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orbemnews · 3 years

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What Can and Can’t Be Learned From a Doctor in China Who Pioneered Masks In late 1910, a deadly plague started spreading in the northeast reaches of China, reaching the large city of Harbin. Tens of thousands of people coughed up blood; their skin pruned and turned purple. They all died. This outbreak sent the Qing government into a tailspin: They didn’t know what illness was causing these deaths, let alone how to control it. So they brought in one of the best trained doctors in Asia at the time, Dr. Wu Lien-Teh. After performing autopsies, Dr. Wu found Yersini pestis, a bacterium similar to the one that had caused bubonic plague in the West. He recognized Manchuria’s plague as a respiratory disease and urged everyone, especially health care professionals and law enforcement, to wear masks. Chinese authorities, heeding his call, coupled masking with stringent lockdowns enforced by the police. Four months after the doctor was summoned, the plague ended. Although often overlooked in Western countries, Dr. Wu is recognized in world history as a pioneer of public health, helping to change the course of a respiratory disease spread by droplets that could have devastated China in the early 20th century, and perhaps spread far beyond its borders. While the Chinese of that era complied with these strategies, public health professionals in the United States and other Western countries have struggled to get people to listen to them during the Covid-19 pandemic. China, too, ran into challenges early on, but the country’s institutional memory from previous viral outbreaks helped turn the tide. And as many Americans abandon masking, push to restore normality in places where risks of infection remain high and hesitate to get vaccinated, some public health experts have looked to Dr. Wu’s success, seeking lessons on handling not only Covid, but also future epidemics. But some scholars who have studied Dr. Wu believe the wrong lesson is being drawn from his legacy: A single individual can’t save a nation. “We can’t always wait for historic figures,” said Alexandre White, a medical sociologist and historian at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Instead, he and other experts say countries like the United States need to reckon with their inequitable and fraught public health systems so they can better contend with health threats. Dr. Wu was born to Chinese immigrants on March 10, 1879, on Penang, an island off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia, as Ngoh Lean Tuck. (He later changed his name to Wu Lien-Teh, sometimes spelled Wu Liande) When he was 17, Dr. Wu won a scholarship to study at Emmanuel College in England and stayed to study medicine at St Mary’s Hospital in London. As part of his training, he studied infectious diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the Pasteur Institute in Paris. By 1903, when he returned to Malaysia, Dr. Wu was one of the earliest people of Chinese descent to graduate as a medical doctor from the West. In May 1908, Dr. Wu and his wife went to China, where he was appointed vice director of the Imperial Army College near Beijing, making him well-placed to investigate when people began dying from an unknown disease in Manchuria. Dr. Wu was entering a place where experts like him were in short supply and urgently needed. At the time, China was in political turmoil: Russia and Japan were vying for control over Manchuria and both saw the plague as an opportunity to advance their goals. Western countries at the time largely viewed China as “the sick man of the East,” a country overburdened by disease, opium addiction and an ineffective government. Historians who study China say the government accepted and internalized that label. But when Dr. Wu stepped in, he had the social and political clout to be a catalyst for change. Dr. Wu is often heralded as the “man behind the mask,” an inventor of using face coverings to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses. Much of this narrative was by his own design in his autobiography, said Marta Hanson, a historian of medicine also at Johns Hopkins. Previous iterations of the mask existed in other countries, and some Chinese were already donning Japanese-style respirators before Dr. Wu arrived in Harbin. What is true is that Dr. Wu introduced and encouraged an idea born in the West to the Chinese public. The mask he designed was based on ventilators from the Victorian era: padding layers of cotton and gauze, with strings so that the user could secure it to their head. The mask was cheap and easy to manufacture. In addition to masks, officials enforced a strict cordon sanitaire, another method that dates back at least to the 1800s when French officials sought to contain the spread of Yellow Fever. Travel was