21F Week 9. Reflections of a Street Doctor

FOCUS TALK: Mary Rose Muti, a WomenExplore participant.
Click here to play the focus talk (28 m)

MAIN LECTURE:

James O'Connell, MD, President, Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. O’Connell graduated summa cum laude from the University of Notre Dame in 1970 and received his master’s degree in theology from Cambridge University in 1972.  After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1982, he completed a residency in Internal Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In 1985, Dr. O'Connell began fulltime clinical work with homeless individuals as the founding physician of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, which now serves over 13,000 homeless persons each year in two hospital-based clinics (Boston Medical Center and MGH) and in more than 60 shelters and outreach sites in Boston.  With his colleagues, Dr. O’Connell established the nation’s first medical respite program for homeless persons in September, 1985, with 25 beds in the Lemuel Shattuck Shelter. This innovative program now provides acute and sub-acute, pre- and post-operative, and palliative and end-of-life care in the freestanding 104-bed Barbara McInnis House. Working with the MGH Laboratory of Computer Science, Dr. O’Connell designed and implemented the nation’s first computerized medical record for a homeless program in 1995.

From 1989 until 1996, Dr. O'Connell served as the National Program Director of the Homeless Families Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Dr. O’Connell is the editor of The Health Care of Homeless Persons: A Manual of Communicable Diseases and Common Problems in Shelters and on the Streets. His articles have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation, the American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Clinical Ethics, and several other medical journals.

Dr. O’Connell has been featured on ABC’s Nightline and in the feature-length documentary Give Me a Shot of Anything. He has received numerous awards, including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Award in 2012 and The Trustees’ Medal at the bicentennial celebration of MGH in 2011. Dr. O’Connell has collaborated with homeless programs in many cities in the USA and across the globe, including Los Angeles, London, and Sydney. Dr. O’Connell’s book Stories from the Shadows: Reflections of a Street Doctor was published in 2015 in celebration of BHCHP’s 30th anniversary. Dr. O’Connell  is president of BHCHP and an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

See also https://www.wbur.org/news/2012/11/27/dr-jim-oconnell  and Aug 28, 2018 — Blessings to Drs Jim O'Connell and Jill Roncarati on their wedding! Two great leaders in health care for the homeless.

Click here to play main lecture and discussion (1 hr 30 m)

21F Week 3. The Battle for Our Digital Rights

FOCUS TALK:

Susan Nulsen's professional interests are physics and language. She is very lucky to have been paid to work in subjects which interested her! After nine years of experimental solid state physics research she moved onto speech science research and somehow acquired a PhD in Computer Science on the way. After a detour into the study of welding as a research fellow in mechanical engineering and a period of unemployment following her move to this country she is now employed in astrophysics using the Pleiades supercomputer of NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division to model the merging of galaxies. (It is named after the Seven Sisters constellation, which is a loose cluster of hundreds of stars, just as the supercomputer is a cluster of hundreds of processors.)

Her hobbies are WomenExplore and painting. Except for her husband, her much loved family, including her 17 month old grandson she has never met, is now inaccessible in Australia.

                                    ********************

Hello.

I always avoid telling people that I have a PhD in Computer Science because it might give them the mistaken impression that I know any more about computers than they do. My PhD research was studying spoken language. Computers were merely the tool I used to that end. All the same I have a long history of playing with programming computers as a pastime – I wrote my first computer program in 1969 when I was in high school and we have had a family computer since 1983, although we weren't connected to the internet until the 90s when we had a dedicated phone line.

In this talk I feel that I am speaking for everyone.

Society has become evermore dependent on computers and networks to handle all of our data. Nowadays, except perhaps for a handwritten journal, most of our new data exists in digital format. Many people even keep their shopping lists on their phones. As computers became more common so did hackers, viruses and other malware.

It has become a battle between those trying to attack our computers to gain access to people's private data and those trying to keep the data safe. Passwords are one way to help maintain privacy. Initially I was taught not use dictionary words in my passwords and instead use a complex mixture of letters, numbers and special characters. This was because a hacker could scan through all the words in the dictionary to find a match to a password. Now that computers are much more powerful, we are taught that that is not good enough. We should use very long “pass phrases” which may include some numbers or other characters. In many cases we also need to back that up with “dual factor authentication”. For example, to fill out my time sheet, once I have logged in to a virtual private network, I need to sign in with a long password and then receive a notification on my phone to check my identity by facial recognition. I just have to confirm with one click that I am indeed the one trying to sign in. 

To get to the Pleiades supercomputer it is even more complicated. When I request access I sign in with a long “pass phrase”. Then I enter an eight digit pin number into an app on my phone and am given an eight digit token, only valid for 30 seconds at most, to enter into my computer. The fourth and final “password” is my NASA one. This must be changed every couple of months. A new password cannot be very similar to the previous one, and it cannot be identical to any of the previous twelve passwords.

Like most of you, I imagine, I have hundreds of passwords. Because I don't trust storing them in electronic format I have written then, in pencil so that I can change them, on a sheet of card. Unfortunately it has become rather full and I will need to make another one soon.

Since I started work at the Center for Astrophysics I have had to do an annual training course on Computer Security Awareness. This mainly warns us of the different ways bad actors can gain access to private digital information. Sad to say, I have encountered many of these ways in real life. 

