Posts
-Robin Sharma
Friday, June 03, 2022
Oliver Sacks
Being a physician involves much more than handing out diagnoses and treatment; it involves one in some of the most intimate decisions in a patient's life.
Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other, and ourselves—the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain.Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
Thursday, June 02, 2022
Henry Horenstein
One-person show at the New Bedford Whaling Museum
- Thursday, June 9, OPENING 5-6 PM
One-person show at the New Bedford Whaling Museum
Air Quality Index
The air quality is generally acceptable for most individuals. However, sensitive groups may experience minor to moderate symptoms from long-term exposure.
Based on Current Pollutants
Over the past hour
O 3Fair
Ground-level Ozone
can aggravate existing respiratory diseases and also lead to throat irritation, headaches, and chest pain.
Radio Smiles
Edyn-Mae Stevenson Producer and Host https://www.classicalwcrb.org/people/edyn-mae-stevenson
Edyn-Mae Stevenson grew up in South Lancaster, MA, fostering her love for classical music in the cello section of the Youth Ensemble of New England. She first caught the public radio bug while completing her Bachelor’s in Music Theory and Literature in Chattanooga, TN, where she spent three years as Music Director for Classical 90.5 WSMC. She briefly joined the CRB team in 2019 as a summer intern and returned in 2021 as a sub announcer. Getting to share classical music with Boston is her dream job. Away from the microphone, Edyn-Mae can be found curled up with her dog, worrying over her latest knitting project or reading any book she can get her hands on.
Cheever
I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.
JOHN CHEEVER
It's been a full day and it's not even noon.
It's been a full day and it's not even noon. YMCA childcare said YES to the popcorn machine!!
Bill's school is in "sheltering in place" but supposedly all is okay.
I rescued a bird on the sidewalk and gave it water using a straw but now I am reading that this can drown a bird which I believe is exactly what happened. I feel terrible! But I gave him a place under the bushes to go to heaven.
Greg Marcoux heating ventilation business on my street just talked to me about difficulties and hazards of basement ventilation. MOLD. And trying to bring up cold air to the rest of the house is nearly impossible because cold air is HEAVY and won't budge.
He told me how he deals with NOISE. He wears noise-cancelling headphones when leaf blowers attack. His business now has security cameras that talk and light up just like our 606 neighbor Alma who installed one in the parking lot behind our house. This was after her downstairs neighbor, THE THIEF was caught climbing her fire escape in a RED HOODIE, trying windows.
Wednesday, June 01, 2022
Through These Eyes
https://torpedofactory.org/event/through-these-eyes/
Through These Eyes
June 10 - September 4
On view in Studio 9.
Exhibition dates: June 10 – September 4
Exhibition Reception: Friday, June 10, 7-10PM
Target Gallery is hosting the pop-up video exhibition, Through These Eyes, in Studio 9 of the Torpedo Factory Art Center during the summer of 2022. This exhibition features a series of videos that focuses on perspectives of underrepresented identities, including BIPOC identity, LGBTQ+ identity, and physical or mental disabilities in the form of video work, film shorts, stop-motion, and animation.
This exhibition will feature a series of videos projected, playing one-at-a-time on a loop in Studio 9 of the Torpedo Factory Art Center. The work will be viewable all together on our online digital catalog which will be available on our website.
Participating Artists:
Megan Christiansen
Michael Covello
Kiana Honarmand
Willow Machado
Dawn Nye
Elizabeth Schneider
Kate Stone
Jessica Valoris
Angelica Verdan
Nancy Wyllie
About the Juror:
Naoko Wowsugi (she/her)
an DC-based artist of Korean-Japanese descent, who works with
photography, video, and performance as forms of communication. Using
interdisciplinary practices of visual art, local research, and community
participation, Wowsugi’s projects highlight and fortify everyday
communal and interpersonal identities. Wowsugi received an MFA from
Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from both the Kansas City Art
Institute and Osaka University of Arts in Japan. She is currently a
professor at American University in Washington DC.
How Leaf Blowers Are Trying to Kill Us
https://canadianaudiologist.ca/leaf-blowers-trying-to-kill-us-feature/
Possible solution:
https://bettersoundproofing.com/quietest-leaf-blower/
Editor’s Note: In Canada, and some other jurisdictions around the world, both at the federal and the provincial levels, the Ministries of Health are different from the Ministries of Labour and/or Environment, so the right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing. Laws and regulations that may control noise levels (e.g. Ministry of the Environment) have been developed separately, and in some cases, in isolation, from the health effects of excessive noise levels (e.g., Ministry of Health). In my opinion, this has long been a stumbling block to a cohesive set of policies.
However, the situation is improved at the municipal level where Boards of Health deal with all three Ministry issues so there is potentially more that can be accomplished at the municipal by-law level.
The potential health/pollution effects that can be (synergistically) additive such that personnel working in one area (e.g. noise control) can gain potential allies working in another, seemingly unrelated area (e.g., air pollution), to better achieve a desired change in by-law regulation.
In this article, Chemical engineer Monty McDonald, the Environment Chair of the Bayview Village Association in Toronto, provides information about the air-born chemical pollution issues relating to leaf blowers. Forming alliances with other professionals and groups that seek the same end-goal- limiting the deleterious effects of leaf blowers- but have differing orientations, can provide a stronger voice when it comes to modernizing municipal by-laws such as this.