restricted, government officers were instructed to shoot anyone trying to escape, and police officers went door to door, looking for anyone who had died from plague. In an echo of some of these techniques last year during the fight against Covid, China strictly curtailed transportation around Wuhan, and people needed permission from authorities to leave their homes. The spring after the plague was brought under control in China, Dr. Wu hosted the International Plague Conference. Respirators and masks were a focal point of conversation, and many Western scholars believed that they could effectively prevent plague. While masks became a political flash point in the United States and elsewhere during the Spanish flu pandemic, the idea of using them persisted in China, and gauze masks became an important tool in the political agenda of the Nationalist Party when it took over in 1928. Public health officials recommended all citizens wear gauze masks in public spaces during outbreaks of meningitis or cholera. By then, masks became a symbol of hygienic modernity, contributing to the greater acceptance of mask-wearing in China today, Dr. Hanson said. In the early 21st century, the SARS epidemic once again drove home the necessity of masks and other public health interventions in China and other East Asian countries. In 1930, Dr. Wu was appointed to head a new national health organization. But after the Japanese invaded northern China in 1937, and his home in Shanghai was shelled, Dr. Wu sought refuge in his native Malaysia. He finished his career there as a family doctor, and died in 1960, at 80 years old. Medical historians and public health experts have a few theories to explain Dr. Wu’s success in persuading Chinese authorities to control the plague. A factor that likely helped Dr. Wu, medical historians say, is that he made masks affordable and accessible. A similar approach was used during the coronavirus pandemic in Hong Kong, which offered every resident a free, reusable mask and put kiosks in public to distribute them. Countries that have provided significant support to their citizens to comply with public health mandates during this pandemic have generally fared better than places that left the same measures up to individuals, Dr. White of Johns Hopkins said. And the more affordable and accessible public health measures are to adopt, the more likely they are to be adopted, said Kyle Legleiter, the senior director of policy advocacy at The Colorado Health Foundation. Another factor that might have contributed to Dr. Wu’s success in China would be the reverence residents and officials had for him as a figure of authority, Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. In some ways, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser on Covid to President Biden and a prominent public health figure since the 1980s, served in a role similar to the one Wu played in China, Dr. Huang said. But, his message perhaps didn’t always get through because Americans are more polarized in their political identities and beliefs. Dr. Legleiter added that public health messaging only penetrates if the public identifies with or trusts that figure of authority. “An individual person is a stand-in for a broader set of institutions or systems that they’re speaking on the behalf of,” Dr. Legleiter said. Those who lean conservative, for instance, may put Dr. Fauci and other scientists in the category of “the elites.” As such, they’re more likely to flout public health policies that such authority figures promote, and comply with proclamations from individuals they identify with the most. Others say that public health is intrinsically tied to the legitimacy of the state promoting it. At the turn of the 20th century, China was in distress, Dr. Hanson said. Dr. Wu helped bring China out of a tumultuous period, and the enforcement of public health measures gave the country more legitimacy. Similarly, because the current pandemic has laid bare shortcomings in the public health systems in the United States, Britain and other Western countries, some experts believe it can be a catalyst for change. “Since the mid-19th century, the West has generally seen its ability to control infectious disease as a marker of their civilizational superiority over much of the rest of the world,” Dr. White said. While China was seen as the sick man of the world then, some commentators in China now attempt to brand the United States with that label. Ruth Rogaski, a medical historian at Vanderbilt University who specializes in studying the Qing dynasty and modern China, believes that the coronavirus crisis similarly offers an opportunity for reflection, which can be very motivating. “Epidemics can serve as inflection points,” Dr. Rogaski said. “Opportunities to rethink, retool and even revolutionize approaches to health.” Source link Orbem News #China #Doctor #Learned #Masks #Pioneered

