Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 255

Lena Olin plays the title role in “Maya Dardel,” a poet with plans to go out with a bang

Nathan Keyes and Lena Olin in "Maya Dardel" (Credit: Samuel Goldwyn Films)

The slinky Swedish actress Lena Olin first captured American audience’s attention in 1988 as Sabina in “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” The following year, she snagged an Oscar nomination for her role in “Enemies: A Love Story.” For some viewers, however, Olin will forever be associated with Mona, the ferocious Russian gangster from 1995’s “Romeo Is Bleeding.” A scene where Olin wraps her legs around Gary Oldman’s head while he’s driving (she’s handcuffed in the back) is pretty spectacular.

Olin has worked consistently since “Bleeding,” but her new film “Maya Dardel,” provides her with another big, juicy, memorable role. She plays the title character, a famous poet who announces on NPR in her husky, sexy voice, that she is going to kill herself. She invites male poets to contact her through her agent to become the heir and executor of her estate. While several young men apply — and she specifically asks for men and requires them to perform oral sex — the pool narrows down to two contenders: Ansel (Nathan Keyes), who is sensitive and artistic, and Paul (Alexander Koch), a sexy and passionate lover but whose talent and manners are lacking.

Olin is irresistible here as the powerful, sensual poetess. She uses her body to express her sex appeal: curling up Sphinx-like on the couch, throwing her long hair around or batting her eyelashes at one would-be suitor in erotic repose. She challenges these guys to think, act, live, write and be in the moment. And she challenges viewers to consider mortality, having a sense of purpose in art and life and creating culture.

On the phone from Sweden, where she is rehearsing a play, the actress spoke with Salon about playing Maya Dardel.

Let me start with a question Maya asks one of her men: With extreme candor, tell me, what do you think of your performance?

[LAUGHS] It’s really hard to tell with any performance as you watch it. There are so many things that hit you when you watch yourself. It takes two or three times before I can say what I think. She’s such an extreme character. When I first saw the film, I was struck by how cruel she is. You enter the character without judging. So when I watched it, I was taken by how cruel she was.

I like when you play cruel!

Why do I play cruel characters?

As a poet and writer, Maya is a “culture creator.” As an actress you create culture. What are your observations on creating art?

I think I go by instinct when I choose a project. I’m doing a play in Stockholm now, and it’s been a while since I’ve done a play. Doing rehearsals in theater is not like making a film, which has a faster pace. We did weeks of rehearsal in the theater, and it struck me how completely detached I was from the intellectual process. The director explains exactly what he wants. He has that tool to paint you a path, and that makes it easy. Some directors have an intellectual approach, and I appreciate that, but I have no way of doing that myself. It’s basically instinct in my case.

Maya talks about denial vs. mortality, having purpose vs. work in decline. What are your thoughts on this topic?

I think luckily, probably, for writers, if you write fiction or poetry, and for actors, the older you get, in a best case scenario, you get better, because you’ve lived longer and had more experiences.

Zack [Cotler, the film’s co-writer/co-director] is a young guy, but he created Maya as someone who is very intelligent and very aware. There’s a truth that sometimes [talent] declines. Great film directors blow you away and then they dry out and then they come back.

Age comes with decline from the outside for actors in America. The insides, maybe not. I do have to believe that as we get older we’re getting better! I can’t stand the other way around.

On that same note, I think Maya is disarmed a bit by her own self-contempt; the madness that comes with genius, the suffering for one’s art. How do you cope with the ups and downs of life and a career in the arts?

Life in the arts isn’t the glamour that people think it is. This play I’m doing and working with a man who is known for being demanding and challenging to work with. I wonder why do I put myself through this? And other times, I get why I’m putting myself through this. You have to work harder when someone gives you appreciation. That’s a discipline you have to have.

If it’s not a spoiler to ask: How did you think Maya would kill herself?

I’m not sure. I think she’d choose a pleasant way. Drink a lot of champagne. She’s concerned about how the world sees her. It would be spectacular and colorful.

Ingmar Bergman has been dead for a while — and because I worked with him —  I get questions about letters he wrote to me when I was in my 20s. He orchestrated the whole thing. I think he was careful in his way, creating the way the world would see him, his writing and his art even after his death.

Let me ask another question one of the men in the film asks Maya: How am I doing so far?