In April last year I received an email, sent to my old email address which I no longer use, with one of my very old weak passwords as the subject heading. It was a blackmail attempt. The sender claimed to have complete access to my computer – which was where, they said, they had obtained the password – and to have made a pornographic recording of me through my computer camera. Fortunately I knew that the most pornographic thing they could have seen was me in my very staid nightgown, and that password was not anywhere on the computer. They wanted me to deposit a couple of thousand in bitcoin in the bitcoin account given or they would distribute the video to my contacts. 

I changed the password to something a bit stronger, covered my camera with a piece of post-it note when I wasn't using it, and otherwise ignored the email. In the next few days I received three more almost identical emails, with different bitcoin accounts, from three different people, and two more blank ones in the next couple of weeks. I don't know what those last two were trying to achieve – saying “I know your password” to prime me for something further? I have no idea where they all got the password and my email address from. Perhaps someone is selling a list of them with accompanying blackmail letters.

The next story involves my mother. She was living on a farm far from any cable so her internet connection was via satellite. She had some problems so she phoned her internet provider and eventually a serviceman came out and fixed them. All was well and good, until the next day when she received a phone call from another man who said that there were a few things that still needed to be fixed on her computer before her connection was fully operational. He guided her through installing some software requiring her name and phone number which she supplied. (he already had those, in any case.) It was when he made the mistake of asking her for her bank account details that my mother realized he was not who he claimed to be, and she ended the call and shut down her computer. A friend took the computer into town where the local computer repairman was able to remove a number of items of malware. So any harm was narrowly averted.

I belong to a Harvard Spouses group called HSSPA. One day I received an urgent email from one of the organizers of this group. She said she needed $200 worth of gift cards, asking me to purchase them immediately and email back the numbers on the cards. I got in touch with her via a Facebook message, since I didn't have her phone number to ask about this. Of course it was a scam and she was able to let others on her email address list know that was the case.

More recently I received a text message from Fedex on my phone. It warned me that a gift package was on its way to me and sent a link so that I could track the package. I was suspicious so I googled the text message and was taken to the Consumer Information site of the Federal Trade Commission (https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2020/02/text-message-about-your-fedex-package-really-scam) where this and other similar scams were described with Fedex and other delivery services, including even the US Postal Service. The advice is, if you think it might be legitimate contact the company using a website or phone number that you know is real. Otherwise you could just delete it. I have also noticed some similar emails apparently from Amazon in my spam folder. I have deleted all of those. I use gmail and I must say that I find it does quite a good, but not perfect, job of recognizing spam.

However I am not immune to malware. In this story I failed to do the right thing and infected my computer. I had been using Adobe Acrobat Reader for many years to read pdfs. When a pop-up appeared on my computer telling me I needed to update it I clicked on the button and downloaded … some malware. My computer then became almost unusable. In my usual fashion I googled what to do and found an Apple Support Community that recommended I scan my computer with some free software called EtreCheck (https://etrecheck.com). This produced a report identifying two groups of malware. I was able to delete these and rerun EtreCheck until my computer was clean. The EtreCheck reports are designed to provide the Support Communities with the information they need to solve your problem. Alternatively you could pay EtreSoft, the very small Canadian company which makes EtreCheck, $18 for an extension which will do the deleting for you. I have had no problem with my computer since. In a final twist, while I was writing this talk I discovered that VirusTotal.com, an anti-malware company recently bought by Google, claims that EtreCheck itself is infected with malware. It is impossible to know who can be trusted! 

More and more things are made to include computers these days from your car to your fridge. There is an arms race between malware and the rest of us who are all users of computers in one form or another. It is indeed a “battle for digital rights”.

So far all my examples are cases of malware where data about me, or my mother, was obtained illegally for the purpose of extorting money or obtaining further data that can be used to obtain money. However, frequently when you download a new app or an upgrade to your phone or your computer you are asked to supply a lot of information that is unnecessary for what you want. I recently had to supply my birthdate to Apple. It was a required field and the format was checked to ensure it was a valid date. If I needed to be over 18 or over 21 I could just as well ticked a box. Alternatively I could have supplied a fake date. I don't like lying, but I don't like handing out my information unnecessarily. This reminds me about my Facebook account. When I joined many years ago I gave a birthdate that would have made me a hundred years old at the time. Recently I realized that I was now well on my way to becoming the oldest person in the world, so I changed the birthdate in my Facebook profile to another fake date making me younger than my real age. No problem. Except that when I had finished I got a message saying that I was only allowed to change my age three times! You don't know where all the information you are coerced into supplying ultimately ends up.

A couple of days ago I was required to upgrade the operating system on my phone. Usually I just accept the license agreement without reading it because I have no option if I want to continue to use my phone. However, because of this talk I decided to read it through. I gave up after two hours. I was near the end and just scanned through the remainder. It is very dense and difficult to read. One thing that is clear is that I do not own any of the Apple software on my phone – I am only using it under license – I guess that it is a “license agreement” after all. I am only allowed to make one other copy as a backup. This seems to mean I could not save a map from the Apple Maps app in a file to use when I am not connected to the internet. In other words it limits the usefulness of the maps.