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lindoig7 · 3 years

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Sunday/Monday, 8-9 November

Sunday

It was a really great day today with some spectacular sights along the way.

Our first excursion from Orbost exactly 6 weeks ago was the Amboyne Loop and we saw a few things on the way home that day that we thought might be good to visit. We didn’t do the whole loop again, but drove in the opposite direction and did perhaps a third (or a bit more) of it and came home the same way. But what we saw was really great.

We drove to Buchan – a really lovely drive in my view, quite varied with some beautiful pastoral areas, some forests and all quite delightful. We drove north from there, heading for Tulloch Ard, but saw a sign for the W-Tree Falls (no idea where the name comes from, but there were quite a few tracks, water holes and so on that included W-Tree in their names) so we detoured there. The Falls are very pretty and splayed out quite widely across the rocks so they looks quite stunning. We climbed down from the road to the top of the Falls and clambered around looking for some special Streaked Rock-orchids that are sometimes seen in the cracks between the rocks. Obviously, we were there out of season because we never saw them (maybe they were all on their Spring break?), but it was a lovely little detour – well worth the climb down to the Falls themselves.

Tulloch Ard is quite a few clicks off the main road and we were the only visitors on the day. It is supposed to be a 3.4 km return Level 3 walk. It was certainly Level 3 – very steep and rocky, but our Fitbits both showed the walk to be at least 5 km – well over the predicted 3.4 km. Incidentally, I lost my Fitbit somewhere late in the day. It was in my pocket and I imagine it must have been dropped out when I was getting something else out of my pocket – probably my other lens. Heather had ‘tried’ to lose hers early in our trip, but someone found it for her. Alas, not for mine though.

Getting to the Lookout at the end of the walk was almost all downhill – so it was a very tiring climb back to the car. It was worth it though. The Lookout spread the entire valley before us with the raging Snowy River far below, just visible between our toes. It was certainly an impressive panorama – a huge valley – but our photos don’t start to do it justice. The viewing platform hung a little over the edge and didn’t inspire confidence in this little chicken-heart.

It was a sturdy steel structure with various tones available on the rails, the cross-members, the floor and so on and we spent a few happy moments hammering out a tune with our sticks. Not sure the Currawongs enjoyed our harmonising, but I reckon they would have recovered once we retreated to the track and the climb back to the car. There were quite a few birds singing to us too, but not many showing themselves. At least we could recognise 5 or 6 of the more familiar calls. Two of the smallest birds did show themselves and I was able to identify both the Brown and Striated Thornbills. We also saw more examples of the wildflowers that we have photographed so many times. Oddly, every time we see a really good specimen, the cameras come out and we add yet another image to our already massive library of ‘perfect’ specimens. I have given up trying not to duplicate/triplicate/quadruple/quintuple……. pics of particular species on my blog.

We ate lunch in the car while we recovered a little of our energy and then set off for a very short walk on the other side of the road to The Big Tree. It was definitely a Big Tree but all I can really add is that we saw it.

We drove back to the main road and turned north again to Little River. The map we were using declared that we were on the McKillop’s Bridge Road, purported to be the most challenging road in Australia. Rubbish! When we drove this loop in the opposite direction 6 weeks ago, we noted that the road deteriorated after McKillop’s Bridge, but we have certainly driven of many far more challenging roads before, including many on this trip. Sure, it was rough, muddy in places, potholed and with rocks and fallen trees to navigate, but not all that terrifying. Some parts were a teensy bit terrifying for me due to my acrophobia – the edge of the road fell away into the abyss for quite a few kilometres (and the abyss looked like kilometres deep too!) – but we have still driven much worse roads in the past week or twenty.

Not far from the McKillop’s Road was the carpark for the Little River Falls – another spectacular cascade, spreading and falling in numerous rushing runnels between the rocks, before falling into the pool below and continuing its headlong cannonading eventually to join the Snowy River and thence to the sea. We explored the immediate area and took some photos. It was impressive but the real thrill was a few clicks further downstream at the Little River Gorge (and it was gorgeous) – another humongous valley with multiple Falls and at least two rivers joining below us. The Gorge is the deepest in Victoria (or is that Australia?) and is more than 500 metres deep in places – one of which seemed to be immediately below where we stood at the Lookout. It was a loooong way down and we could see where at least one massive rockslide had occurred across the Gorge – almost from the top to the very bottom. The signage mentioned the instability of the cliffs and I was just a tad nervous as to whether that included the foundations of the Lookout from which we were overhanging the precipice.

I have often commented that when I saw the Grand Canyon in the US, I was not as impressed as I expected I would be. I think this is because it is sooooo big, that I couldn’t take it in – I found the nearby Little Colorado River gorge much more impressive. But the Little River Gorge is just the right size to be awe-inspiring without quite losing perspective. It is massive. Stupendous, but you can see almost all of it and get a feel for its grandeur – rather than catching many disconnected mini-glimpses of the Grand Canyon. Definitely one of Australia’s iconic features in my book: certainly more impressive than Uluru. It was the experience of the day in my view, something never to be forgotten.

It was getting late in the day so although we would have liked to take the long way home through McKillop’s Bridge and the rest of the Amboyne Loop, we decided to retrace our steps and enjoy a slightly more leisurely drive home.

Monday

We spent the day around the van, editing photos and writing – yes, I will post some pics soon!