You’re doing great! [Laughs]. I love these questions!

There is a fearlessness in your performances. Can you talk about this aspect of being disarming?

I think that what I’m interested in — and this journey all actors are on — is what is truly human and catching that something. Very rarely do we say what we mean or react in the way we should react. People surprise us, and it rings true.

When I was in drama school, I was told to get on the subway and fantasize about people — are they married, do they have kids, are they happy? I’ve been doing this since I was two years old! People who know me well wonder why I’m so curious. It’s like an addiction. Those are the moments I’m looking for in my performance. It’s hard to plan. As you’re doing it, something comes along that you don’t expect. You’re supposed to be happy and excited, and a fear comes through you. Those moments are interesting to watch on screen and in life too. It’s when you feel completely present. You try to create something, and it is when things just happen that you catch the moment.

Maya plays up her sensuality and talks about the sex appeal of older women. You’ve expressed sensuality in many of your films?

I think it’s such an important part of my characters. But I’m always surprised after, how much the sensuality comes through. It’s my connection with someone else. Maya has a need to feel life and power, and a bit of desperation in her longing — that’s how she used these men.

I see the film as a power struggle between Maya and her suitors, Ansel and Paul. What do you think Maya sees in these young men?

She tries to create a power struggle between the men, but maybe it is more about her and the men. I think what she’s really looking for, and what touches her, is the raw talent. When she sees and recognizes that it excites her and kills her at the same time, because her own brilliance is in decline.

I really like the friendship between Leonora (Rosanna Arquette) and Maya. What can you say about Maya’s interaction with women?

It was a really bizarre compound up in the mountains. When Rosanna came along — and it was a challenging character for her — we immediately bonded. We got a hold of each other in a wonderful way. Our scenes were extremely non-competitive. We could breathe with each other. I’d never met Rosanna but she was extraordinary. I want to work with her again.

Maya describes what she likes to read. What do you read? Do you have a favorite poet?

The Swedish poet who won the Nobel Prize, Tomas Tranströmer. I love his poetry. I grew up with Swedish poetry. We read poetry in school. Teenagers read poetry and it’s a big part of our schooling.

It’s Zack’s poetry that I read as Maya — he would talk about what he meant with it. But in my heart, I have a tough time really appreciating American poets.

Maya is concerned with legacy. What do you think your legacy will be?

That’s interesting. I’m grateful for films. I grew up in the theater, and my parents were actors. They were very snobby towards film. I did theater before I got the opportunity to work with film and TV, and what’s so rewarding is that there’s something that will stay and be there. There’s something exciting — both good and bad — about that.

Top 10 political horror films

"The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (Credit: Bryanston Pictures)

Horror films are particularly good places for social commentary. I suspect the reason for this is that, when you peel away the jump scares and gore, horror appeals to us because it allows us to confront our ultimate fear, one from which none of us can escape — death.

Once a human being can appreciate their fear of death, of course, it goes without saying that the door has been opened to understanding the many, many other deep fears that come with being part of this life. Which is why we have such horror classics as . . .

1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956): Film scholars have long debated whether this Don Siegel classic is a satire about McCarthyism or an attempt to promote the very Red-baiting that made McCarthyism possible. After all, a story about aliens who pretend to be regular human beings but are truly double-agents could be seen as an allegory for supposed Communist subversion or as a way of skewering 1950s-era social conformity and fearmongering (the pod people themselves are emotionless husks of human beings). Either way, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” deserves to be seen, even if its ultimate meaning remains controversial to this day.

2. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974): This movie is about vegetarianism. In fact, its vegetarian themes are so obvious that it’s hard to believe people took so long to pick up on this. Even if you didn’t have director/co-writer Tobe Hooper outright saying that the movie is “about meat,” think of the first act monologue in which one character graphically describes how animals are slaughtered. Throughout the rest of the movie, the major characters are killed in ways that are reminiscent of slaughterhouses (hammer to the head, meathooks). And, of course, the fate of the murdered characters is to be cannibalistically devoured.

3. Dawn of the Dead (1979): “It is gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling,” wrote Roger Ebert in his original review. “It is also (excuse me for a second while I find my other list) brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society.”

