RichardHowe.com – Voices from Lowell & Beyond

Will Tuesday’s debate change the race? by Marjorie Arons Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons Barron’s own blog.

Tuesday night’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President (and convicted felon) Donald Trump put a smile on the face of anyone who has ever felt degraded or dismissed as weak, inconsequential or otherwise put down by a bully. Harris was “presidential.” Not only did she stand up to Trump verbally, but she used her body language and facial gestures to register other forms of disapproval and diminish his stature. She got under his skin, artfully baiting him, teasing out the former President’s worst enemy, himself. Even a Fox commentator called his performance “a train wreck.”

He ranted. He raved. He lied. When he had legitimate policy challenges to make against Harris, he couldn’t resist defaulting to the hordes of Haitian immigrants, mentally deranged, criminals, who, he falsely and ludicrously claimed, were taking American jobs, voting in our elections, using up our health care and, in Springfield, Ohio, cooking and eating the pet cats and dogs of local citizens. Flailing further, he accused Democrats of killing babies after they were born and doing transgender operations in schools and prisons. ABC Moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis didn’t press hard with follow-up and didn’t do a lot of fact-checking, but they did work at keeping the guardrails in place around Trump’s most outlandish lunacy.

Harris took charge from the outset, striding boldly toward him and extending her hand for the ultimate germophobe to shake. When he said she was unfit to be Commander-in-Chief, she let it be known that he was weak on foreign policy, that he admires dictators, and that they, in turn, can manipulate him with flattery and favors. She was superb in her defense of Ukraine and the global fight for democracy, in which scores of other nations look to the United States for leadership.

Her defense of reproductive freedom, the restoration of Roe v. Wade, the protection of fertility treatments and contraception, – in short, the need to keep the government and Donald Trump out of the doctor’s examining room – was impassioned and powerfully effective. He muddled about, failing to say whether he would or would not sign a federal ban on abortion.

In one debate you can’t get to every issue, but I would have liked them to talk about Artificial Intelligence as well as artificial insemination. No one asked them about the federal debt and deficit, and, on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, no one discussed the palpable risks to our homeland from international and domestic terrorism.

Even among those who think Harris won the debate, a majority still think Trump would do better on the economy and immigration. She was far more effective on economic policy than she had been previously, but, in laying out her plan, she sidestepped Trump’s question of why such steps were not taken in the last 3 1/2 years.

Trump’s repeated attempts to use the Biden/Harris administration’s failures on border security were thwarted by Harris’s attacking Trump’s big-footing Congressional Republicans to halt the bipartisan border bill to ensure he could have it as a campaign issue. Why did you do that, she asked him. He didn’t answer, and the moderators didn’t press for one. Nor was she pressed about Biden’s failure to act aggressively on the border until the last year of his administration.

Harris never conceded the tragic mess that was the departure from Afghanistan under the Biden administration. The moderators didn’t push her. She focused on the deal that Trump had made with the Taliban that undermined the Afghan government. She skillfully bridged to how he invited Taliban terrorists to the hallowed grounds of Camp David, and reminded viewers how frequently Trump has disparaged the military.

To her supporters and even to many critics, Harris’s debate performance showed she has the intellect, poise, experience and stature to do the job. She prepared hard for this event and was extraordinarily well coached, but I feel that some of the pivotal “undecideds” may still see her as inauthentic and unrelatable.

In addressing her changed positions from 2019, she missed an opportunity to show herself as someone who can grow, whose fundamental values are firm but whose approaches to specific issues can evolve as she learns new things – in contrast to Trump, whose values are all negotiable based on self-aggrandizement.

We won’t know what kind of bounce Harris will get from the debate for several days, but it’s sobering to remember that voter views are so fixed that neither did Biden drop significantly after his disastrous debate performance nor did Trump get any real bounce after the assassination attempt.

And remember, in 2016 Hillary Clinton debated Donald Trump three times. She was widely regarded to have won all three debates. She won the popular vote, but she lost the Presidency. The Constitutionally mandated electoral system favors the Republicans. The next 55 days could feel like a very long time.

Lowell Politics: Sept 15, 2024

The Lowell City Council met last Tuesday. The end of the agenda showed an executive session “to consider and discuss ongoing negotiations relative to Lupoli Companies LLC, public discussion of which could have a detrimental effect on the city’s position.” This would be the second executive session within a month on this topic, although the last one had a couple of councilors absent so perhaps this was a do over.

