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With yesterday’s confirmation that two Lowell youngsters have Swine Flu, many are now questioning the process and timing of releasing such information.  While it’s indeed fortunate that neither child has attended school since being exposed to the virus during a family trip to Mexico, Lowell’s own WCAP radio yesterday broke the news that one child had played in a Little League baseball game at Shedd Park last week after being exposed to the virus but before becoming ill from it.  On WCAP this morning, they’re asking whether public health officials should have notified the parents of the other children who participated in that game of the possibility of exposure.

Here’s the dilemma as I see it: Someone who becomes ill is entitled to some privacy and should not be subjected to having a half-dozen TV trucks parked in front of their house as they convalesce from their illness.  But from everything I’ve heard about this virus, the anti-viral medications only work (or work most effectively) if they’re administered within 48 hours of the onset of symptoms.  Because the symptoms in the early stages (tiredness, fatigue, cough and fever) might be relatively mild, it’s quite possible that someone who is not in a heightened state of alert might disregard such symptoms for more than 48 hours and in doing so, pass out of the window in which the most effective treatments are available.

In retrospect, no one else got the virus so there was no harm done, but this type of situation will undoubtedly arise again, if not during this flu outbreak, then in some future situation.  Yesterday, the NPR program “Here and Now” addressed this question when it interviewed Martha Bergren, the Director of Research at the National Association of School Nurses.  Bergren said that federal privacy laws dealing with students (called FERPA) were eased considerably in the aftermath of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.  In that tragedy, a student who had a long history of mental illness (and who had received treatment for it) was still able to legally buy several guns which he then used to kill 32 people.  Despite the extensive documentation of the threat he posed, privacy laws prohibited those treating him from alerting anyone to his status and so there was nothing to prohibit anyone from selling him guns.  As Bergren put it in her interview, now, health care providers are permitted to make an immediate assessment and anytime they have reason to believe that a student is potentially harmful to himself or to others, the health care provider is permitted to convey such information to the proper authorities. 

Sounds like a common sense solution, but after years of training (and myth) surrounding FERPA’s privacy requirements, I suspect very few in the medical and educational fields are aware of this current interpretation of the law.

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When the Sunrise radio program on WUML, 91.5 FM, UMass Lowell, went off the air several months ago, Dick put out a call to Sunrise essayists to consider contributing to this blog. Steve O, for one, has come on board with short-short stories and commentary. I miss the regular morning essays on the radio. Following is an example of how we can re-purpose the words and music in the past essays by adding pictures — turning them in to short videos for this blog and YouTube. My son, Joe, took my essay “The Happiest Music I Know” and produced this video. Thanks to super-producer Bob Ellis for his tremendous work with the sound editing and music clips. The essay aired on June 27, 2006. If the “permissions” folks at Apple Corps in London catch this creative package, I hope they see it as “fair use” and welcome it in good spirit.

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For the final haiku of the month in our community haiku project, we go back to the old master, Matsuo Basho (1644-94). Thank you to all the writers who offered haiku of their own or favorites by others. We published haiku by more than 20 local contributors and showcased several classics from Japanese literature. We’ll do something else special for National Poetry Month next year. This haiku for April 30 looks ahead to the new month and the fullness of spring. Much has happened in the city this April while we carried on with our haiku project. The spirit of haiku is about awareness of the moment.

          . . .

To the sun’s path

The hollyhocks lean

In the May rains.

— Basho

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Here’s a YouTube video I created from last Sunday’s Walking Tour of Lowell’s Public Art:

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City Manager Bernie Lynch appeared live in-studio on WCAP this morning at 7 a.m.  The first topic raised was UML’s potential purchase of the Lowell Doubletree Hotel.  The city manager called it an “intriguing idea” that the university had been quietly exploring for months.  He is concerned about the potential revenue loss and has a meeting with UML Chancellor Marty Meehan tomorrow to discuss this and other issues.  Lynch did say that Meehan seems “amenable” to working out the various issues such as the city’s loss of property and hotel tax revenue and the parking issues raised by such a change in ownership.  The manager did emphasize that should the university purchase the hotel, it would be a private sale from one entity to another and that the city would not have a great deal (if any) of control over it.

Regarding the possible swine flu outbreak, the manager commended the Health Department, one of many governmental agencies that he said “fly under the radar until you need them.”  He also commented that the frequent calls we hear to “cut government” ignore the reality that many governmental functions such as public health, police, fire and snow removal are critical to public safety, but they also cost money to have them ready when needed.