We had a series of emails about our 2022 travel plans and sorted our way through all the details for that and locked it in. We will be doing two more Expeditions with Aurora: the first starting from Tokyo, flying to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (Kamchatka – where we started our 2016 Odyssey) and following the coast, including Chukotka, and across to Nome. Then back-to-back, we head west again to circumnavigate Wrangel Island, both covering some of the most spectacular and pristine wildlife regions on earth. It should be fantastic – but we have a lot of other adventures planned before then!

Heather had a kip in the afternoon to recover from our previous day’s excursion and seemed much the better for the couple of hours’ relaxation.

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lawrencedienerthings · 4 years

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What my horse taught me about working through the difficulties of coronavirus

#lastyear↩️ 🍾 💧 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦

Colorado News

Late last year, I was riding my big project horse, Barry. (“Project” because we’ve got stuff to work on and “big” because he’s 16½ hands.)

We’d moved up and down through the gaits and had had a lovely two-hour trail ride. Returning home, I grabbed a water bottle I’d left on a fence post at the end of the driveway. He spooked and bolted. I did not succeed in slowing him down and came off hard, at a gallop, about 100 yards down the road.

We collected ourselves. I stepped back into the saddle, and we rode for another 30 minutes.

This spring, we picked up where we’d left off. Things were fine, but edgy. He was nervous and I was nervous. One night, I was hanging out in the pasture, drinking a beer, and watching him as he watched me. Why push? There had to be a better strategy.

My new plan was not so much a plan but an acknowledgment that pushing was pointless. Mmm, maybe not pointless since the intention was progress. But we were missing each other, looking past each other at things we valued more – for me, it was riding; for Barry, it was safety. I’d skipped by opportunities for connection and growth.

MORE: See all of our Write On, Colorado entries and learn how to submit your own here.

So, for months, Barry and I have been having a re-do. Learning about equine body work has helped me help him. “Don’t touch my poll!” has always been his mantra (from what I suspect was years of mishandling).

So, our nightly sessions are mostly about touching his poll, the top of his head, rubbing it, massaging. He gets ear strokes and neck flexion. There are long, uninterrupted sessions of licking and chewing and yawning. Sometimes, he rests his chin in the crook of my elbow or on my shoulder. His breathing is slow and regular. When I unhalter him, he often stays with me. It’s not riding, but it is progress.

What happened? What can I do for you? These are new questions I try to ask more often, not just for Barry but in general.

While many are directly affected by the chaotic tragedy of COVID-19, more of us are just inconvenienced and isolated. We have time to bear witness, to look out and look in. Has the pandemic helped us white folk to finally see blistering inequalities in government and society? Were we ready to be riled because COVID-19 primed the pump? I’d say so.

Vehicles & a Driveway Moment

The other day, I was changing a tire in the driveway. I’d jacked it up and removed the flat. Then I listened as the driveway started making the faintest of gravelly noises. I watched as the jack tipped ever so slowly. But not that slowly. Faster than a tree falling. Slower than dominos.

I’d parked the car on a bit of an incline and had not set the emergency brake. I can’t remember why this didn’t seem important at the time.

I cursed and rushed to get something, anything, to put under the axel. I placed a concrete block there and realized it was too low, that the wheel would still hit the ground when the jack collapsed. The dogs looked on as I ran for another block. The jack gave way just as I wedged the second block on top of the first.

Sometimes it feels like the moment gives us a moment to right the wrong.

This summer, in rural southwestern Colorado, periods of ho-hum, git-er-done routines are pocked with bouts of reckoning. Long, sunny days with a chance of thunderstorms. I’m not sleeping well. It’s been hard to write. Distractions are myriad.

While writing is difficult, I continue to believe it’s my best vehicle for bearing witness. Yet so many humans are fairly flagellating with reflection and opinion and sharing and pontificating. Is my voice valuable? Is this exercise pointless?

OUR UNDERWRITERS SUPPORT JOURNALISM. BECOME ONE.

Body and brain struggle with sessions of sitting. It ain’t cutting wood, or running four miles, or reviewing a new product, or producing a newsletter, or massaging a poll, or riding the mustang. And yet. Converting synapses to sentences feels powerful, painful, necessary, pleasurable, indulgent, challenging, and full of agency. It’s complicated. But it’s not like there aren’t other things to do. What is worthwhile nowadays anyway?