I couldn’t have put it better, but I’ll try to add a point here: What makes this movie such a great commentary on consumerism isn’t simply that the zombies shuffling around that mall don’t look very different from real-life mallgoers, or that the film’s climax involves two bloodthirsty gangs fighting for the right to own the remaining stores. My favorite scene is an early montage in which the four protagonists, having safely turned the mall into a fortress, try to escape from the terror of their new reality by shopping. It’s a fun, light-hearted sequence that illustrates how vices are often fueled by desperate human needs.

4. The Stuff (1985): Much as I adore Clint “Ice Cream Man” Howard, that flick has nothing in the way of sweet tooth-related terror when compared to “The Stuff.” If you distrust corporations or are disturbed by the long-term implications of GMOs, then this is the movie for you. Like “Dawn of the Dead,” it also takes stabs at consumerism, but the real horror here comes from the ease with which the major characters simply trust a big business that offers them a product which common sense should tell them is too good to be true. Tastes delicious and has zero calories? If that was real, it wouldn’t be horror — it would be fantasy.

5. Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985): The backstory behind this film is pretty rough to read about. LGBT star Mark Patton was basically outed by the film’s obvious metaphors for homosexuality — Freddy Krueger wants to possess the so-called “final girl” Jesse Walsh, prompting lines like “He’s inside me and he wants to take me again!” and “Something is trying to get inside my body,” and there is of course the shower death scene — and it’s clear that the experience ruined his acting career. Yet if you want to understand the discomfort that ’80s Hollywood had with homosexuality, “Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge” is a fascinating gem. It works quite well as a horror film in its own right and is surprisingly bold in some of the creative choices that it makes in order to add layers to its narrative.

6. They Live (1988): It’s pretty hard for a leftist to NOT love “They Live.” The movie’s premise is that a homeless man finds a pair of mysterious sunglasses and, when putting them on, discovers that they allow him to see the “real” world which lurks beneath our own. Seemingly ordinary people are revealed to actually be hideous aliens, our system of currency and culture is seen as a method used by the aliens to enslave humanity and humanity itself is revealed to be nothing more than mindless, manipulated sheep. Released during the final full year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the ’80s aesthetic actually makes “They Live” more compelling — it couldn’t have been set during a more appropriate decade.

7. Candyman (1992): Growing up, I remember being told that if you said “Bloody Mary” into a mirror five times, an evil ghost would magically appear and murder you. I never had the guts to test that theory, but “Candyman” follows a very similar premise — only the titular Candyman himself is a victim of racism, and the film’s primary setting is Chicago’s notorious Cabrini-Green housing project. Of all the villains featured in this article, none have a more sympathetic backstory than Candyman, and few performances are as bone-chillingly powerful as Tony Todd in the lead role.

8. Ginger Snaps (2000): There is something deliciously wicked about a horror film that takes male predatory behavior toward women and literally inverts it. Ginger Snaps tells the story of two socially ostracized sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, whose early struggles with puberty take a violent turn when the elder of the two is attacked by a werewolf. Much of the commentary here serves as metaphors for puberty, but there are particularly clever plot twists in which the men who hunt for Ginger’s flesh (sexually speaking) find that she is hunting for their flesh as well (because she’s a werewolf whose intentions are, well, less sexual).

9. Saw VI (2009): “Look at me! When you’re killing me you look at me!”

What makes “Saw VI” such a masterpiece — and yes, I just referred to a “Saw” film as a masterpiece, which I’m sure will cause many film snobs to want to revoke my critic card — is that its plot involves health insurance executives being forced to play the same life-and-death games that they regularly force on their customers. Released at a time when Obamacare’s right-wing critics claimed that the law would impose “death panels,” the Jigsaw Killer in “Saw VI” forces the main character to make literally life-and-death choices for other human beings using the same cold logic he employed bloodlessly as a business leader. The best of these is a carousel trap in which one character is forced to choose two of six people to live by weighing the “value” of their lives, not dissimilar at all from what health insurance companies do every day. And when one character realizes he is going to die, he has a poignant moment in which he demands that the man who has sentenced him to death at the very least have the decency to look him in the eyes before he goes.

It’s a level of moral accountability that most insurance companies avoid to this day.