A related item was on the same agenda: “Informational presentation by Lupoli Company LLC regarding Hamilton Canal.” This turned out to be a rehash of the same Lupoli presentation to a council subcommittee earlier this year so with nothing new to report, I’ll wait until whatever is being discussed in executive session bursts into the open to discuss this further.

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In response to a motion by Councilor John Descoteaux about the failure to initially count 705 mail-in ballots in the September 3, 2024, state primary election, the city’s new Director of Elections Will Rosenberry appeared before the council to offer an explanation and answer questions.

By way of background, you might recall that at the July 23, 2024, council meeting, Rosenberry’s soon-to-retire predecessor, Greg Pappas, appeared before the council to answer questions about the election office’s ability to administer a potential special election to fill the council seat that John Leahy would soon vacate. Pappas issued a lengthy rant about all the challenges and pit falls of mail-in ballots. At the time, I took it as an effort to provide political cover to councilors who wanted to appoint Corey Belanger to the seat by council vote rather than leave it to the residents in a special election. But Pappas’s outburst had the added effect of sowing doubt about the efficacy and accuracy of mail-in voting. (See my July 28, 2024, newsletter for a report on that council meeting.)

Sure enough, on September 4, 2024, the day after the primary election, the city announced that 705 mail-in ballots that had been properly cast for the September 3, 2024, election had not been counted. Fortunately, the two contested races on the ballot that day would not be affected by the uncounted votes since (1) the uncounted votes were all from outside the 18th Middlesex State Representative district. and (2) the margin of victory in Northern Middlesex Register of Deeds race far exceeded the number of uncounted ballots.

Nevertheless, this was a deeply disturbing incident. In his remarks to councilors, Rosenberry calmly explained what happened, took responsibility for it, and highlighted the new procedures he has implemented to ensure something similar does not happen again.

For those unfamiliar with mail-in voting, here’s how it works. A voter who has requested a mail-in ballot is sent one by the city. It arrives in a large white envelope. Inside that envelope, is a light brown envelope, the ballot, and a sheet of instruction. The voter marks their ballot by filling in the familiar ovals alongside their preferred candidates, inserts the ballot into the brown envelope, seals it, and signs the brown envelope in the place indicated (the brown envelope typically contains a white sticker with the voter’s name, address, and ward/precinct number on it). The voter either puts the brown envelope into the mail (it is already addressed to the election office and has postage prepaid) or drops it at the ballot drop off box at City Hall.

At the election office, election clerks collect the incoming brown envelopes and enter the names on each of them into the statewide central voter registry, a massive database maintained by Secretary of the Commonwealth Bill Galvin’s office. This would change the status of each voter’s record in that database from “pending” to “accepted.” The SOC has a handy “track my ballot” page on its website that allows you to check the status of your ballot based on this kind of input.

For example, when I check the status of my ballot, it reports the 11/5/2024 State Election ballot is “pending” which means they received my application for a mail-in ballot but have not yet sent the ballot to me. My entry for the 9/3/2024 state primary says the ballot was mailed to me on 7/30/2024, it was received back from me on 8/7/2024, and its status was “accepted” which means “submitted to be counted.” I assume that when my brown envelope arrived at the Election Office on August 7, a clerk entered that information into the central voter registry database and my ballot status shifted to “accepted.”

Rosenberry further explained that the election office received 4000 brown envelopes in this manner. At some point, they performed “advance processing” of these ballots. This consisted of verifying that the information from the brown envelope had been accurately entered in the database, then the brown envelopes were opened, and the ballots were removed and separated from the envelopes. This separation is to ensure the confidentiality of each person’s voting choices. The now anonymous, already cast ballots were unfolded, flattened, organized by ward and precinct, and placed in plastic containers which were then secured with tamper-evident seals. These containers were then placed in the Election Office’s vault to await counting on election day. Ballots received up until August 27, 2024, were handled in this manner.

The plan for election day was to establish a “central tabulation facility” at City Hall where election office employees would feed the already pre-processed mail-in ballots through an automated counting machine so the votes cast on these ballots would be tabulated and then added to the vote totals calculated at the various polling locations once the polls had closed.

But as that great philosopher Mike Tyson once said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” The “punch on the face” for the election office was a malfunctioning ballot counting machine at one of the polling places. That diverted the attention of key people from the “central tabulation facility” to the remote precinct and, while the wayward machine was eventually fixed, it threw off the timetable at City Hall and the counting of mail-in ballots fell behind schedule.