I was talking with my son, Cormick, who is isolating and working from home in Washington D.C., and who I haven’t seen since March. He said that in order to write well and true, writers shouldn’t expect their pursuit to result in happiness. Writing does, however, give meaning to our notions of freedom and to our place in the universe. So there’s that.

If the pandemic has shown us anything, it’s revealed that we are part of the natural world. Humans are consciously distinct from it, too, by virtue (and, boy, that’s a loaded word in these times) of our frontal lobes and our consciousness.

Ridge Moment

I get up on the ridge, east of my home, to view the desolation of the East Canyon fire, which turned 3,000 acres to ash and had our neighborhood evacuated for five days. The scrub oak, the juniper, the piñon, the Ponderosa, the mule’s ears, and the yucca. All gone. Lacking flora, there is no fauna.

I squat on a rock, overlooking the vast burn area. I’m mesmerized and alone and relishing the silence.

When I climb the ridge a week later, green shoots are popping up. In another week, despite the heat and lack of rain, there’s more green and I’m reminded that with devastation comes the chance for renewal.

I’m adopting an understanding of links: running the ridge supports the writing; writing nurtures the soul and connects with readers; massaging Barry’s poll makes us better partners; wildfires and pandemics can reveal our errors and give us a chance to right wrongs. A tree is not just a tree, but part of a vast network that includes microbes. Does that ring a bell?

Maddy Butcher has written for the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe and High Country News. She is the author of “Horse Head: Brain Science and Other Insights.” She lives in Mancos.

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deniscollins · 5 years

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Columbine High School Could Be Torn Down to Deter Copycats

Twenty years ago two Columbine High School students armed with guns and explosives killed 12 students and a teacher. Since then, the school often attracts curious and obsessed tourists from around the world hoping to walk the halls, to look for the two teenage gunmen’s lockers. If you were on the Columbine Board of Education, would you vote to tear down the building and rebuild a new one at a different location to put an end to becoming a tourist attraction: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

In the 20 years since the massacre at Columbine High School, the building has become a macabre tourist attraction for the curious and the obsessed. They travel from as far as Brazil or Japan, hoping to walk the halls, to look for the two teenage gunmen’s lockers. They come every day, and more come with each passing year.

Now, in an effort to stop the escalating threats against the school and lessen Columbine’s perverse appeal to copycats and so-called Columbiners, school officials are proposing a radical idea: Tear it down.

“The morbid fascination with Columbine has been increasing over the years,” Jason Glass, the superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools, wrote Thursday in an open letter titled “A New Columbine?” “We believe it is time for our community to consider this option.”

School officials said they were still in the early stages of exploring what to do, but one idea was to scrap much of the existing structure and rebuild it farther from the road, where entry onto the school grounds could be better controlled and tour buses could not get such an easy glimpse.

The school would keep its silver and blue colors and mascot, the Rebels. Its name would remain Columbine High School.

The idea has divided a tight-knit community of current Columbine students, survivors of the 1999 attack and victims’ families, who share a fierce love for the school. It has also stirred a debate about whether schools, churches and other places devastated by mass shootings can ever exorcise their legacy by demolishing the buildings where the violence unfolded.

“My heart says, ‘No way,’” said Josh Lapp, 36, who was in the library that day when the two teenage gunmen entered and started shooting. “It’s not changing anything.”

Some survivors said that their memories of hurt and healing were still bound up in Columbine’s concrete walls, and that the school should be preserved. Others doubted that school officials could actually succeed in erasing Columbine’s dark allure if they simply rebuilt the school on the same grounds and kept its name.

On Friday, Ana Lemus-Paiz, 18, a recent Columbine graduate, said most students she had spoken with were against the idea of razing the school. She counted herself among them.

Ms. Lemus-Paiz was not even alive in 1999, when the shooting took place, but she said she had been part of a process of community healing that involved reclaiming the school. While the world may look at the building and see the Columbine of 1999 — a symbol of tragedy — the community, she said, had moved on. “That building is a symbol of strength,” she said. “Our community really did bind together to show that we are stronger than what happened.”

Ms. Lemus-Paiz also said that she believed the school’s demolition would do little to stanch the flow of visitors. “As long as the name stands — which it should — people are going to keep coming.”