10. ParaNorman (2012): Without giving away too much of the plot, this is a movie in which the ultimate bad guys aren’t the zombies or witches or ghosts that move the story forward. It’s the emotion of fear itself, one that causes human beings to act in distinctly inhumane ways when confronted with the unknown. This would be a profound message in any film, but it’s especially daring to put it in a motion picture aimed at children. Yet the movie’s message is both subtle and effective, and it even contains a bonus message at the end, when a character is revealed to be gay in a twist where the punchline is on the audience for assuming he would be straight.

Mark Halperin fired from NBC, MSNBC for sexual harassment

Mark Halperin (Credit: Getty/Frederick M. Brown)

Last week, political analyst Mark Halperin was accused by more than a dozen women of sexual harassment while he worked for ABC News, according to a CNN report. On Monday morning, NBC and MSNBC, Halperin’s most recent employers, terminated his contracts. He had already been on suspension at both networks, pending investigations.

Also Monday morning, one of Halperin’s accusers, Eleanor McManus — a journalist and former senior producer for CNN’s “Larry King Live” — shared her story on NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today.” She alleges that, while a student, she met Halperin at a political event and took him up on an offer to meet him at his office to receive career advice. What she experienced there was not what she had expected.

“At one point, I felt a bit too uncomfortable, and I stood up to thank him for the meeting,” McManus told Kelly. “That’s when he leaned in, tried to kiss me, and attempted to do a bit more. I didn’t want to offend the man in charge of political programming at ABC News, and I tried to be courteous and apologetic, and practically ran out of the office.”

McManus added that, for a time, she felt that the encounter was her fault, offering an object lesson why women shouldn’t blame themselves for what their abusers do. “I thought, maybe, was my dress a little too short?” she said. “Did I smile a little bit to much? Did I say something to lead him on? And I think it’s so important for women to understand today that it’s not their fault, and the only thing we can do is to come out there and speak about this.”

She described Halperin’s behavior as an “open secret,” much as how the rumors about Harvey Weinstein, James Toback and others bubbled around Hollywood for decades. “Everyone thought that is just normal,” McManus said.

McManus also said that she felt guilty for not speaking out sooner, which allowed Halperin’s behavior to continue with other women, which, in turn, deterred them from continuing in the business.

The allegations of the women that came forward to accuse Halperin included reports that he masturbated in front of an ABC employee and, with clothes on, pressed his genitals up against non-consenting women, CNN reported. Halperin has denied these allegations, but apologized for conduct “that was often aggressive and crude.” The CNN report also stated that Showtime and Penguin Press have all severed ties with Halperin in addition to NBC and MSNBC.

ABC, for its part, issued a less-than-thorough statement to CNN, never remarking on how it dealt with or could have possibly been unaware of Halperin’s alleged conduct. “Mark left ABC News over a decade ago,” the statement read, “and no complaints were filed during his tenure.”

Late last week, Halperin apologized for his behavior saying, “I have recognized conduct for which I feel profound guilt and responsibility, some involving junior ABC News personnel and women just starting out in the news business.” He added, “I know I can never do enough to make up for the harm I caused.”  It seems now, as then, too little too late.

Netflix cancels “House of Cards” amid sexual assault allegations against Kevin Spacey

Kevin Spacey in "House of Cards" (Credit: Netflix/David Giesbrecht)

Deadline is reporting that Netflix has determined that the forthcoming sixth season of its series “House of Cards” will be its last. The news comes less than 24 hours after actor Anthony Rapp accused “Cards” star and producer Kevin Spacey of sexually assaulting him in 1986, when Rapp was 14. There is, as of publication, no available statement from Netflix — but reliable sources, including the Hollywood Reporter and Variety, have also individually confirmed and reported the development.

It is still unclear whether there is a link between Rapp’s accusation, Spacey’s much-criticized apology and the cancellation of future seasons, though the timing is suggestive. Other details, such as whether the 13-episode sixth season will come to series conclusion or simply stop mid-narrative, are also unavailable at this time. Currently, “House of Cards” is reportedly over six weeks into its shooting schedule for season six.

In a comment that did not include news of the move above, Netflix and “House of Cards” co-producer Media Rights Capital stated “Media Rights Capital and Netflix are deeply troubled by last night’s news concerning Kevin Spacey. In response to last night’s revelations, executives from both of our companies arrived in Baltimore this afternoon to meet with our cast and crew to ensure that they continue to feel safe and supported.” The statement added “As previously scheduled, Kevin Spacey is not working on set at this time.”