Some of the language like the sentence from the middle of a paragraph that reads: “Unpublished-rights reserved under the copyright laws of the United States.” just didn't make sense. This doesn't even look like a sentence to me. Maybe you could add the word “are” so that it reads “Unpublished-rights are reserved under the copyright laws of the United States.” I still don't know what it means but at least it looks like a sentence. At another place where it is talking about ID cards it says '…  presentment may vary by state or location”. “Presentment” didn't look like an English word to me. I was wrong: “A presentment is the act of presenting to an authority a formal statement of a matter to be dealt with” or it is “a formal presentation of information to a court, especially by a sworn jury, regarding an offense or other matter”. I would say that the word was meant to be “presentation”. These two cases, and I am sure much more of the agreement, look like the work of some lazy lawyers.

No company should be allowed to collect more information than they need to provide the service they are offering and they should not be able to use the necessary information for any other purpose. All people should be allowed to use digital devices without being spammed by advertising or scams trying to harvest their data and ultimately part them from their money.

The lockdowns and isolation covid required have highlighted the essential nature of access to high speed internet and phone service and that it has become a human right. Just as we expect to be able to use the roads in our neighborhood without paying we should expect the internet to be free and safe.

I hope politicians at all levels from our local councillors on upwards will now be motivated to work towards this end. 

That is all I have to say for now. Thank you for listening.

                                    **********************

MAIN LECTURE:

Josephine Wolff is an associate professor of cybersecurity policy and has been associated with The Fletcher School at Tufts University since 2009. Her research interests include international Internet governance, cyber-insurance, security responsibilities and liability of online intermediaries, government-funded programs for cybersecurity education and workforce development, and the legal, political, and economic consequences of cybersecurity incidents. Her book "You'll See This Message When It Is Too Late: The Legal and Economic Aftermath of Cybersecurity Breaches" was published by MIT Press in 2018. Her writing on cybersecurity has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Wired. Prior to joining Fletcher, she was an assistant professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at the New America Cybersecurity Initiative and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. She received received a Ph.D. in Engineering Systems and M.S. in Technology and Policy from MIT, and an A.B. in mathematics from Princeton. As a student, she also spent time at Microsoft, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Department of Defense.

Click here to play main lecture and discussion (1 hr 30 m)

21F Week 2. Recreating the Performing Arts: Transcending the Pandemic

23rd September 2021: Series Title: Inspiring Hope and Change: Making a Difference Now

Our spring series asked us to face our world in upheaval. This series is conceived to reveal and share some hopeful/good-news/difference-making stories about how representative speakers from several different areas of local and global concern, have been, and still are, facing all the huge pandemic, cultural, and political changes currently taking place here and throughout the world. Today's forum, consisting of a panel speaker with a theater company and another with a music program, will tell us about what creative things they and their groups have done, and are doing, to continue to bring their particular gifts to us culturally starved people.
My assignment is to tell you how these deprivations have been affecting my life. What I have had to struggle with for the past 18 months and how I feel now.

Theater.
I have always loved theater: to experience, occasionally to perform, to support. I usher for several theaters in Providence, which gives me the pleasure of seeing a play at least once, and often twice - or even thrice! I participated in high school drama and later on in my adult life ventured into community theater to play Aunt Abby in “Arsenic and Old Lace”. I auditioned for the namesake part of Aunt Martha, but was told by the director that I was perfectly suited to play Aunt Abby, and that she would change what character descriptions that didn’t fit me! ... What a thrill it was to have a woman in the grocery store come up to me during the run to ask if I was the Aunt Abby actress!

Music.
*I grew up in a classical-music-loving home. I sang in church choirs in elementary school, and in an a cappella choir in high school. One of the perks for the latter group was each year taking the train in to NYC to go to an opera. I enjoyed those expeditions, but did not develop into an enthusiastic opera fan! For many years, as an adult, I enjoyed singing in church choirs.
*What I still love best is classical music and I try to attend as many of my local philharmonic and chamber music concerts as possible.
*And I continue to sing in choral groups - in the 100 voice Providence Singers to which I have belonged for over 40 years - and to a much smaller hospice choir which sings in groups of 3-5 at the bedsides of persons who are gravely ill and near death.

ALL active participation in the above was abruptly removed from my life in mid March 2020, thanks to Covid-19!
*Later in that same month my husband died of heart failure, both physical and emotional. I had been managing his care and visiting him almost daily in the nursing home for three years.
*The travel plans I’d been looking forward to in my new life as a single person were now completely unavailable to me. I hope I will not follow in the same path as my mother, who once told me she was looking forward to being a “Merry Widow” - and sadly was unable to be.
***********************

In the words of a friend, I had lost my scaffolding! My cultural ... and care giving ... and travel-anticipating selves had been cut out from under me. I had huge holes in my life and I struggled to find out just who I was without those selves. I was alone in my home, no one could come in to grieve with me or give me a much needed hug. There could be no formal closure to my husband’s life and our long marriage.
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The first thing that helped me rebuild my identity was starting to walk with a friend every day, usually first thing in the morning. The commitment to walk at a specific time gave me a new structural start to my days. I had to get out of bed, get dressed, go outdoors ——— to be somewhere, with a real live someone.
*Walking with a friend or family member allowed me to physically be with another human being.
*Walking gave me exercise - two to three miles each day. I lost some weight and felt healthier.
*Walking gave me someone to share with.
*Walking intensified my love of the outdoors and the large and small elements of the changing seasons.

