Hasta La Gadget!

The article first published at Cohousing.org.

Last week, I attended the Cohousing Conference in Salt Lake City. Before the meeting, my knowledge and understanding of it were vague. The concept sounded intriguing, and I looked forward to learning more. My assumptions of cohousing looked a lot like a senior independent living place that used a trendy name.

Initially, the idea of “another” housing option for adults, the kind where the retired lived a high life wasn’t compelling. However, in the ten years that I’ve spent in senior care, plus the time I helped my parents, I’ve learned that isolation and solitary come with a price. If there’s something the aging needs, it involves companionship, connection, and human interaction.

The name, cohousing, is a bit deceiving. My mind conjured images of hippies living together, a free for all. Boy was that assessment off! After the first day, it struck me that referring to it as “housing” misses the mark. Frankly, it’s a healthy existence based on group principles and values.

The collaborative housing comes in all shapes and sizes, from single-family units to high-rises. The settings are varied too; ranging from downtown to suburban. There’s a cohousing development in Denver that’s appealing. Initially, it was a convent, and it’s close to the metro lines and downtown activities. That kind fits my unique preferences since suburbia seems too isolating, causing people to live alone and become inaccessible.

The U.S. Census surveys show that millions of Americans over 65 live alone, without a spouse, partner, or adult children. In Waco, where I live, 4,476 seniors, 65+, live alone and of those, 73% are female. Take a look at San Diego’s older population. 36,077 65+ live alone, and 68% of those are women. In Minneapolis, 36,077 65 and over live alone, of these, 68% are female. Shortly, you can view more city stats like these by visiting Seniorcare.com. Because isolation contributes to loneliness and depression, awhile back, I started a Facebook group for elder orphans, people like me living with no spouse, partner, or children.

Are we crying out for solitude and separation?

I think not. However, we do seek a balance of alone time with shared companionship. Take a look at Millennials; they’re proving that human behavior is social, not entirely isolated and self-reliant. The segment prefers to shop, eat, and make decisions in a group. And I believe it’s the same for the adults who approach retirement. At least for boomers, we want to create friendly villages.

Cohousing gives us the chance to reinvent a lifestyle of our choosing, not someone else’s vision of how we should live. Many adults enjoy solo living, but there is a distinction between living alone physically and living alone socially. Here are the disadvantages:

• Physical safety–as one grows older, we’re subject to falls. Conditions like hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease, may affect balance and physical strength. Other things that put us at risk are climbing stairs, using a step-stool, and ladder.
• Financial security–older adults are subject to fraud and scams. Phone callers fish for personal information that results in loss of life savings and personal identity. Having close friends nearby can help monitor scams.
• Nourishment–people who live alone are less likely to prepare nutritious meals than those who share meals with others. Instead, they opt for snacks and empty calories. Social interaction with other people makes it more appealing to sit down for a complete meal.
• Healthcare–people living alone often fail to recognize life-threatening medical conditions and get care. They ignore minor disorders until they become severe. Having friends who urge help early on mitigates the risk.
• Memory issues–recognizing the decline in memory like failure to turn off the stove, and other household appliances can cause a house fire. Other problems with memory loss like bill paying and performing basic hygiene, and taking medications on time are concerns for memory-impaired people living alone.

Cohousing is an excellent remedy for the disadvantages. If one insists on privacy, the lifestyle allows for it. However, it looks to me that once a person acclimates to the life there; deeper relationships are the norm.

At the conference, I connected with several attendees who seek a life in community. Their answers give food for thought.

Before the meeting, what was your interest in living in a cohousing community, and now that you know more, how motivated are you to make a move to one?

Rhyena, CA, declares that her interest was high and, now, it’s very high,” and motivated by the feeling of being around “my peeps,” and she wants to be around them more when retired in about two years. Rhyena believes there are not enough detached homes in existing communities and hopes for the chance to realize real personal and collective transformation through the power of living and experiencing communal sharing.

Shelly, WA, has done a lot of research on Senior Living trends, which led her to cohousing. Once discovered, she dived right in and tried to learn as much as she could from the internet. Shelly visited Quimper Village because she heard they were doing a great job in building community and getting their project off the ground. Shelly loves cohousing as another option for boomers since they will demand choice and control. Cohousing gives both. The community piece will speak to boomers who are so independent and may now ask if there is a better way to live. However, Shelly believes that boomers might view it as losing privacy and independence.

Nancy, CA, has known about and studied intentional communities for the last few decades and her level of interest was an eight before, now it’s a 7. Her oldest brother was a leader in the intentional community lifestyle in the 60’s, and she knows that a “village” way of life is important but wants to explore all options. Attending the conference, she learned that cohousing requires much planning. The challenge is, “balancing the privacy that I like, and the shared aspect.” She hopes to live around the friends of her choosing!