As reported, Rapp, a star of Broadway and the ongoing CBS streaming series “Star Trek: Discovery,” alleged to Buzzfeed on Sunday that Spacey had cornered him in a bedroom during a party in the older actor’s New York City apartment in 1986 and “picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold.” Rapp added “But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me.” Rapp managed to extricate himself from that situation and kept the alleged incident private for over 30 years.

Spacey subsequently apologized via a public statement saying he was “beyond horrified” to hear the story and claiming that, if indeed the incident did happen, it was an example of “deeply inappropriate drunken behavior.” In the course of that public statement, Spacey confirmed the longstanding rumors that he is indeed homosexual.

That apology itself has become the focus of attention, as many inside and outside of the LGBT community have criticized Spacey for using his coming out as a means to deflect the seriousness of the allegations against him (again, Rapp was well under the age of consent in New York State at the time). “For a famous person to deflect these accusations with a long-in-the-making coming out is so cruel to his supposed new community it stings,” said writer Richard Lawson in a tweet that captured much of the spirit behind many other posts attacking Spacey for his statements.

As much as this is a turning point in the lives of Spacey and Rapp, it is also (somewhat less so) a turning point in the history of Netflix. Created with David Fincher, the “House of Cards” premiere in 2013 marked the streaming giant’s first successful foray into the sort of original, prestige television it has become known for. While later seasons of “House of Cards” have been inconsistent, it still has managed to garner over 45 Emmy nominations and seven wins over its run.

The previous, fifth season of “House of Cards” debuted in May 2017; prior to today’s news, the sixth season appeared on track to premiere around the same time in 2018. It is unclear if the currently unfolding news about Spacey or the show’s forthcoming cancellation will affect the show’s shooting schedule or release date.

How to ensure the fourth industrial revolution is “Made in the USA”

(Credit: Reuters/Chris Keane)

President Donald Trump has long talked about reinvigorating American manufacturing, which has suffered heavy job losses as a result of automation, trade deals and other factors.

In July, the Trump administration even celebrated “made in America” week by showcasing things built in the U.S. and hosting dozens of manufacturers at the White House.

Some of the highlighted products included golf balls made in Arizona, helicopters built in Connecticut and New York Steinway pianos — one product from every state.

To me, an engineer who studies the future of manufacturing, this focus on what the U.S. made yesterday will only go so far in saving American manufacturing. The U.S. needs to figure out what the country should make tomorrow — and invest heavily in it. Whether we do depends on our willingness to embrace the fourth industrial revolution, a new era that is beginning and is destined to be just as pivotal as the previous three.

Something great from all 50 states.

Revolutions one and two

So what is an industrial revolution and how can we take advantage of the current one?

Broadly speaking, we define something as an industrial revolution when great technological advancements are accompanied by significant socioeconomic and cultural changes.

The first one, from the late 1700s to mid-1800s, marked the transition from making goods by hand to using machines. Begun in Great Britain and adopted in Belgium, France, the U.S. and elsewhere, it was made possible by harnessing water and steam power and the development of machine tools and factories, leading to unprecedented change.

The second industrial revolution began in the late 1800s largely as a result of the invention of electricity and ushered in an era of mass production and assembly lines. Widespread adoption of technology — the telegraph, railroads, gas and water supplies, among others – not only enabled the movement of people and information like never before, it also led to the production of goods such as cars, fertilizer and petroleum.

Both revolutions had great socioeconomic and cultural impacts, some good, some bad. Basic necessities, such as food and clothing, became more available. Trade increased. Populations soared as people moved from rural areas to cities. At the same time, far more pollution led to serious health consequences, and unsafe labor conditions resulted in worker unrest.

Countries that spearheaded the first revolution dominated the second as well, but Germany, Japan and other nations also embraced the latter’s changes. The strong American role helped the U.S. become a global leader in manufacturing, which made the U.S. the world’s largest economy by 1913.

A third revolution and China’s rise

The introduction of computers and other digital electronics launched the third revolution in the 1950s, and there’s debate about whether we’re still in it. Among the key changes was automation, which led to China’s rise.