My favorite place to walk is in Swan Point Cemetery, a spectacular near by garden cemetery. It is quiet, safe, beautiful, calming and sacred.

I can visit my husband each day. His ashes are scattered in the Memorial Grove, and mine will be when the time comes. Speaking of which, a small story. The first time my 22 year old granddaughter came to “visit” her beloved Papaga, she took one look at the names on the ledger stone, and yelped - Grammy, why is your name there when you are dead yet? I explained that if we had wanted our names to be together, both of us had to be “enrolled” at the same time and that hopefully it would be a long time before my death date would need to be inscribed.
****************************

What also hugely helped me find me was Zoom!
* I recovered much of my culture loving self as I found a multitude of virtual possibilities to experience many many hours of theater, including Trinity Rep’s Christmas Carol, Alvin Ailey dancing, concerts by Windsync (a favorite wind ensemble), myriad home concerts and mini theater presentations, virtual choral performances, and much much more. I could have “live” dinner music every night!
* My daughter gave me a subscription to Netflix and I was able to experience “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, “Hamilton” and “In the Heights”.
*I have taken some on line classes. My book club took to zoom. My church went on line, as did WomenExplore.
*The Providence Singers had an entire season of virtual Tuesday night rehearsals, highlighted by the creation of four recordings. Singing alone in my dining room was not a very satisfying exercise, but the point was to keep the Singers going until we could return to gathering in person.
*Grace Note Singers has continued to meet weekly on zoom to share our thoughts and lives, which is deepening our personal relationships, and will enhance our closeness when we return to bedside singing.
*I and my four daughters (two from each parent) now have regular catch up zoom meetings. On the anniversary of my husband’s death, one of them rejoiced that this coming together, precipitated by his loss, was a big silver lining in our lives! .... Between these zooms and a very active group text thread we are practicing making connections. We communicate more now and are closer to each other than ever before.
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Zoom free happinesses.
*Most of my friends and all of my fellow singers became vaccinated as soon as possible, so we have had some backyard sings, some restaurant trips, a few summer chamber music concerts. My first restaurant outing, outdoors of course, began with careful, joyful hugs, and included a celebratory bottle of wine, with the waitstaff sharing in our happiness.
*Most of my family members are vaccinated, and just two days ago I returned from a wonderful two week vacation at the beach with my local daughter and her family. On a down side, four family members are not yet vaccinated, for various reasons, and it is a source of great sadness that we cannot yet ALL be together.
*The Providence Singers has resumed in person Tuesday night rehearsals - with mandatory proof of vaccination, masks, distanced seating, and strict adherence to the CDC rules and recommendations. We have a full season planned, and will perform masked if necessary.
*Most of our local theaters and instrumental ensembles have returned, or will return, to full indoor seasons and I am greatly looking forward to them.
*My church (which is also Patrick’s) is meeting in person, and hopefully will be able to allow congregational singing in the near future.
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My scaffolding is being rebuilt, slowly and satisfyingly, in both familiar and new forms.
And I am a changed person.
One who will continue to walk every day for as long as I am able.
One with an enhanced appreciation for the beautiful, unchanging, sustaining, natural environment in which I am fortunate to live.
One who is ever more grateful for rewarding family and friend relationships.
One who is learning how to let herself have more fun, while letting go of some perceivedly necessary chores.
One who is learning to enjoy being older!
And who cherishes her life in its full range, from the smallest minutenesses to the grandest occasions.

Following her focus talk, Martha Nielsen lead a panel discussion with:

Patrick Aiken,
Organist and Choir Director, Central Congregational Church, Providence, RI  

Josh Short,
Artistic Director, The Wilbury Theatre Group, Providence, RI

Click here to play panel talks and discussion (1 hr 27 m).

21F Week1. Change: The Pleasure and Horror of It

Week 1 Change: The Pleasure and Horror of It 16h September 2021

Main lecture:  Ross Ellenhorn

Ross Ellenhorn, sociologist, social worker and psychotherapist, is the author of How We Change (and Ten Reasons Why We Don't) (HarperCollins, 2020)

Click here to play main lecture and discussion (1 hr 13 m).

Spring 2021: Week 10 Pandemic: Our Stories of Resilience and Healing

—A Story Quilt

Barb:

HOW I AM CHANGING WITH THE PANDEMIC

     It has taken a pandemic for me to find my voice.  Ordinarily, I just go along to get along, rarely taking a stand, and that has certainly been true in my 52-year marriage, but the COVID threat changed that.  My husband, Larry, has had this part-time job where he takes older clients who can no longer drive to their doctors’ appointments.  It has been good for him because it allows him to see up close and personal how folks fight to stay independent as they age.

     He had become “the new best friend” of Mary, one of these clients, who had him take her grocery shopping after her doctors’ appointments.  They were both diabetic and were sharing their shopping finds.  In March of 2020, just as we were all trying to get our heads around what this COVID virus meant, hubby got a call from his agency asking him to sign on to take Mary to dialysis three times a week, which immediately got my attention.  I felt in my gut that this was a threat to our safety.  I knew it was important that Mary go for her dialysis, but I was determined that my husband wasn’t going to take her.  Communications in our household has never been our strong suite.  I told him how I felt, and I didn’t think he was processing the information.  That was when I said I would protect both of us as best I could from COVID, and if he wasn’t going to allow me to protect him, then I would do everything necessary to protect myself.  I said if he took this assignment, he wasn’t welcome back in our house.  I knew at that point that COVID had been brutal on an older population whose health was compromised.  The idea of his being in a dialysis facility three times a week for hours at a time was risky, not only to him, but to me.