Fran, CA, read Cohousing and Senior Cohousing before attending the conference and has been interested in the concept for 16 years. “I’ve followed the cohousing.org website since its inception and attended other meetings on the topic. There’s not much happening in Southern CA. and her level of interest in an eight. Affordability and being able to find a place to share with a friend who has high care needs are the two driving factors. “I’m determined to age in a community and will try to make that happen in cohousing.”

Lisa, TX, explored the topic online and read descriptions of the various communities and had followed a couple of them through development. “I was very interested in PDX Commons in Portland and even visited Portland and attended several events in March.” Her level of interest is high, ranging from levels 8 to 10; there are NO cohousing communities in Austin or the whole state of Texas! Lisa has friends in their 60s and early 70s interested in Intentional Community, and she picked up a lot of info at the conference, but not sure how to make it happen in Austin. “The city is expensive, and I learned it is very particular about zoning. For example, I have a friend who has a smaller older home on an acre in Central Austin and wondered if it could zone to accommodate cohousing. I suspect that is unlikely.” However, Lisa left the conference knowing there are different ways to create a similar lifestyle that does not involve building from scratch.

The wishes people have in shared living

When visiting with other participants, the one wish I heard most frequently is, “I hope the cities or state agencies would offer a financial incentive to make it easier to build, buy, or rent a unit or home. After much digging, I learned that several cities did indeed offer “affordable” housing options.

And for me, before Salt Lake City, my interest level was a 6. Today, it’s an 8. But as Lisa, TX, confirmed, “Seekers in the Lone Star state are plum outta luck, well, at least for the moment.”

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Credit: Michela/CC

I had lunch a couple of days ago with an old friend, and I noticed how she brightened the faces of everyone we met. A kind word here, a friendly observation there, it was an afternoon of cheerful encounters. How easy it is, when we are in the right frame of mind, to smooth the path for our fellow humans.

From holding open a door to holding the elevator, from a smile to showing a bit of patience when someone isn’t moving at the lightning speed we’d wish, from the little things to the big things.

I was 22 and at the wheel of my 1962 VW Beetle in San Francisco, driving down an empty four-lane Divisadero Street after midnight. The central street islands and lamp posts whipped past. I had a couple of buddies in the car and the three of us had just finished our shifts at a trendy restaurant. We were laughing at some line of jokey conversation that had escalated into absurdity and we had tears in our eyes. I glanced at Brian in the seat next to me, all smiles, and in the rearview at Jimmy for an echo of the amusement.

But Jimmy, there just a second earlier, had disappeared. Poof! Then I looked at Brian, and his face was a mask of terror, his mouth a round, silent O. And I looked ahead and we were headed straight for one of those concrete lamp posts, except it wasn’t off to one side anymore. The driver’s side of the VW had slipped its way up on to one of the central dividers and the post was dead center and only a few feet away.

Suddenly, Brian reached across and grabbed the steering wheel. He jerked it hard to the right, the wheels popped back on to the road, the lamp post flicked past the window, and all was well. Jimmy reemerged from behind the seats, where he had taken cover, disbelief at our survival in his gawping expression.

You might say Brian saved my life, as well as Jimmy’s and his own. Hilarity was replaced by relief. No one had felt the car sly its way up the curb, there hadn’t been a bump, and no, we hadn’t been drinking. Just youthful enthusiasm and lack of attention. But what I was completely unprepared for was Brian’s joy. Joy isn’t strong enough a word. Elation. Ecstasy.

“I did it! This time I did it! I was in the right seat and I did it!” And now he was really crying.

As it turned out, Brian had been in a major car accident two years earlier. In a vintage VW Beetle. With two friends, one at the wheel. That time, Brian had been in the back seat, where Jimmy now sat. The car had, unnoticed by anyone, jumped a curb and headed straight for a lamppost, and Brian had reached for the steering wheel.

Except he hadn’t been able to grasp it in time because he was in the back seat. The two people in the front, both friends, had died. Only Brian survived the wreck– with broken bones and a legacy of guilt and nightmares.

My inattention had given him a second chance, and this time, he was in the right seat and he knew what to do. He said he felt liberated, and actually thanked me. Not as much as I thanked him, though. (John found the entire episode neither liberating nor amusing and never accepted a ride home from me again.)

I was reminded of this long-ago good deed when I was out at Half Moon Bay beach, my first time there in many years. I was taking pictures, taking air, taking it all in, when I found some keys on a picnic table. I’d been walking around a bit, and I’d noticed one young guy, T-shirt and Warriors cap, eating take-out fifty feet away. So I took the keys over to him and asked whether he’d noticed who had been sitting at the table with the keys–and he had. He thought it might be a family a hundred yards off, down near the shoreline.

As if they’d heard our discussion from that distance, a woman in the family suddenly jumped up and started searching her purse, their blankets, the picnic cooler. Then she started running towards us at a sprint. Well, that was easy, I said to my partner in key finding. We tossed the keys down the small bluff in her direction and she thanked us profusely.