Repetitive and low-skill tasks once performed by people, especially on assembly lines, were handed over to machines, which became ubiquitous in auto plants and made switchboard operators obsolete. From a consumer and cultural standpoint, this era is often identified with the profound changes resulting from the introduction of television and personal computers.

During the third revolution, the U.S. began to cede its lead manufacturer role to China as the latter invested in industrial production and education and eased restrictive trade policies. For the U.S., that meant textile mills and steel plants closed, leading to the loss of more than four million manufacturing jobs.

Yet manufacturing remains an integral part of the U.S. economy, employing almost 13 million people in the production of electronics, automobiles, airplanes, refined oil, plastics, pharmaceuticals and more.

Today China and the U.S. both jockey for the lead as the world’s most dominant manufacturing nation.

That makes it all the more pivotal which countries dominate the next industrial revolution, whether it’s already happening (as I believe), or if we’re on the brink of it.

Industry 4.0

The fourth industrial revolution focuses on artificial intelligence, big data, the internet of things and other emerging technologies that fuse the physical, digital and biological worlds.

How impactful it will be compared with previous revolutions is open to speculation. But we’ve already seen a glimpse of a world in which self-driving cars, personalized medicine and humans working alongside robots are likely to be the norm.

While some of these technological advancements may be rejected — Google Glass anyone? — there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the future. Our ability to detect and treat serious diseases will improve. Autonomous vehicles could make our roads safer while reducing congestion and pollution. More robots mean fewer humans performing dull, dangerous and dirty jobs.

Like previous industrial revolutions, these changes will cause socioeconomic and cultural shifts. Some argue the pace of these shifts will increase compared with previous revolutions. Others worry the less fortunate will be left behind and are making plans, such as universal basic income, to ameliorate negative consequences.

Smart robots like these at a BMW plant in Leipzig, Germany, and other autonomous systems are part of the fourth revolution.

Global leadership up for grabs

So who will lead fourth industrial revolution?

In 2011, the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology sensed the U.S. risked economic, social and political security if it was not at the forefront and recommended the government create a series of public-private partnerships to support advanced manufacturing initiatives. Known today as “Manufacturing USA,” these initiatives created a number of national institutes each with a particular emphasis including 3D printing, digital manufacturing and flexible electronics.

By bringing together industry, academia and government, these partnerships began the process of training the workforce for new and emerging careers, facilitating the transfer of technology from the lab to the market, and increasing our nation’s overall competitiveness.

These investments, as well as additional efforts by the Trump administration, can help the U.S. maintain and build its manufacturing sector.

However, given how rapidly technology is evolving, the nation faces significant challenges. Germany and Japan are developing formidable strategies to lead globally in the fourth industrial revolution. Mexico and South Korea stand ready to claim their share of the opportunities as well. And despite the slowdown of China’s economic growth, it remains an economic powerhouse.

In short, global leadership is up for grabs.

The U.S. may never surpass Singapore’s capabilities in biotech fabrication, Taiwan’s capacity in optoelectronics manufacturing or South Korea’s prominence in biopharma production.

But significant opportunities exist in emerging industries such as autonomous systems, defense technologies and energy harnessing and storage. And of course, someone needs to produce the digitally enabled machines and robotic systems that actually fabricate these systems — this could end up being a data-driven reboot of the machinery industry. The U.S. could end up being the leader in any or all of these depending upon the steps it soon takes.

President Trump gestures to some of the items manufactured in the U.S. during ‘Made in America’ week in July.

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

How to move forward

Besides trying to lead the revolution, another concern Americans need to address is how to ensure today’s U.S. manufacturing base is not left behind.

The University at Buffalo, for example, my school, has partnered with the Digital Design and Manufacturing Innovation Institute — part of Manufacturing USA — and education technology company Coursera to develop a massive open online course that addresses the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the fourth revolution.

We’re not alone. Universities in Louisiana have created a consortium to support advanced manufacturing and education. Meanwhile the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed a number of programs to bolster next generation manufacturing. There are numerous other programs nationwide many with a regional focus, but all aimed at empowering the nation’s collective capabilities.

Members of the current and emerging workforce will need to adapt to the significant changes on their way because they’re unlikely to be stopped.

Fortunately, just as old jobs will be lost, new manufacturing jobs will emerge. And those displaced workers who are willing will be able to find new opportunities. Several groups are identifying what they will look like.