Out at the polling locations, election workers continued to service in-person voters until 8 pm when the polls closed. Then, as I understand it, election workers print a paper receipt from each voting machine at the polling place, and tape it to the front door of the polling place so that the public can see the results from the vote counting machine. This gives interested parties an early glimpse at the election results at that precinct, but it also provides a verification method that would help disclose any tampering with the vote counting machines that might occur while in transit from the polling place to City Hall. Once the paper receipt is printed and displayed, the paper ballots are sealed in a container and then the container, the voting machine, and all peripheral equipment and records are transported to City Hall by an election worker with a police escort.

During the next hour or so, things get hectic in the basement of Lowell City Hall which is where the Election Office is located. Accountability is critical, so there is a complex ballet of checking in the incoming voting machines and ballots, and then a second paper receipt showing the results is obtained from each machine. These receipts are all tabulated, the separate counts from the mail-in ballots are added to the proper precinct counts, and the greatly anticipated unofficial election results are released to the public.

On the evening of September 3, however, the counting of the mail-in ballots at the “central tabulation facility” was still underway when the ballots and machines from the polling places arrived at City Hall. My sense is that the same people who were counting the mail-in ballots had responsibilities in receiving the materials from the polling places. The plan was for the mail-in counting to be completed long before the polling place material arrived, but the plan had a Mike Tyson episode.

Amid this, the container containing 705 mail-in ballots from one ward that was securely lodged in the vault was overlooked and never counted.  The morning after the election, as Rosenberry was completing the calculations needed for the official results to be submitted to the Secretary of the Commonwealth, he found that the numbers did not add up. A quick investigation revealed the untouched container of ballots. He notified the city solicitor and the Secretary’s office which directed him to hold a public count of those additional ballots on Friday. That was done without incident, and the city’s official numbers were transmitted before the Saturday deadline.

Looking ahead, Rosenberry told councilors that for the upcoming general election, he will activate an “advanced tabulation facility” which will allow the election office to begin counting mail-in ballots on Friday, November 1, 2024. That will continue through the weekend so that all the mail-in ballots that have been received by the city prior to a certain date will be counted before election day arrives on Tuesday, November 5, 2024. This advanced counting is allowed by Massachusetts law and while those ballots will be counted ahead of time, those results will not be known until the polls close at 8pm on election night.

Besides freeing key personnel to react to unexpected events on election day rather than simultaneously counting mail-in ballots, this additional processing time will likely be needed just for the sheer number of votes expected to be cast by mail. Rosenberry explained that the city already has 8000 requests for mail-in ballots and expects to receive more. He expects to receive the actual ballots from the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s office no later than October 6, 2024, and the city will begin mailing them to voters right after that.

The last time I voted in person was February 25, 2020, for that year’s presidential primary and even then, I did not vote at the regular polling place but cast my ballot at Lowell City Hall during the “early voting” window. (For the record, I voted for Elizabeth Warren.) Ever since, I have voted by mail. At first, that was mostly because of the Covid pandemic, but I continue to vote by mail because (1) I find it convenient; and (2) I believe vote by mail has huge implications for voters, candidates, and election outcomes, and I’m doing everything I can to learn more about it.

I’ll share more of my thoughts on mail-in ballots and on elections in general in next week’s newsletter, so please check back for that.

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If you’re reading this early on Sunday morning, you still have time to get over to Lowell Cemetery for today’s Mausoleum and Portrait Tour. It begins at the Knapp Avenue entrance to the cemetery (77 Knapp Ave, right behind Shedd Park) and it starts at 10am but since it’s self-guided, you can begin later than that:

A mausoleum is an above ground building that contains one or more burial chambers. Mausoleums became popular in America from the 1890s to the 1920s, especially among wealthier people. Lowell Cemetery has nearly a dozen mausoleums, all with unique architectural and design characteristics. The doors of the mausoleums are always locked, except on the rare occasions when the cemetery allows visitors to look inside. To be clear, once inside the mausoleum, you will see the closed compartment in which the decedent’s casket is placed, not the casket or the decedent’s remains, however, what is visible inside is still fascinating to see.

In the past, my predecessor as tour guide, Catherine Goodwin, did a special mausoleum tour that was limited to 15 guests since the space inside each mausoleum is cramped. To allow for larger crowds to participate, we switched to the self-guided model where a volunteer guide will be at each of the mausoleums; visitors will be handed a map at the cemetery entrance and can then proceed at their own pace in their own order. Although you can start the tour at any time from10am on, the mausoleum doors will be locked at noon so plan your visit accordingly. As a bonus this year, the cemetery will display portraits of many of those buried in the mausoleums alongside their burial places.