     At that point, I was running on sheer adrenalin.  I called Frank, the former owner of the company hubby worked for to get his take.  When Frank retired, he held onto the van and had been giving rides to clients who needed a wheelchair.  Hubby had been doing some work for him as well until we understood he was an independent contractor and was responsible for insuring himself.  No insurance company would cover us for that arrangement.  Frank said he wasn’t running the service at that time, at which point I took a deep breath and called Larry’s current employer and told them they weren’t following CDC guidelines putting someone Larry’s age in a risky environment where COVID could be contacted.  They assured me it would be fine.  I was sure they were delighted that they had found someone for the job so that was one more thing they could check off their “to do” list.  I advised them to check with their corporate counsel, because I believed they would advise them that they had a liability issue.  That got their attention.  When they got back to me, they said they would find someone else to take Mary to her dialysis.  I knew I had overstepped what I would ever consider doing under normal conditions, but I didn’t feel these were normal conditions.  I felt that our health, safety and our well-being were on the line.  Mary later got in touch with Larry.  The gal at the agency had told her that we had moved out of the area.  Larry wasn’t sure what the mix up was, but I heard him say that I had him on a very short leash….  

     Since that exchange, everything in our relationship seems to have changed for the better.  Our communications have improved.  We are paying more attention to how each other feels.  We are enjoying the time we spend together.  At least once a day we meet on the deck to take a break and play with the dog.  In the middle of a pandemic, life is good!

                                               ________________

Susan:                                         Sadness

I was looking forward to 2020. It was going to be a very special year for me. Usually we got to visit our families only once a year, at Christmas time, which, in Australia, is synonymous with the summer holidays. However 2020 would be different. I had three trips planned.

First of all, our daughter was due to give birth to our first (and only) grandchild in April. She herself was born in England, far from any other family, and I promised myself that I would be with her to help in those first difficult weeks when her turn came. Now she and her husband are living in South Australia far from any relatives or close friends. I had my suitcase packed in our spare room ready to go when the time came.

Covid came first. We were sent to do our work from home where everything took much longer. Australia shut down. I reluctantly unpacked my bag and instead stocked the spare room with everything that a covid patient might need. We bought a digital thermometer and an oximeter. I was absolutely certain that at least one of us, and probably both would get the virus.

And by summer, I expected, we would be back at work with covid a distant memory.

I had found it extremely hard to break my promise and not be able to be there after Ambrose had been born. Still I expected to be able to make the second trip I had planned which was to attend my mother's ninetieth birthday celebration in October. I had made a special trip ten years earlier for her eightieth. October came and went. Then it became clear that we would not even be able to make our regular Christmas visit.

Each Australian state is only accepting a limited number of people on repatriation flights. For example, Western Australia only takes in 512 a week, set by the number of beds available in quarantine. The flights are very expensive (e.g. cheapest US$6,119 per person), as is the two weeks' quarantine (AU$2520 or $3360/couple). And now it appears that it will be another 18 months before we can be with our families. 

A year or more seems to have gone by in a flash. It's as if there has been a pleat in time. Time has folded back on itself so we have jumped straight from 2019 to the present.

How did I get through this time?

Firstly I had the companionship of my husband, the person I would have chosen to be with. He helps me get through those really low times. He takes me out for an hour's walk each day, rain, snow or shine.

Skype had already been our way of keeping in touch with both our children. Now we were able to watch Ambrose grow from a helpless newborn to a toddler with a big smile, climbing up on everything, waving to us and getting frustrated when things don't go the way he wants. This contrasts to the time when Alix had been born in England and phone calls were a pound a minute with rent at eleven pounds a week. So a week's rent would give us an eleven minute call. Those calls were few and far between. Now I use Facetime to talk to my mother and sister. The internet has been essential. I started WomenExplore on Zoom and I am now running my art group on Zoom too. 

I should also mention the absolutely amazing work done by multitudes of people around the world coming together to create numbers of vaccines in record time. I would not have believed that my husband and I could have been fully vaccinated by now. Vaccines provide the hope that covid will finally be overcome.

People have been kind, such as the friend who gave us a packet of surgical masks at the beginning when we didn't know what to do.

But always in the background is the sadness caused by not being able to be there for my daughter, my mother, my son, and our sisters and other family members. 

                                               ________________

Leigh:

Resilience and Contentment during the Pandemic, March 2020 - May 20, 2021 

Leigh Sherrill - May 20, 2021

We, my husband and I, are very lucky. We have medical workers in our family and close by who helped us quarantine efficiently in mid-March of 2020, answering questions as time went on. We were able to get vaccinated very soon after the clinic opened up in our town. We have remained healthy during this period of time, although my husband continues to need to manage his Parkinson’s Disease.