As we move towards a manufacturing resurgence, there are significant opportunities across our academic institutions, research laboratories and production floors that require innovative science, technology, practice and education.

However, without continued significant private and public investment, the U.S. may find itself being late to the party already commencing in advanced manufacturing.

Kemper E. Lewis, Professor and Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

America now has 6 political parties

(Credit: Inequality Media/YouTube)

The old Democratic and Republican parties are exploding. When you take a closer look, America actually has six political parties right now:

1. Establishment Republicans, consisting of large corporations, Wall Street, and major GOP funders. Their goal is to have their taxes cut.

2. Anti-establishment Republicans, consisting of Tea Partiers, the Freedom Caucus, and libertarians. Their goal is to have a smaller government with shrinking deficits and debts. Many of them also want to get Big Money out of politics and end crony capitalism.

3. Social conservative Republicans — evangelicals and rural Southern whites. They want America to return to what they call “Christian” values.

4. Establishment Democrats — corporate and Wall Street executives and upper middle-class professionals. They’d also like a tax cut, but they believe in equal rights.

5. Anti-establishment Democrats — younger, grassroots movement types, and progressives who still call themselves Democrats. Their biggest issues are widening inequality, racism, sexism, and climate change. They also want to get Big Money out of politics and they reject crony capitalism.

6. The sixth party is Trump. This party consists of Donald J. Trump and his fanatical followers. Trump’s goal is to get more money for himself, get more power for himself, get more attention to himself, and get even.

Whoever can put together elements of a governing coalition among these six parties will win future elections.

One possibility is a coalition of anti-establishment Democrats who want to get big money out of politics and who reject crony capitalism, and anti-establishement Republicans who want the same.

The other possible coalition is establishment Democrats who want their taxes cut and establishment Republicans who want the same.

The nuclear dreams of President Donald Trump

(Credit: AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Preventing a nuclear war between the United States and North Korea may be the most pressing challenge facing the world right now.

Our childish, ignorant, and incompetent president is shoving all of us — especially the people of Asia — ever nearer to catastrophe. While North Korea probably hasn’t yet developed the missiles to deliver a nuclear warhead to the U.S. mainland, it certainly has the capacity to reach closer targets, including South Korea and Japan.

But what can ordinary people do about it? Our fingers are far removed from the levers of power, while the tiny digits of the man occupying the “adult day care center” we call the White House hover dangerously close to what people my age used to call “the Button.” Nevertheless, I think there may still be time to put our collective foot on the brakes, beginning with the promise of a bill currently languishing in Congress.

Meanwhile, many of us who were born in the post-World War II years are re-experiencing nightmares we thought we’d left safely in the past.

Duck and cover

I was born seven years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Like the rest of my generation of Americans, I grew up in the shadow — or perhaps more accurately, the glow — of “the Bomb” (which, in those days, we did indeed capitalize). I remember the elementary school ritual of joining a line of neat, obedient second-graders crouching on knees and elbows against a protective concrete hallway wall, hands covering the backs of our necks. I remember coming home from school, recounting that day’s activities to my mother and watching as she rushed to the bathroom to vomit — her all-too-literal gut reaction to a world in which her children were being prepared in school for global annihilation.

In class, we saw civil defense films produced by the government, like the one that encouraged us to “set aside a small supply of canned goods” in makeshift basement shelters. “They’re safe from radioactivity,” the narrator assured us, as a lovely, young, white mother confidently placed the last can firmly on the cupboard shelf. (The film was far less enlightening about what to do once that “small supply” ran out.) Other movies reminded us that we should always be aware of the location of the nearest fallout shelter or taught us how to duck and cover.

By 1961, my family had moved from rural New York State to Washington, D.C., where my mother got a job with the brand new Peace Corps. Everywhere in my new city I saw the distinctive black-and-yellow signsindicating fallout shelter locations. The student body at Alice Deal Junior High School was too big for hallway drills. Instead, at the appointed time, we would all be herded into the auditorium, where a solemn-faced principal would describe the secret underground shelter where we would all be safe, should the Soviets actually launch a nuclear attack on our country. I remember bursting out laughing, while my homeroom teacher fixed me with an angry stare. Who was the principal kidding? We lived in Washington, the number one political target of any potential Soviet nuclear strike. Even then, I was aware enough to know that, whether above ground or under it, we would either fry immediately or die of radioactive poisoning thereafter.