Those noisy leaf blowers have it in for us in many ways besides the unhealthy noise levels they subject us to. They are probably the greatest obnoxious noise source in the city of Toronto. The readership of Canadian Audiologist is aware of the degree of unhealthy noise they generate; up to 115 dB SPL peak of low frequency sound that can penetrate walls and windows.
Air Pollution from Engine Exhaust
Almost all lawn maintenance contractors use leaf blowers even when there are no leaves on the ground as it saves them time…their goal is to get the grass cut and all the clippings blown off their customers lawns and driveways as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next customer. The clippings usually get blown down the street and the next contractor down the street will blow them back. These machines are driven by highly polluting 2 stroke engines which can be operated in any position even upside down whereas the 4 stroke engines used in most lawn mowers as well as our automobiles run very cleanly but can only run when upright. The first stroke is the power stroke when the fuel is burned in the combustion chamber pushing the piston to run the engine. The second stroke is the exhaust stroke when the piston pushes the products of combustion (CO, CO2, H2O, excess air and some unburned fuel) out of the engine. This stroke occurs at the same time as fresh fuel and air is coming into the combustion chamber and some of it mixes with the exhaust. As a result, about 30% of the fuel (gasoline / oil mix) goes out the exhaust and becomes an aerosol for us to breath. I calculate during the 5 spring/summer months when there are no leaves on the ground 1500 homes in my community will have 1000 liters/ each month polluting our atmosphere. During the Spring and Fall cleanups it would be 4 times that number as the machines are used for a much longer time period cleaning up all the leaves on the ground, wedged inside hedges etc.
Many gasoline components are carcinogens (e.g., benzene, butadiene, formaldehyde). The oil companies post signs on all their pumps warning that gasoline causes cancer in laboratory animals and to avoid breathing gasoline vapours. When these carcinogens are used in chemical manufacturing they are identified as regulated substances by the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) and the workers must be protected and the plant atmosphere must be controlled to very low concentrations, usually 10-20 parts per million in air. A person operating a leaf blower with its fuel laden exhaust is exposed to 10,000 parts per million or more fuel in air. Therefore, the workers who do not wear carbon filter masks are exposed to dangerous levels of these carcinogens. As a bystander, if you smell the fumes, you have ingested a big dose... the smell of most of these chemicals cannot be detected by your nose at levels less than 500 parts per million. The state of California reports that emissions from small engines create more ozone than the millions of cars on the road in that state.
Air Pollution from Dust Generated and Dispersed by the Leaf Blower
Many people do not think of other air pollutants that are just as bad as gasoline. Air from a blower travels at 200 km per hour and pulverizes what it hits into very fine dust, finer than is found in nature. Think what the air comes in contact with on the ground (soil, manure, fertilizer, pesticide residue, moulds, animal excrement. There are all kinds of toxins in street dust: dust from brake linings (asbestos is still used), grease and oil and the most common is carbon black from tire wear which is also a carcinogen. The problem with street dust is it can stay airborne for days. Much of this dust is so fine (less than 10 microns), it gets past the protective cilia in your airway and passes into your lungs, some very fine particles can get into your bloodstream through the lungs. Some health authorities in California claim dust is a worse health risk than fuel emissions
California is away ahead of Canada regulating the use of leaf blowers. One hundred municipalities (including Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica) have banned their use year round because the of dust and fuel health hazard)
How About Water Pollution?
Yes! Think of all those grass clippings left on the streets. During rain storms they get washed into the storm sewers and end op decomposing in catch basins eventually get churned up by the turbulence of high flows during rainstorms. All storm sewers flow to our creeks and rivers. These masses of decomposing greenery add to the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) in our waterways.
What Should a City Do?
As a start, ban leaf blowers in the summer months (mid-May until October) when there are no leaves on the ground, they are the high smog months and children are out of doors. All homeowners should leave clippings on the lawn as mulch as all gardeners recommend. Use brooms to sweep paved surfaces of clippings. The IDEAL VEHICLE to do this is to insist that your municipality’s Leaf Blower Noise Bylaw should include this ban as well as regulations on reducing noise.
Thai Peanut Sauce
- 1/2 cup peanut butter natural, unsweetened
- 2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce use tamari or coconut aminos for gluten free
- 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce more or less to taste
- 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
- 3 garlic cloves pressed or grated
- 1 tablespoon ginger root grated
- 2-4 tablespoons warm water
Instructions
https://www.foxandbriar.com/the-best-thai-peanut-sauce-recipe/
through the crosswinds of meddling editors
Writers take words seriously—perhaps the last professional class that does—and they struggle to steer their own through the crosswinds of meddling editors and careless typesetters and obtuse and malevolent reviewers into the lap of the ideal reader.
JOHN UPDIKE
The key is to tell it straight.
I have never found alcohol helpful to literary production in any degree. My experience goes to prove that the effect of wine, taken as a preliminary to imaginative work...is to blind the writer to the quality of what he produced rather than to raise its quality.
THOMAS HARDY
I learned a lot from James Joyce and Erskine Caldwell and of course from Hemingway … [but the] tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable, into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk. GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ
James Baldwin
One writes out of one thing only—one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.
JAMES BALDWIN
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