Through the computer and IPad we have maintained contact with friends and family, the technology allowing me to play bridge online and write my weekly column for the local newspaper. Our library developed a system to phone in a book order with the book then packaged and placed on an outside bench for pickup. Our librarian is especially good at procuring books the collection does not have and suggesting books I might like. In addition we have shelves and shelves of books here at home that I can reread or read for the first time. A special treat has been the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters, of which we have 16 books that before the pandemic I had not read.

Although I am a fairly consistent housekeeper, neglected spaces received some more thorough attention such as the shed, the garage, and the attic with more work to do to clean out the attic. We are very poor at throwing things away as they carry so many memories, but even handling those items and allowing the memories to surge into our thoughts brings pleasure.

Most of all I relished the unscheduled existence. Yes, we have been retired for 20 years, but having always been involved and therefore busy people, once retired to Maine we jumped into life here with relish, never stopping to think that retirement might signal less action.

But the pandemic did give us that signal. And with less action I found more time to observe and enjoy. I love music and have a large collection of CD’s, but I rarely play them because I have come to enjoy the quiet more.

We have always, in retirement, had bird feeders, but checking them only for refill. Now we delight in watching many varieties of birds feed and fly and return for more.

Watching the seasons change and completing the concomitant chores has brought pleasure because time is flexible and plentiful. Especially this spring watching the humming birds return and the tulips and daffodils grow to flowering, and the trees bud and then burst into leaf has brought much joy.

An evening routine of watching local news and then international news, and then eating dinner and then watching two sessions of MASH, is a good combination for us, first bringing us up-to- date with the world and then nourishing our bodies and then relaxing with humor we appreciate.

In 60 years of marriage we have grown to know each other very well. We may prick or rub a tender spot now and then, but love and need for each other soon mends the wound. With two out of three of our offspring in Maine and not far away, we have backup forces with friends to back them up if necessary.

We have worked hard, but are also very lucky. We have had time to enjoy the rewards of our efforts. We have learned to slow down, take deep breaths, watch, and continue to learn to appreciate God’s creation and its gifts to us.

                                               ________________

Ival:

                                               ________________

From Crisis to Creating a New Normal

—Timothy Patrick McCarthy

Tim presented us with his speech for 2020 Class Day at the Harvard Kennedy School.

You can see it on Youtube here:

HKS Class Day 2020: Professor Tim McCarthy on "Precedented Bravery"

Harvard Kennedy School

34.8K subscribers

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In his Farewell Lecture, "Precedented Bravery," Professor Tim McCarthy argues for "enough of normal" and asks us all to become the "brave misfits" we are meant to be in this moment. Video by Johnathan Carr, American Repertory Theater. You can read more about Professor Tim McCarthy here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/timothy-patrick-mccarthy​

Climate Emergency: Truth and Action

 

On 15th April 2021 a panel made up of:

Seema Khan and Tami Kellogg from Citizens' Climate Lobby,
Deb Wild from Mothers Out Front,
Allen McGonagill, Extinction Rebellion

discussed the topic and answered questions from WomenExplore participants.

Below is the "Chat" from this meeting.

11:53 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: Join CCL: citizensclimatelobby.org 
Check out the bill: energyinnovationact.org
Call every month to Congress: cclusa.org/mcc
Write your congressperson: cclusa.org/write

11:53 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: Tami Kellogg - tami@citizensclimate.org
11:55 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: Seema Khan - khan.seema@gmail.com

12:02 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: Wonderful work!! You all get so much done.

12:11 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: I just love this! XR is so creative and unstoppable. Thank you for pushing hard.

12:12 Barb V: And it receives fun media coverage!

12:12 Allen (XR, he/him): Newburyport action: https://xrmass.org/action/emergency-everywhere-newburyport-part-2/ 
Earth Day Action: https://xrmass.org/action/earth-day-celebration-2021/ 
Orientation: https://xrmass.org/action/xr-orientation-4-26/

12:12 Allen (XR, he/him): My email - allen.mcgonagill@gmail.com

12:13 Deb Wild/Mothers Out Front: deborahwild@comcast.net or www.mothersoutfront.org

12:14 Allen (XR, he/him): Great to see both Deb and Seema's presentation! That work is so important in keeping our voice loud and well represented in political decisions :)

12:26 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: Here is one of our chapter speakers talking about the pandemic and climate change, and how we have denied the severity in both cases... 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTjw6OhYISk&t=51s
12:27 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: (David Cash, from U.Mass Boston)

12:43 Allen (XR, he/him): Berkeley has a great carbon calculator, so you can see what the biggest components of your carbon footprint are: https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/calculator

< p>12:46 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: John Oliver did a great bit about plastic recycling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E

12:49 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: "I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.” -E.B. White
12:50 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: To save it, or to savor it?

12:53 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: Deb's last comments about staying positive and turning despair into action embody resilience!

12:55 Allen (XR, he/him): Love that answer!

12:56 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: A woman doing this: https://myplasticfreelife.com/

12:56 Mary Ann Serra: Thank you to each of the speakers for the great information you’re giving us today and for the work you do

12:57 Allen (XR, he/him): Cleenland: https://www.cleenland.com/

13:00 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: I love a solution that demands financial/economic accountability. Magic.