In April, the 20th anniversary of the attack, in which two students armed with guns and explosives killed 12 students and a teacher, was a reminder of that. It had been planned as a time for prayers and memorials, but instead hundreds of schools in Colorado were closed as the authorities frantically searched for Sol Pais, an armed 18-year-old woman who law-enforcement officials said was infatuated with the massacre, made threats and had traveled to the state from Florida.

For John McDonald, the Jefferson County Public Schools safety director, it was one more example of an onslaught of Columbine obsessives that two full-time officers confront every day in the parking lot or on the edges of campus. The school was extensively renovated after 1999 and is now protected like a fortress. It has cameras, doors that lock remotely, and security monitoring 24 hours a day.

“At some point we have to stop being the poster child for school shootings around the country,” Mr. McDonald said. “I think it’s time.”

Mr. Glass, the superintendent who oversees Columbine, said that school safety officials stopped hundreds of people each year who try to enter the school or are caught trespassing on campus. This year’s numbers were the highest on record.

“I know all of the severity of the threats,” he said. “We don’t tell everybody all of those things. I think if people knew, they’d be really scared. And they should be. If I didn’t think this was something we should consider, I wouldn’t have brought it forward.”

The school has become a model institution when it comes to safety measures, he said, “but people need to know that it is tested constantly.”

The school district released an online survey on Thursday for residents to consider a ballot measure to allocate up to $70 million for a construction project. One idea was to preserve the high school’s library — where 10 students were killed — and make it a cornerstone of a new campus.

Some former students and family members of victims were surprised that school officials were re-examining what to do with Columbine after so many years. They still remember yelling “We are Columbine!” at a rally to reopen the school after the attack.

“Twenty years ago, there was no blueprint,” said Frank DeAngelis, who recently retired after serving as Columbine’s principal during the attacks and for years after. He supports the proposal to take down the original and rebuild the school.

He added: “If I would have known 20 years ago that we were still going to have tour buses showing up, we were still going to have people infatuated with the two killers, I would’ve said maybe we need to look at relocating.”

The school superintendent’s letter said that experts recommend tearing down a structure after a school shooting. But schools reckoning with what to do with a bullet-scarred building have few easy choices.

In Newtown, Conn., where 20 children and six staff members were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the school district demolished the building and built a new school on a different part of the same property.

In Parkland, Fla., crews are expected to break ground this summer on a project to replace Building 12 of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 people were killed. The new building is expected to be ready for the 2020 school year.

Other survivors have decided to maintain mass shooting sites to honor victims.

Last month, the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Tex., opened a new sanctuary next to the original site for worship. The congregation converted the old church, where a gunman killed 26 people in 2017, into a memorial to the victims.

“We don’t want it to look like a fortress, but we also wanted to make sure everybody could feel safe on the inside,” Pastor Frank Pomeroy said at the dedication of the new building.

Not surprisingly, security was also a key consideration in the construction, though Mr. Pomeroy, whose daughter was killed in the attack, would not disclose details about the safety features. A refurbished bell from the old building now tolls in the new church.

In Orlando, a foundation created by the owner of the Pulse nightclub, where 49 people were killed in 2016, is planning to establish a museum and memorial on the site of a massacre.

Columbine is not simply a magnet for obsession. It is a place where survivors and victims’ families say they still find meaning. Over the years, some have returned to show their spouses and children where they had run from gunfire or hidden under tables.

Coni Sanders, whose father, Dave, a teacher, was killed in the attack, said that a floor tile with an image of the purple columbine flower lay near where her father had been shot. Ms. Sanders was skeptical about the idea to rebuild, and said that $70 million for construction would be better spent on student-focused programs like mental-health treatment or community centers.

“When they say they’re going to tear it down, rebuilding it in the same spot and still call it Columbine, that’s not solving the problem they’re claiming it’s going to solve,” she said.

Some survivors choose to keep their distance from the building. They do not want to attend anniversary gatherings there. Mr. Lapp said he does not even drive by when he visits family in the area.

On Friday, Columbine High School looked just like any another school on a June day: The sun beat down on its tan bricks, the parking lot sat half-empty and a park next door was filled with children in bathing suits, who ran with glee around a fountain.

Only a few signs indicated that something darker had happened here — a placard pointing visitors to a memorial and a large sheriff’s truck parked horizontally in front of the school’s doors.

