the Salvation Army. Perhaps a few nice or at least very old pieces of furniture, a couple of pictures, especially an old oil painting or two, and a family Bible might be acceptable to the next generation but that’s about it.

So  do them a favor and get rid of as much as you can before your demise. As the song from the Thirties, says “It’s later than you think.’’

Domenica Ghanem: Pharma companies are the authors of the opioid crisis

Via OtherWords.org

At a recent rally in New Hampshire, Donald Trump called for the death penalty for drug traffickers as part of a plan to combat the opioid epidemic in the United States. At a Pennsylvania rally a few weeks earlier, he called for the same.

Now his administration is taking steps toward making this proposal a reality. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions issued a memo on March 21 asking prosecutors to pursue capital punishment for drug traffickers — a power he has thanks to legislation passed under President  Clinton.

Time and again, these punitive policies have proven ineffective at curbing drug deaths. That’s partly because amping up the risk factor for traffickers makes the trade all that more lucrative, encouraging more trafficking, not less.

But it’s also because these policies don’t address the true criminals of the opioid crisis: Big Pharma.

If Trump really wanted to help, he’d put the noose around drug-making and selling giants like Purdue Pharma, McKesson, Insys Therapeutics, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, and others.

The president knows this, in a way. These companies “contribute massive amounts of money to political people,” he said at a press conference in October 2017 — even calling out Mitch McConnell, who was standing beside him, for taking that money. Pharmaceutical manufacturers were “getting away with murder,” Trump complained in the same speech.

For once, he’s wasn’t wrong.

The pharmaceutical industry spends more than any other industry on influencing politicians, with two lobbyists for every member of Congress. Nine out of ten House members and all but three senators have taken campaign contributions from Big Pharma.

It’s not just politicians they shell out for.

Opioid pioneer Purdue Pharma, the creator of OxyContin, bankrolled a campaign to change the prescription habits of doctors who were wary of the substance’s addictive properties, going so far as to send doctors on all-expense-paid trips to pain-management seminars. The family that started it all is worth some $13 billion today.

From 2008 to 2012, AmerisourceBergen distributed 118 million opioid pills to West Virginia alone. That’s about 65 pills per resident. In that same time frame, 1,728 people in the state suffered opioid overdoses.

McKesson — the fifth largest company in the U.S., with profits over $192 billion — contributed 5.8 million pills to just one West Virginia pharmacy.

Meanwhile, five companies contributed more than $9 million to interest groups for things like promoting their painkillers for chronic pain and lobbying to defeat state limits on prescribing opioids.

These companies don’t stop at promoting opioids. They also spend big on stopping legislation that would actually help curb opioid use.

Insys Therapeutics, a company whose founder was indicted for allegedly bribing doctors to write prescriptions for fentanyl (a substance 50 times stronger than heroin), spent $500,000 to stop marijuana legalization in Arizona in 2016.

In response, cities and states from New York City to Ohio are suing pharmaceutical companies for their role in the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans every year. It’s time for the federal government to get behind them.

Of course, going after these companies isn’t going to eliminate opioid abuse on its own. That will take combating the root social and economic causes that lead to so many deaths of despair.

But it’s clear who the real profiteers of the opioid epidemic are. If Trump wanted to get real about curbing incentives for selling opioids, he’d turn away from street dealers and target the real opioid-producing industry.

Domenica Ghanem is the media manager of the Institute for Policy Studies.

'The vision of it'

"We breathed the dank clean air, the thin sharp smells of

                                                          pine woods and dead

Leaves and melting snow and we started to whoop and jig

                                                                  for the vision of it,

The abiding strength that we had gone too long without.''

From "Building a House in the Woods, Maine 1971,'' by Baron Wormser

'First American Modernist' in once rich factory town of New Britain

"Salem" (Mass.) (oil on canvas), by Maurice Brazil Prendergast,  in the show "American Post-Impressionists: Maurice & Charles Prendergast,'' at the New Britain (Conn.) Museum of American Art, through June 10.

 

The museum says:

"Travel in time to the early 20th Century,  when Maurice and Charles Prendergast revolutionized American art. Inspired by European styles, the brothers challenged traditional artistic conventions, propelling the American Post-Impressionist movement and contributing to the evolution of American Modernism. 'American Post-Impressionists: Maurice & Charles Prendergast' features over 100 works, including paintings, sculptures, frames, sketchbooks, photographs, letters and tools drawn from the permanent collection of the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Prendergast Archive & Study Center, at  the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Mass., which houses the largest Prendergast collection in the world.