13:07 Susan Hardy: Has anyone used Terracycle?
13:07 Susan Hardy: https://www.terracycle.com/en-US/
13:08 Allen (XR, he/him): I've used Terracycle. They are a good example of trying to aggregate otherwise unused waste streams.
13:09 Susan Hardy: Thank you Allen.

13:09 Allen (XR, he/him): A fun fact. BP popularized the term "Carbon Footprint" to shift the conversation towards individuals: https://mashable.com/feature/carbon-footprint-pr-campaign-sham/

13:11 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: Paula, express your frustration to your Congressperson and your Senators. Tell them you don't know what to do. Ask them to create legislation that will make what is healthy the cheaper thing.

13:13 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: cclusa.org/write

13:17 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: The EnROADS simulator is amazing. We use it to show Congress what the most effective actions are. It's POWERFUL.

13:17 Linda Legge: Ival - will you please send that chart to Martha to distribute to the rest of us?

13:20 Deb Wild/Mothers Out Front: a single countertop induction stove cooker is cheap - you can buy one at Best Buy for about $80 - I plan to buy one and try it out (I prefer cooking eggs on gas myself but I'm willing to try to convert)

13:23 Barb V: Just received a text telling me that since Citizens United, the fossil fuel companies have spent $907 million to influence American elections.  The text encouraged me to contact my legislatures.
13:23 Allen (XR, he/him): That's great Barb! Thank you for sharing that.
13:24 Mary Ann Serra: Astounding!

13:28 Tami Kellogg/Citizens' Climate Lobby: This has been one of the best groups I have had the privilege to speak with. You all asked really thoughtful and personally impactful questions. (((Thank you))) for having us.

13:28 Seema Khan - Citizens' Climate Lobby: I agree, it has been such a pleasure to join you all today~

13:29 Allen (XR, he/him): Really great to be with such wonderful climate organizers. And this group that had such thoughtful questions and responses. Very much appreciated the dialogue.

13:29 Linda Legge: Thanks to all the speakers - this was a wonderfully informative forum!

13:29 Deb Wild/Mothers Out Front: Many thanks to WomenExplore and my co-panelists for a great session. So honored to be in community with you. Feel free to let me know if you have follow up questions. We are here to help and encourage!

Spring 2021 week 3 focus: Grappling with Opposing Views

—Linda Legge

A relative newcomer to WomenExplore, Linda Legge has recently retired from a career in Human Resource Management and Civil Rights that spanned more than 30 years.  She held management positions in Employee Relations, Training and Development, Recruitment, Benefits, Affirmative Action and Diversity and Inclusion.  Linda holds a Masters’ Degree in Human Resource Management, is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources, and is also certified as an Executive Coach.

-So yes, I spent more than 30 years of my life in Human Resources and Civil Rights

-I was especially good at employee relations and was usually the one called on to

-listen to and deal with the concerns of employees

-mediate difficult disputes between co-workers

-train and coach supervisors on effective communication with staff

-You might think that this experience would have provided transferrable skills when grappling w/ opposing views

I certainly thought so, until I started interacting with family members on Facebook

-for the longest time, I had remained happily unplugged from the digital age

-for years, my only Facebook friends were my daughter (b/c I wanted to keep tabs on her) 

and my mother (b/c I couldn’t say no to a FB invitation from my mother)

-but when I moved to TN last summer, I decided to become more engaged on-line to keep connected w/ my family and friends

-I distinctly remember when I first started actively posting on FB, asking if there was any FB etiquette that I should be observing

-the wife of one of my cousins who happens to be very liberal said, “Don’t Discuss Politics.”

-I laughed at that, but I would have been wise to have headed her warning

Of course, at that point, we were well into the pandemic & the presidential election was only a few mnths away

-I was following the news on both issues very closely at that time

-and I was increasingly alarmed by the disinformation and hyperbole I saw being re-posted by my family

-when my cousin who has a heart condition was complaining that he could not get hydroxychloroquine, (remember that drug Trump was touting that scientists found had adverse health effects and did nothing to help with Covid-19?) I begged him not to take it and sent him scientific studies about its adverse health effects

-After a few rounds of him arguing with me, I told him that I was just sending him that info b/c I loved him and did not want him to come to any harm; he then sent me a smiley face emoji 

My mother was increasingly reposting things that I thought were so crazy, I truly thought she might be experiencing some brain dysfunction

-I had no idea what was influencing her or where she was coming up with her crazy ideas

-but I did notice that she seemed to be angry and agitated all the time (maybe it was just all the time she was speaking to me because I had opposing views)

-my father suggested family counseling, which in hindsight, might have been good but we never did it

My relatives were also reposting frightening Q-anon conspiracy theories and strong anti-BLM rhetoric

-For awhile I stayed silent, but I increasingly felt like my silence would be taken as complicity

-So I started posting my views and my experiences, such as my attendance at several peaceful BLM events and what I learned from them (but that was met with scorn and derision)

-I tried encouraging family members to fact-check their info before reposting (but they didn’t)

-I started fact-checking both the information I was posting and the info they were reposting (which were often opposing views), but they just demeaned my fact-checking sources

-Many times I thought of leaving FB or blocking some of my family members with the most egregious posts; but I really didn’t want to cut myself off from my family members and I DID want to HEAR them

-I thought I was “listening” to understand what they were saying and where they were coming from

-but I now know that I was listening more to try to effectively “preach” my version of “the facts” instead of listening to really understand their point of view