“It’s only a building,” said Salli Garrigan, 36, who ran through Columbine’s auditorium and halls as the sounds of gunshots exploded around her. “All of those memories will be there, whether the building is or not.”

#Columbine High School

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sallysklar · 6 years

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Janresseger: Red States: Waking Up to Public Responsibility for Educating Children?

This is the first of two updates on this spring’s wave of walkouts by schoolteachers. Today’s post will examine the fiscal implications. Tomorrow’s will explore what the walkouts may mean about shifting attitudes across some of the Heartland’s Red-states.

In a fine piece for NPR’s All Things Considered, Cory Turner provides some context for the fiscal crisis beneath walkouts across a number of states: “How did we get here? When you put that question to people who study teacher pay, you’ll often hear something like this: ‘I have been saying, Why aren’t (teachers) in the streets? What took them so long?‘ says Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California, Berkeley. She’s compared teachers’ weekly wages to workers with similar levels of experience and education and says teachers consistently earn less.”

In a brief for the Economic Policy Institute, Allegretto’s bar graph displays the nationwide disparities in pay between schoolteachers and other college graduates—but it is a lot worse in some places than others. Oklahoma’s teachers have been making only 67 percent of the income of their college-educated peers in other fields. Arizona’s teachers (the lowest-paid) have been making 62.8 percent; West Virginia’s teachers 74.6 percent; and Kentucky’s teachers about 78.8 percent. Across the United States, teachers’ wages average 77 percent what others make with equivalent education, and in not one state do teachers’ salaries exceed what their peers are making.

Turner also quotes Bruce Baker, the school finance expert at Rutgers University: “‘Teachers in Arizona are actually at the bottom of the heap…. And teachers in Oklahoma are pretty near that’… He mentions Tennessee and Colorado as other states with a teacher wage gap. ‘What’s really so striking to me is that it’s had to get this bad. It was kind of like that slow boil over time.'”

Turner adds: “When you focus on teacher salaries, which make up the lion’s share of schools’ spending, data published by the Education Department show that, after adjusting for inflation, U.S. teachers earned less last year, on average, than they did back in 1990. In Oklahoma, teachers’ wages averaged $45,245 last year, down roughly $8,000 in the past decade. Over the same span, in Arizona, teachers’ wages are down roughly $5,000.”

Turner also addresses the myth of the gold-plated teacher pension: “(I)n many states, teachers don’t qualify for Social Security benefits, either. So they really depend on that pension.” However, new teachers usually have to teach in a school district for five years even to qualify for the pension system. Turner quotes Chad Aldeman, who edits a publication about teacher pension systems: “In the median state, about half of all new teachers won’t stick around long enough to qualify for any pension at all.” And while school districts must pay, on average, 17 cents on retirement costs for every dollar in teachers’ salaries, Aldeman explains: “Of that 17 cents, about five of it is actually going in benefits, and 12 cents of it is going to pay down unfunded pension obligations.”

One reason the massive walkouts have exerted so much pressure on legislatures is that huge salary disparities across state borders have fed teacher shortages in states paying less. Teachers in West Virginia have been leaving for Maryland and in Oklahoma for Texas. POLITICO’s Caitlin Emma quotesTulsa School Superintendent, Deborah Gist speaking from her cell phone as she marched with striking teachers from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Gist compared the average teachers’ salary in Texas at $52,575 to the Oklahoma average of $45,245: “I’ve had superintendents in Texas thank us because they hired our teachers. It creates an extraordinarily unstable situation.” Emma adds: “The Sooner State has had to issue emergency certifications to thousands of people in recent years to staff classrooms, raising concerns about qualifications.”

What have teachers won so far through the mass walkouts? Though teachers have won raises and in some cases school funding boosts, legislators have not been willing to restore cuts to progressive income taxes or to bring back capital gains taxes on wealthy residents and corporations. Sadly, regressive sales, consumption and sin taxes have prevailed.

Last month West Virginia’s teachers achieved a five percent raise, after the state’s governor had previously offered only one percent. And the state will give the five percent raise to all state employees. It is still unclear where the money will come from as the Governor has promised not to increase taxes.

In Oklahoma, teachers also will get a significant raise, though not the kind of increase they’d hoped for to increase overall school funding. The NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein and Elizabeth Dias report: “In a deep-red state that has pursued tax and service cuts for years, teachers won a raise of about $6,000, depending on experience, while members of schools’ support staff will see a raise of $1,250… To fund the measures, as well as some limited new revenues for schools, the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Mary Fallin instituted new or higher taxes on oil and gas production, tobacco, motor fuels, and online sales. The state will also allow ball and dice gambling, which we will be taxed.”