“That was really nice of you to pick up those keys.” The guy acted like he’d had no part in our little good deed.
“Lucky you noticed the family; it was a mutual effort. And losing your keys is the perfect way to ruin a good day.”
“You just made their’s, that’s for sure.”
“As did you.” As if this small effort had been something extraordinary.

Okay, it wasn’t life-saving, but it was day-saving, and sometimes that can be pretty good, too. Those little gestures that change the course of a moment, and maybe a life.

Life-changers.

Not long after Brian had saved me from certain death, I was about to leave the Bay Area. I was moving to Japan, and had been tying up loose ends all over the City. Errands, good-byes, dropping off borrowed books, and so on, in completely random neighborhoods. A couple of days prior to departure, I was sitting in Café Trieste in North Beach, enjoying a quiet moment alone. I noticed a woman approaching me, well-dressed in skirt and heels, a dreamy expression on her face. She looked like she knew me, but I was certain I didn’t know her. She stopped in front of my table and smiled.

“You must be my guardian angel.” She put a hand on the table, as if steadying herself.

“Pardon me?”

“I’ve seen you three times in the last week, in different parts of the city. All over the city. At the Department of Motor Vehicles. The Marina. The Cliff House.”
It was true, I’d been in all those places over the previous week. I nodded, not sure where she was going with this.

“So, in the past week, my life has turned around. I’d see you, and something good happened. Every single time. And I don’t know you.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. What’s the protocol when a stranger declares you to be their guardian angel?

“I guess you’ve had a lucky week?”

“Better than lucky. I don’t know how to thank you enough. And I don’t want to bother you. But I’d like to buy your cup of coffee.”

My coffee was already paid for and I told her she didn’t have to thank me for anything. She smiled and patted my shoulder, and said good-bye. A few minutes later, a fresh cup of coffee and a piece of cake arrived at my table, and the woman was gone. I never found out what she thought I’d done. It didn’t matter. She had made my day.

I wish I could say I’m a big believer in karma. But in my experience, for better or worse, not many people really get what they deserve.

Doing good, though–that I believe in, however major or minor the opportunity. And not just because it’s usually just as easy as doing nothing at all. Sometimes it just feels good. Sometimes it’s a life-saver.

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James Finney, a Louisiana citizen, has filed numerous unanswered public records requests for information related to school enrollments and statistical calculations.

On March 12, 2016, Finney appealed to BESE regarding difficulties in having his public records requests filled by John White and alerted the board that he had decided to sue.

In response, Louisiana State Superintendent John White chose to sue Finney.

The following discourse represents the full contents of an email dated May 31, 2016, from Finney to all Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) members and copied to White:

Greetings once again to members of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education:

As you may recall, I sent you an email March 12 (attached below) describing the status of several pending record requests that I had placed with John White and the Department of Education. I also mentioned the existence of a lawsuit (Finney vs White, 6395333, attached). That lawsuit, which was filed May 22, 2015, was set for trial in late April.

However, on April 11, Mr. White’s attorney requested and was granted a continuance, presumably to become better prepared for trial and to resolve a scheduling conflict with the Department’s sole witness. Rather than prepare for trial, however, it seems that Mr. White instead instructed his attorney to file two lawsuits against me which appear to be groundless, unnecessary, and against the public interest. Meanwhile, Mr. White and his staff have made no effort to address the 35 pending requests which are subject of my lawsuit.

The first new lawsuit (White vs Finney, 647827, attached) addresses five requests I made in fall 2015, five that I made in February of this year, and one that I made in March. In the lawsuit, Mr. White apparently is asking the judge to create special conditions on Louisiana’s public records law. It seems that, for whatever reason, Mr. White is bending over backward to make sure the public has no idea what statistical distributions LEAP, iLEAP, or EOC test scores follow. Are they symmetric? Skewed? Bimodal? Uniform? Nor does he, it seems, wish the public to have any means of verifying that School or District Performance Scores have been fairly and accurately calculated.

The second new lawsuit (White vs Deshotels et al, 647953, attached) attempts to reverse favorable judgments Mr. Deshotels received in two prior lawsuits, and apply that reversal (which seems unlikely given that the 19th JDC is not an appellate court) to a subsequent request by Mr. Deshotels and also to one of my requests. He seeks to use Mr. Deshotels and I as pawns, and cost us additional time and money, to establish a data-suppression policy that was already soundly rejected at court.

I have repeatedly requested meetings with Mr. White and/or his staff to work out arrangements that allow the public to have access to important public records without compromising student privacy nor causing the Department undue burden. I have consistently been rebuffed. And now we’re tangled in litigation in three different divisions of the local district court.