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As I’ve mentioned previously, the regular guided tour of Lowell Cemetery this fall will occur on Saturday, October 5, 2024, and on Sunday, October 6, 2024, both beginning at 10am from the Knapp Ave entrance. This will be a traditional guided tour led by me. Even if you’ve been before, please consider returning this year since many of the sites and people I will talk about are new to my tours. The same content will be covered on both days.

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The 36th Annual Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Fall Festival will happen from October 10 through October 14, 2024. The full schedule of events is here, but there are two I want to single out for your consideration.

On Friday, October 11, 2024, at 11am, there will be a Kerouac-themed tour of St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Chelmsford led by Kerouac-scholar Kurt Phaneuf. I attended this tour last year and found it fascinating. Kurt did a masterful job of connecting real life people from Lowell, some of whom I knew while they were alive, with the corresponding characters in Kerouac’s books. As a cemetery tour provider myself, having a knowledgeable guide lead us around this historic cemetery which was founded in 1894 was a bonus. St. Joseph’s Cemetery is located at 96 Riverneck Road in Chelmsford. Attendees can meet there or can take a dedicated bus that departs Lowell National Historical Park HQ at 246 Market Street at 11am with a suggested donation of $10.

On Saturday, October 12, 2024, at 11am at the Pollard Memorial Library Community Room, another Kerouac expert, Paul Marion, will discuss his new book Portraits Along the Way which is a collection of biographical sketches written by Paul from 1976 to the present. Many local and national figures are included in the collection, including many with strong Kerouac connections. The book will soon be available from Loom Press. Look for my review in the coming days on richardhowe.com.

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Speaking of richardhowe.com, there are a couple of posts from this past week that might be of interest:

The first is a reprint of a Steve O’Connor essay of his experience and observations on September 11, 2001.

The second recounts a recent trip to the Canine Emergency Room with our labradoodle. Our dog is fine, but the circumstances of the visit may be of interest, especially if you are a dog owner.

Canine ER Visit

Zoe

On the Sunday night of Labor Day weekend, we found ourselves in a veterinary emergency room with Zoe, our 3-year-old labradoodle. All is well but the circumstances of our visit are worth sharing, so consider this a public service announcement. Here’s what happened:

Sunday, September 1, 2024, was a beautiful late summer day in the midst of a holiday weekend. We had no plans, so we had a relaxed day around the house. As is our practice, we took Zoe for several walks around the neighborhood, the last being in midafternoon. After that, a neighborhood dog-friend visited and the two of them raced around the yard, wrestling and playing.

After an easy meal, we all settled on our front porch as the sun began dipping below the tree line. The humans were lost in their books and Zoe sprawled on the cool cement floor for a nap. Thirty minutes later, I glanced up and noticed a puddle underneath Zoe. We got her up and it was clear that she had had an accident, something that hadn’t happened since she was a young puppy.

I led Zoe into the backyard so we could clean up her and the porch. Although Zoe was on her feet, she seemed out of it mentally. And as she moved slowly around the yard, the only way to describe her was unsteady on her feet.

If Zoe was human, our diagnosis would have been a stroke, so we called our normal veterinarian. We knew they would be closed at that hour but also knew they had an emergency call back option. We left a message and soon the phone rang.

“What’s going on with your dog?”

We described the symptoms.

“Do you have any marijuana in the house?”

“No”

“Do you have any teenagers in the house?”

“No”

“We have an emergency veterinary center in Woburn you can take her to. Let me get her details.”

We spent a few minutes on the phone answering her questions but then she interrupted to say that the computerized dashboard for the Woburn facility had shifted from green to red as we talked, which meant they had filled up with critical patients and, unless our case was a life and death matter, they likely would turn us away when we arrived. The person on the phone said we could try calling some other facilities. I asked for phone numbers.

“There’s one in Lawrence” and she gave me that number. “And there’s one in Westford.”

“Did you say Weston or Westford?”

“Westford.”

“Give me that number.”

So, we called Westford Veterinary Emergency Referral Center which is open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week and is conveniently located (for us) at 11 Cornerstone Square in Westford.

I dialed the number and a human being at the facility picked up on the second ring. She asked me to describe the symptoms.

“Do you have any marijuana in the house?” she asked, then told us to come right in.

The drive on Route 495 was quick so we were there within 20 minutes. Zoe seemed better and had no further accidents. Normally she gets hyper excited in any new setting but as we walked into the vet center, she seemed uncharacteristically subdued.