After days of striking, Kentucky’s teachers returned to their classrooms after the legislature passed a budget that increases funding for K-12 education and a tax plan to pay for the increase, but Governor Matt Bevin vetoed the spending plan and the taxes to pay for it. So, last Friday, Kentucky’s teachers closed school for an additional day and brought their enormous presence back to Frankfort. The legislature responded, according to the Associated Press report: “With the chants of hundreds of teachers ringing in their ears, Kentucky lawmakers have completed an override of Gov. Matt Bevin’s veto of a more than $480 million tax hike that helps pay for increases in public education spending.”

The Washington Post‘s Jeff Stein adds that Kentucky’s funding scheme, important as it is, is the definition of regressive: “The plan would flatten Kentucky’s corporate and personal income-tax rates, setting both at 5 percent. Currently, Kentucky’s corporate tax rates runs between 4 and 6 percent, while its income-tax rate ranges from 2 to 6 percent. The new flat rate of 5 percent for everyone means that small companies and Kentuckians with below-average incomes will face tax hikes, and higher earners will get tax cuts. The bill attempts to make up for those cuts by nearly doubling the cigarette tax and imposing sales taxes on 17 additional services, including landscaping, janitorial work, golf courses and pet grooming.”

Pressure from teachers’ walkouts in all these states and a #RedforEd movement threatening its own walkout in Arizona seems to have awakened Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey, who announced a plan late last week to raise teachers’ salaries 20 percent by 2020. The Arizona Republic reported: “Gov. Doug Ducey on Thursday boosted his proposal for teacher raises next year to 9 percent, up from 1 percent he proposed in January, saying lawmakers would work through the weekend to figure out how to fund the plan. Coupled with 5 percent raises the following two years—and the 1 percent raise given last year—Ducey said his proposal would give teachers a ‘net pay increase’ of 20 percent by 2020.”

Columnist for Tucson’s Arizona Daily Star, Tim Steller warned, however, on Saturday that it’s too early to celebrate in Arizona: “Everybody was right that the governor’s announcement was hopeful news, but this is no time for teachers or the #RedForEd movement to declare victory and stash away their crimson shirts. The only thing that has gotten them this far is collective action and increasing pressure. They cornered the governor in an election year, and they shouldn’t let him out till they’ve got their raises and increased school funding in hand… Ducey’s dramatic announcement was a great relief, but it was just words. It was a proposal to use money of unclear origin to raise the pay for teachers but not other employees like counselors and teachers’ aides. It’s a good gesture, but so far nothing more.”

Meanwhile on Sunday, April 8th, legislators in Kansas—under pressure from the state’s supreme court which had, last October, set an April 30 deadline for compliance with its earlier court order to increase school funding—passed a $534 million increase in school funding over five years. The state’s funding for public schools had collapsed in recent years as a result of former Governor Sam Brownback’s failed experiment with tax cutting and supply side economics. However, after some hope early in April that the Legislature has likely appropriated enough money to meet the Kansas Supreme Court’s expectation, it turns out there was an $80 million flaw in the math behind the plan. The Associated Press‘s John Hanna reports: “The bill approved by lawmakers early Sunday was meant to phase in a $534 million increase over five years, and with the flaw, the figure is $454 million or perhaps a little less.” After a two week break, the Legislature will now return on April 26. There seems to be hope that the miscalculation will be fixed.

In these all-Red states across the Heartland, it is clear that a reckoning has begun. But so far there is neither clear agreement that paying taxes is a responsibility of citizens and businesses nor that taxation should be progressive with the heaviest responsibility falling on those who can best afford to support the public. At least, driven by the voices and actions of desperate schoolteachers—and in Kansas by a supreme court enforcing the state constitution—governors and legislators are having to face that their citizens seem suddenly to agree that there is a floor beneath which education services must not fall. And there seems to be an awareness that enough well qualified teachers are at the heart of what is necessary. That is a positive development.

elaine April 17, 2018

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Janresseger: Red States: Waking Up to Public Responsibility for Educating Children? published first on https://buyessayscheapservice.tumblr.com/

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