Most of my requests to date, and all that are subject to litigation thus far, could be collected into the following six categories. I trust you would consider these all to be important and of potential public interest:

• calculation details regarding Value-Added Modeling as performed by the Department

• voucher programs’ exact enrollments and costs, and demographics of voucher students

• test-score distributions and technical reports

• details of School and District Performance Score calculations adequate to verify accuracy and credibility

• charter schools’ enrollments, charters and leases, and other information

• exact enrollment numbers with no more suppression than is absolutely required to protect the anonymity of an individual student

I urge you as a body to ask Mr. White to defend his position regarding data secrecy, and his preference for litigation over useful dialogue. Is the department in service to the public, or to test-creators, charter networks and private schools? Have the school grades and Value-Added measures been calculated fairly? How will we ever know? Is Southern politeness more important than democracy? Is it appropriate to sue citizens rather than responding properly to public record requests? Please ponder those questions carefully, and provide the appropriate guidance to the Superintendent who is employed at your pleasure.

Thank you.

Dr. James Finney

White is working hard to hide what he is doing to Louisiana public education.

Suing private citizens over public record requests is a new low for an already sorry excuse of a state superintendent. However, it seems that with White, no low is too low.

***

Originally posted 05-31-16 at deutsch29.wordpress.com

Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.

She also has a second book, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?.

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(Image: Dredging channels at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge to restore tidal salt marshes. Credit: Richard Weiner.)

Hurricane season officially starts June 1, and weather forecasters are predicting an active season for hurricanes and tropical storms.

While people living along the Atlantic Coast are asking themselves, “Are we ready?” (check out these preparedness tips from NOAA) we in the conservation community are asking, “Are our coasts ready?”

It’s a question we’ve been asking ourselves with increasing urgency since Hurricane Sandy struck the Atlantic Coast in 2012.

In the aftermath of Sandy, federal, state and local groups stepped forward in an unprecedented effort to strengthen natural defenses along the Atlantic Coast, protecting communities and wildlife from future storms. At the heart of this effort is one key concept: resilience.

Resilience means being able to bounce back from stress or damage and return quickly to a functioning state. We want to raise resilient kids. We want to be resilient in our careers. Ideally, we want our health and finances to be resilient.

And we want nature to be resilient in the face of damage, stress and unpredictability. A resilient coastline is one that can weather a hurricane without being destroyed, one that can adapt to rising seas and an unpredictable climate, one that can support the wildlife and people who call it home.

How do we make coastlines resilient?

At the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, we’re working with partners across all levels of government and community to find solutions. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re coming up with science-based approaches to build resilience into our restoration projects across the Atlantic Coast and beyond.

For example, we know that tidal salt marshes are highly effective at buffering wave energy, reducing erosion and absorbing water. One study found that salt marshes can reduce the height of storm waves by 18 percent. Having a robust, healthy salt marsh can go a long way toward protecting homes, farms, businesses and industry in coastal areas.

Yet scientists estimate that as much as 50-70 percent of salt marshes have been lost in the United States.

That’s why we’re working to enhance and protect more than 63,000 acres of coastal marshes at 14 sites from Virginia to Massachusetts using federal funding from the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013. These projects help restore and strengthen critical marshes so they can better protect nearby communities from flooding during the next superstorm. They also have the added benefit of improving water quality (marshes are excellent filters) and supporting nurseries for fish and shellfish.

Coastal resilience takes other forms, too:

● Rebuilding beaches using new design methods to help reduce the risk of coastal flooding and improve habitat for wildlife like migratory birds.

● Removing old dams to reconnect streams and rivers, which is great for migrating fish, and also protects people who are at risk from flooding when these dams fail in high-water events.

● Building green infrastructure such as oyster reefs and living shorelines to help reduce wave energy and impacts, thereby protecting coasts while providing much-needed marine habitat.

All these projects are currently underway in some of the hardest-hit areas of the Atlantic Coast. One site where much of this innovative, science-based work can be seen is at Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) in Delaware.

The restoration of 4,000 acres of tidal marsh at Prime Hook is one of the most complex marsh restoration projects ever attempted on the U.S. East Coast. The project used state-of-the-art science and computer modeling to explore multiple restoration scenarios before settling on the best approach to make this coastline more resilient to the impacts of sea-level rise and intense storms. The restored marsh system will be seeded with salt marsh grasses this spring, and we expect in a few years’ time that it will be a fully functional natural defense.

If there’s a bright side to Hurricane Sandy, it’s that it has helped galvanize natural resource protection efforts around the issue of resilience. With anticipated rising sea levels, more frequent and intense storms, shifting seasons and higher temperatures, we need to continue to work together to better understand and adapt to changing conditions. Strong natural defenses will help all of us better weather future storms.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

A grab bag of tech accessories, an air mattress that doesn’t deflate overnight, and a smart Logitech Harmony remote lead off Tuesday’s best deals.

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