As for the Spinners’ lease, he’s anxious to get the lease done and doesn’t think the parties are “that far apart” but even on issues where they are far apart, he still sees room for compromise.  He says he understands the concerns of those who are scrutinizing the proposed rent but he also asserted that the Spinners’ proposal is one of the most landlord-favorable in the league.  [Reading between the lines, Manager Lynch by no means made this sound like a done deal.  Although he still sounds optimistic that a deal will be finalized, there was enough of a tone of concern in his remarks to suggest that this thing could still fall apart].

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As we come to the close of National Poetry Month I bring you Ogden Nash.

Nash is another of my favorite poets because, well simply he had “fun” with words and their meaning. Ogden Nash was born in Rye, New York in 1902 and died at age 69 from Crohn’s disease. He is best known for bending, twisting and re-shaping the meaning and rhyming of words. Nash attended Harvard University, but dropped out in his first year. He started his work career writing Ads for the sides of street cars, an experience that influenced his later work. Nash is buried in North Hampton, New Hampshire.

Click on the picture below to hear Nash reading one of his most famous poems…The Purist, then scroll below from some of his more recognizable lines of poetry.

Do you think my mind is maturing late, or simply rotted early?

Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker.

Happiness is having a scratch for every itch.

I think that I shall never see a billboard lovely as a tree. Perhaps, unless the billboards fall, I’ll never see a tree at all.

If you don’t want to work you have to work to earn enough money so that you won’t have to work.

Middle age is when you’ve met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

Progress might have been alright once, but it has gone on too long.

To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.

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Well, I missed a day after all. Life gets in the way of poetry. The trick is to make poetry life. To catch up, here are two haiku from the Massachusetts Poetry Festival haiku project last fall:

          . . .

run forth with ideas

not breaking like the wave but

learning as the river

— Michael Gormley, Lowell

          . . .

many decades ago

immigrants from foreign lands

came to Lowell mills

— Blair Gracie Woodman

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As I drove past the Lowell Health Department on my way home from work last night, the sight of six Boston TV trucks parked there ready for their remote broadcasts suddenly transported the current swine flu scare from Mexico to Pine Street.  As I write this, there is no public report on whether the two Lowell students tested for the virus are indeed infected by it, so to as President Obama put it, “there is cause for concern and a heightened state of alert, but it’s not cause for alarm.”

Through the years, I’ve developed an interest in the history of public health.  Things we take for granted today – safe drinking water, regular trash collection, a reliable sewerage system – did not always exist.  As modern cities developed, the ways in which local government implemented such “modern conveniences” is a fascinating story.  The same is true for our public health system’s response to infectious disease. 

For as long as I can remember, my family has always attended the outdoor mass on Memorial Day at St Patrick’s Cemetery.  After the service, we travel through the cemetery to the graves of our relatives who are buried there.  Some fascinating information can be derived from the inscriptions on headstones.  For instance, one of my father’s relatives had been born in 1856 and died in 1956 – now there’s a person whose life transcended multiple eras.  But the headstone inscription that always interested me the most belonged to my mother’s side of the family.  Among the several names inscribed on the “Gorman” headstone were May and Susan, ages 3 and 1 at their passing.  An obituary from the November 27, 1906 newspaper tells the story and might explain my interest in public health: 

GORMAN – The many friends of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gorman will be pained to learn of their double bereavement in the loss of two children by death yesterday.  Susan, aged 1 year and 14 days, and May, aged three years, dying within a few hours of each other, after a brief illness at the home of their parents, 154 Cross Street.  Owing to the cause of death, diphtheria, the funeral took place this morning at 10 o’clock in charge of Undertakers J. F. O’Donnell & Sons.  Interment was in the Catholic cemetery.

When a flu virus that infects pigs makes the leap into a human and begins to spread it’s very dangerous.  The human immune system has never before dealt with the virus and may or may not be able to effectively fight back.  In 1918, when a similar virus made such a cross-species leap, the human immune system worked all too well.  The very young and the very old were largely spared from the fatal effects of that illness.  It was the healthiest and strongest in society who died in the largest numbers, because their powerful immune systems vigorously attacked the virus and in the process, swamped the victim’s lungs with fluid, essentially causing them to drown.  The drugs and medical treatment today are infinitely superior to what was available in 1918 and so is the knowledge of public health professionals whose response thus far appears to be prudent and reassuring.  We’re in the midst of tough fiscal times and anger-induced calls for cutbacks in government spending proliferate, but this current public health scare should remind everyone that government does indeed have an important role to play in keeping us safe and that’s got to be worth something. 

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Book Review, The Boston Globe

by Rob Gavin, April 28, 2009

(c) 2009 The New York Times Company

A CASE STUDY OF THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURING

If there’s one city that could be called the birthplace of New England’s innovation economy, it’s Springfield.