-I got nowhere with this strategy

-At best they accused me of is being a know-it-all elitist; 

-The worst things they said were that I joined a cult and was brainwashed and that the US would turn into a fully socialist country if Biden won the election

As the election neared I just became UNRELENTING in my fact-checking posts

-it was like a full-time job to me and & consumed much time

-I would agree with things I found to be true (and that did gain me some credibility among some w/opposing views)

  -I also posted lots of fact-checked info discrediting the opposing point of view

-that was often met with a dump of vitriolic personal attacks followed by accusations that I was “angry” 

-I would always answer that I had nothing but love for them which was/is true and then drop it

-Clearly, this was not working either

-so, sharing my personal experiences in opposition to their point of view was not working and discrediting their opposing point of view with my sources of information was not working

I was becoming worn out so I sought some solace by joining a FB grp called “Suburban Wmn for Kamala Harris”

-while I mostly enjoyed this group, I did try to keep the conversation on the issues 

-I did call out as inappropriate the negative personal attacks on Trump’s appearance or “mean Memes”

-I was on a new mission to try to keep those who shared my point of view above the negativity and engaged in civil discourse 

-I wanted us to win people over by our stance on issues, not by negative attacks of a personal nature on those with opposing views

-some agreed with me and also helped to try to curb the mean memes and negative rhetoric

-I must admit that I did find some consolation in interacting with like-minded people, even though I am a registered Republican

Also, even though I live in a very pro-Trump state/region (TN), I put up two “Republicans for Biden” signs

-I was a bit worried about vandalism, but my neighbors were respectful

-some neighbors commented on my sign, but comments were always focused on “Biden” and not the fact that the sign indicated that I was a “Republican”

  -however, I avoided any real conversation about the election or my views w/ my new neighbors

-on hindsight, that wasn’t very productive either (lost opportunity)

The list of things that did not work for me in grappling with opposing views was growing:

-sharing my personal experiences

-fact-checking to prove that my opinion was right

-avoiding discourse altogether

Finally, the election came and I was more than thrilled that it was finally over and that Biden had won

-Even though there was a flurry of disinformation spreading about the election being stolen, I largely remained silent except to sometimes comment on evidence presented to the courts and how they ruled

-I decided specifically not to comment on Biden or Trump at all so as not to rub salt in any wounds, especially when the GA victories gave the Democrats the slimmest majority

-my family largely went silent on politics and FB news was more civil and about family matters

-by that time, my mother had stopped speaking to me/ only my father would occasionally take my calls

-after the election, I think we all needed a break and I was happy to have one

Then we had the events of January 6^th at the Capitol

-again, I maintained my political posting silence

-I expected more silence on politics from my family, thinking they would be embarrassed by the events

-however, I was absolutely shocked at the FB post my cousin’s wife sent

My cousin - Shame on each and every one of you who are saying Trump should be arrested for inciting domestic terrorism today!!! Where the Hell were all of you when cities were being burned to the ground and no one was held responsible?!?! Hypocrites!!!! Cozying up to the New One World Order. Might as well get your ticket now for the microchip train. There's gonna be a long line. I'll kick back with my popcorn, and pistol and watch the show.

Me - We were condemning the violence every time it happened, and we cheered the peaceful protests for civil rights. But no leaders were advocating for violence the way President Trump has. It is reprehensible that the President of the US who has sworn to uphold the Constitution has so violated his oath of office. Shame on all who are defending him.

As I now read the response I wrote then, I am truly ashamed of myself. 

-I started off OK, but I know better than to use inflammatory words like “reprehensible” and “shame”.

-I knew I needed help grappling with opposing views in a more positive and productive way b/c my strategies clearly weren’t working

Thankfully, the WomenExplore group recommended “Braver Angels”, an organization dedicated to improving the civility of discourse in the US and helping people to truly understand and work with fellow citizens who have opposing views

-I attended several of their free seminars and decided to join to get access to even more

-although I made a larger contribution, anyone can join for a year for just $12 

-through the Braver Angel workshops I’ve attended, I have become keenly aware of my personal shortcomings in fostering constructive dialogue with those who hold views that are opposed to mine

-even though I had a wealth of skills from my background, the workshops have helped me to listen and understand better those with opposing views and to find constructive strategies for engaging in positive civil discourse 

I’m going to leave you with four L’s from Linda that have helped me to grapple with opposing views:

Listen – listen deeply to really understand the other person (don’t just listen to try to persuade the other person to your point of view)

Learn – keep an open mind and learn from others even if you don’t agree with their perspective; see if you can find any underlying common ground with them

Love – maintain a deep empathy and care for the person you are communicating with; think of the person as your friend/neighbor, not an adversary or enemy

Lead – take an active role in promoting civil discourse; demonstrate by your own actions your unwillingness to sink into meanness; work actively to end racism, injustice, hate and to model inclusivity of marginalized

I just want to end by saying that I am disheartened and scared by the extreme polarization of our country today. 

-The tone and tenor of civic discourse is at an all-time low

-Disinformation and angst seem to be at an all-time high

However, I am happy that we have David Ball from Braver Angels here today to speak on this topic.

I think it is crucial that we all build our skills at Grappling with Opposing Views and I think Braver Angels is one step in the right direction.