"American Post-Impressionists'' originates with Maurice’s early works of the 1890s, executed during his studies in Paris, and follows his return in 1894 to the United States. Represented are paintings produced in his subsequent travels to Italy, France, Maine, Massachusetts and beyond, demonstrating the artist’s interest in the avant-garde techniques of Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse, and his evolution toward a more abstracted depiction of figures and landscape, leading to his reputation as the 'First American Modernist.' Charles Prendergast’s works on view will include hand-carved frames and sculptures as well as his idiosyncratic paintings, which diverge from Maurice’s compositions in their pared-down, folk art aesthetic.

New Britain is another of those small New England cities that have good museums because local industrialists and other businesspeople well funded them in the great local wealth-creating times that started in the Industrial Revolution, which really got going in the region in the first part of the 19th Century.  It's still the home of Stanley Black & Decker, the tool company.

See pictures below.

Looking north from Walnut Hill Mansion in New Britain.

Layers of history from the '30s

"Eclipse'' (encaustic relief construction over wood and old letters), by Stephanie Roberts-Camello, in  her show "Encaustic Shrouds, Free Forms and Missing Pieces series,'' at the Cotuit Center for the Arts, Cotuit, Mass., through April 21.

She explains that her work is primarily of encaustic paint {which uses bee's wax} with which "many layers are built up and fused to each other over text or old family letters from the '30's and '40's during the Depression and the Dust Bowl days of Texas. These letters represent a very difficult time in our country's history -- a time that had to be endured. This work is about confronting and overcoming personal obstacles.'' The aim is "to look at the past in a new light and be free of anything holding one back.''

Ms. Roberts-Camello is a member of the New England Wax consortium.

Conn. also getting into offshore wind

New London is being eyed as a center for the offshore wind-power industry.

Via ecoRI News (ecri.org)

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) recently closed the bidding period of a request for proposals (RFP) for renewable-energy resources, including offshore wind. The RFP, which closed April 2, allowed bidders to propose up to the maximum amount of offshore wind generation allowed under law: 3 percent of load or about 250 megawatts.

“Offshore wind is a critical technology for states to meet their clean energy and greenhouse gas reduction requirements,” said Emily Lewis, a policy analyst at Acadia Center. “The region needs rapid deployment of offshore wind, and Connecticut’s RFP shows that the state wants to participate in growing the market for this clean energy resource.”

While DEEP hasn’t yet published the details of the submitted proposals, any selected offshore wind project will likely fulfill Connecticut’s legal limit for offshore wind. The Connecticut General Assembly will need to take action to continue growing offshore wind.

“With aggressive commitments from Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, the emerging offshore wind industry will bring thousands of highly paid, skilled jobs to the Northeast in the coming years," said John Humphries, organizer for the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs. "Connecticut has taken a modest initial step with this procurement process, but the good news is that New London's port is well positioned to become a regional hub of activity to support offshore wind projects up and down the coast.”

Recent studies have shown that offshore wind development could create as many as 36,000 jobs in the Northeast region, but significant long-term commitments from Connecticut and other states are needed to maximize this economic development potential throughout the offshore wind supply chain.

“We have the skilled people to make this happen. The building trades workforce of Eastern Connecticut is eager to do whatever is needed to support this growing industry,” said Keith Brothers, president of the New London-Norwich Building and Construction Trades Council.

Scott Bates, chairman of the Connecticut Port Authority, said, “Wind energy has the potential to help power Connecticut’s maritime economy. This is an industry that is custom designed to leverage our deepwater ports. Connecticut is uniquely positioned geographically and logistically to support development of offshore wind projects from southern New England to the Mid-Atlantic states.

“Besides our obvious strategic location at the exact center of the region most likely to support offshore wind, New London also happens to be the only port between Boston and Norfolk with no height restrictions (no bridges) in the main channel.”

Gee, it's not all that bad....

"New Hampshire has always been cheap, mean, rural, small-minded, and reactionary. It's one of the few states in the nation with neither a sales tax nor an income tax. Social services are totally inadequate there, it ranks at the bottom in state aid to education--the state is literally shaped like a dunce cap--and its medical assistance program is virtually nonexistent. Expecting aid for the poor there is like looking for an egg under a basilisk.... The state encourages skinflints, cheapskates, shut wallets, and pinched little joykillers who move there as a tax refuge to save money.''

-- Alexander Theroux, novelist and poet (who grew up in Massachusetts)

Editor's note: Mr. Theroux presents some entertaining cliches. But New Hampshire does very well in some indices, including education, where it has long be marked as among the top five states.