With the establishment of a federal armory in the late 18th century, Springfield became a center of precision manufacturing, attracting skilled workers and forward-thinking entrepreneurs. The tools and techniques they developed were diffused throughout New England, then adapted and advanced as the economy moved from textiles and shoes to computers, telecommunications, and biotechnology.

In “Metal Fatigue: American Bosch and the Demise of Metalworking in the Connecticut River Valley,” Robert Forrant recounts this proud history and the hard times that befell Springfield as forward-thinking entrepreneurs were replaced by shortsighted capitalists. Once described as an “industrial beehive,” Springfield saw its manufacturing base vanish, skilled workforce erode, and social fabric unravel as quick profits trumped investment in the plants, equipment, and workers who had made the city hum.

Forrant, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, tells this story through American Bosch, a machine tool maker established in Springfield in 1911 and shuttered in 1986 by the last of its owners, United Technologies Corp. of Hartford. It’s a familiar tale of disinvestment, deindustrialization, and despair that continues today in factory towns across the nation.

Forrant, however, brings a different perspective. Before he earned his doctorate in history, Forrant was a machinist and union official at American Bosch.

These experiences infuse what is a thorough history of metalworking in the Springfield area with a sense of personal loss and betrayal. Forrant’s admiration for the ingenious men on the shop floor comes through, as does his contempt for the moneymen who took control of the industry.

These corporate owners refused to see what Forrant saw: The true value of their companies came from the skills and know-how acquired by workers over generations. To corporations, labor simply became another commodity for which to seek the lowest cost. They slashed jobs, stopped modernizing plants, and ended worker-training programs. The shortsighted strategy not only destroyed American Bosch, Forrant argues, but much of the US machine tool industry.

Forrant tells the story well. The tone tends toward the academic, but the writing is clear, clean, and, for the most part, well paced. A few sections crammed with figures are dense and dry, but Forrant’s passion resurfaces.

His view, at times, seems a bit simplistic. He draws a sharp line between the good guys, workers and their unions, and the bad guys, greedy corporate owners. But the decline of traditional manufacturing is not so clear cut.

Even with enlightened owners, there still would be far fewer factory workers. The history of manufacturing is the drive to produce more with fewer workers - a drive that has resulted in better, cheaper, and more widely available goods and services.

This is not to diminish the pain Forrant and his friends experienced when they lost well-paying, satisfying jobs. Lives were upended, families pulled apart, neighborhoods destroyed. It’s a story told all too often. But it still breaks your heart.

Rob Gavin is a member of the Globe staff.  

© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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A week or so ago two ladies were at the end of my driveway as I was leaving. I assumed that they were proselytising for a religious, political or environmental cause or organization - they were too mature for selling Girl Scout cookies. Wrong! They and many other local folks have just completed training as Census workers. It seems early I know but they have a special assignment. The neighborhoods of Lowell and Tewksbury are being canvassed even today by these workers to verify - or not - the existence of homes and residential properties. Ten years is a long time and houses come off the rolls for many reasons - while new homes and neighborhoods have come on-line. Using a GPS technology along with traditional maps, pencils and paper, the roster for obtaining an accurate 2010 Census is being confirmed, updated, corrected and established. I’m told that the coming census will allow “short forms” for everyone. That simplicity should help make this the most accurate Census ever.

The Census is critical as it provides the foundation information for formulas that decide the allocation of Congressional seats, electoral votes and the distribution of government money, resources and programs. The United States Constitution mandates this decennial census. The enumeration of persons in this census includes actual counts of persons living in U.S. residential structures - citizens, non-citizen legal residents, non-citizen long-term visitors and illegal immigrants. The process is not without controversy and this cycle will certainly be no different.

Information about individuals is withheld until 72 years after the census completion but aggragate statistics are available immediately. Census records are mother’s milk to those doing genealogy and other family and local research. I have learned much about my family history and their relationships by studying the Census records - available even on-line through the National Archive and many libraries - including the Center for Lowell History and the Pollard Memorial Library.

The Secretary of the Commonwealth - William Galvin is the lead liason in Massachusetts when it comes to the U.S. Census. At a recent meeting he commented: “Working with outreach groups in Massachusetts a decade ago, we achieved a count that showed an increase from 1990 that was more than double predictions,” Secretary Galvin said. “It is vital that we have an even more complete count in 2010 and for this the work of the partnerships will be essential.”  In fact individuals as well as cities, towns, institutions and the state government are all part of this partnership. So watch for the census workers doing the prep work and think ahead as to how you and your group can make the census in Massachusetts the most accurate ever. Congressional seats may be lost - vital services to our citizens would be reduced - the Commonwealth could lose its fair share - if the Census fails to enumerate all its residents. More to come.

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