We checked in and within minutes a veterinary technician came out and took Zoe into a treatment room. We waited about 30 minutes, fascinated by the steady stream of patients coming and leaving (although one aged dog who was rushed in with trouble breathing sadly did not leave with her distraught owners).

But Zoe would be leaving with us. They brought us into a publicly accessible treatment room. A few minutes later, the door swung open, and a much more vigorous Zoe dragged the veterinarian holding the leash into the room with us.

The Vet explained that when she first examined Zoe, the dog’s pupils were dilated. That and the symptoms we described led the Vet to conclude that Zoe had ingested marijuana. She explained that since marijuana had been legalized, the substance is present everywhere, not only in people’s homes, but also on sidewalks and front lawns, tossed there by passersby. Zoe, who from the first day she came to us, has acted like one of those big sidewalk vacuum cleaners sometime seen on downtown sidewalks, picking up countless pieces of debris despite our best efforts to keep her from doing it.

The Vet said that Zoe’s symptoms were consistent with the ingestion of the remnants of a joint or an edible, adding that this Westford facility alone treats on average three dogs per day for the results of marijuana ingestion.

The Vet did add that there were other possible causes but given Zoe’s youth, good health, and the quick resolution of her symptoms, no further treatment other than observation at home was recommended.

The next day and every day since, Zoe has been fine, so the medical crisis was short-lived. We do scrutinize our walking path more closely, but Zoe’s ability to sniff out contraband is better than our ability to see it, so she still zaps up random items from the sidewalk from time to time.

I’m sharing this story to alert dog owners of the risk that stray marijuana fragments present to their pets, to let them know of the excellent, around the clock emergency care for pets available in Westford, and to urge any recreational users reading this to take care when disposing of the residue of their product.

Preparing for a pandemic (2009)

Preparing for a Pandemic

By Richard Howe (on September 3, 2009)

For many years at the registry of deeds I wrote daily blog entries on real estate matters. But doing that daily is a difficult chore so often I would write about other things, especially world events that somehow affected Lowell or the registry. Recently, I was scrolling through the archives of that blog and found this post from 15 years ago which seems remarkably prescient in light of subsequent events.

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As the days grow shorter and the temperatures grow colder, stories about a possible flu pandemic this winter have started to appear in the press with greater frequency.  While I am not overly concerned about the risk of a devastating epidemic, I do think it’s advisable to make some preparations.  Back in 1999 we prepared extensively for possible disruptions from Y2K.   When the year 2000 finally did arrive, we had no date-related problems which was due in large part to the extent of our preparations.  Additionally, our Y2K-inspired efforts at safeguarding our operations had the collateral benefit of improving the overall technological health of this office.  Similarly, I don’t think any effort expended on preparing for the possibility of a severe flu outbreak will be wasted.

I’ve spent some time researching ways to reduce the risk of exposure to flu in the workplace.  The recommendations are simple and based on common sense.  Here are some of them:

• Stay home if you are sick
• Wash your hands frequently with soap and water
• If you can’t wash your hands, use hand sanitizer
• Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue or cough into your upper sleeve
• Avoid shaking hands
• Keep frequently touched common surfaces such as telephones and computer equipment clean

Those are just a few of the recommendations.  We’ll soon be ordering tissues, hand sanitizer and sanitizing clothes for office equipment.

In 1918, the influenza pandemic came in two waves.  The first struck in March and was relatively mild, no different than other seasonal flu outbreaks.  But by August, the virus soon mutated into something deadly.  By the time it was over between 50 million and 100 million people around the world had died from it.  While medical science of today is light years ahead of that which existed in 1918, the flu is still a virus that is capable of rapidly mutating into something unknown and untreatable.  It’s important to be ready, just in case.

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Here’s some context for the above blog post:

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic on June 11, 2009. The pandemic was declared after early reports of influenza outbreaks in North America. The WHO declared the pandemic over in August 2010.

The 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic was the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century. The virus was a new strain of Influenza A virus subtype H1N1 that was first identified in April 2009. The virus was a result of a triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses, which further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus.

The 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic was notable for its rapid global spread, which was facilitated by the high degree of viral contagiousness and the unprecedented rates of passenger travel at the time.

The H1N1 flu strain from the pandemic became one of the strains that cause seasonal flu. The seasonal flu vaccine can now help protect against the H1N1 flu and other seasonal flu viruses.