In my family, we joked about bomb shelters. We knew they wouldn’t save us. So I remember being shocked when, in the early 1960s, we visited the family of a friend of my mother’s named Yarmolinsky.  We kids were all sent out to play behind their suburban Virginia home, where my brother and I stumbled upon a large dome in the middle of the woods. “What’s that?” we asked our new friends.

“Oh, that’s our fallout shelter,” one of them replied.

I was stunned. The Yarmolinskys lived just a few miles from Washington and yet they had their own fallout shelter! They were crazy. What I didn’t know then was that the father, Adam Yarmolinsky, at the time a special assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and one of his “whiz kids,” was the architect of a “complicated domestic [program] to expand the construction of fallout shelters in American homes.”

Indeed, “shelter morality” became one of the favorite ethical issues of the day. The question was: What responsibility would people who had the sense to build such shelters before an attack have for people who failed to do the same? In 1962, Life magazine published a cover story urging the government to build mass shelters in order to avoid just such a future division between “haves” and “have-nots.” It quoted a Mrs. Florence Ergang who said, “I am dismayed at shelter morality. It is natural to protect one’s family, but my ethics dictate that my neighbors be protected too.”

Even today, students in college political science or business ethics classes sometimes wrestle with the “fallout shelter exercise” (although the quandary it lays out undoubtedly seems to them like a scene from ancient history). In that exercise, students are asked to decide which individuals — a Latina prostitute and her infant son, a white male biologist, and so on — should be allowed to remain in a fallout shelter with limited space and supplies. There’s even a fallout shelter game for your cell phone where the characters are a bit more multicultural than in the civil defense films of the 1950s — although all three women pictured on the home screen still wear little-girl skirts.

As an adolescent, I knew all the words to satirist Tom Lehrer’s “Who’s Next.” (“First we got the bomb, and that was good/’cause we love peace and motherhood. . .”) I read the nuclear thriller “Failsafe,” the grim, end-of-everything novel “On the Beach,” and that peculiar mixture of racism and nuclear terror, Robert Heinlein’s “Farnham’s Freehold,” in which a nuclear blast sends the author’s self-reliant, libertarian hero into a dystopic future “America.” There, Black people oppress the white population — to the point of regarding young white women as culinary delicacies. Yes, the science fiction writer who gave the world “Stranger in a Strange Land” and taught hippies how to “grok” (to understand something deeply and intuitively) also created that perfect fictional confection of the fears of comfortable white people of the 1960s.

It’s hard to explain, especially to those who were born after the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, taking with it the immediate fear of nuclear holocaust, what it was like to grow up in the knowledge that such a war was coming within your lifetime. It’s hard to describe what it was like to lie awake at night waiting for the sound of the sirens that would let us all know it was happening. During those long nights, I hid a transistor radio under my pillow, turning it on repeatedly to reassure myself that the pop-rock station I disdained during the daytime was still transmitting top 40 hits, not duck-and-cover instructions.

My morbid preoccupations weren’t unusual in that era.  The constant threat of nuclear war formed the background radiation for the childhood of a whole generation. All my friends, many of whose parents worked for the federal government, shared my fears. When we said good night on the phone, my high school boyfriend and I sometimes wondered aloud if we’d see each other the next day. Our adolescent reckoning with our own mortality became a confrontation with the mortality of our species, and it made some of us more than a little crazy. We lived with a curious wartime consciousness, in which we planned for our futures while knowing that there might be none to plan for.

A dose of reality

So much for the never-realized fears of the baby boomers. How likely is Donald Trump not just to revive them, but to start a nuclear war with North Korea in 2017? Several indicators suggest that the danger isn’t as great as some of us may fear.

* Trump has yet to follow through on his August 9th threat to rain “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea, should it again threaten to attack the United States. Nor has he implemented his breathtaking guarantee at the United Nations that, should North Korea “force” us “to defend ourselves or our allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy” it. In both cases, as political scientist Steven Brams has pointed out, Trump’s rhetoric left the location of his nuclear tripwire so vague that even he may not know where it is or when it might be crossed. As recently as October 13th, according to the New York Times, North Korean officials “renewed their threat to launch ballistic missiles near Guam, an American territory in the western Pacific.” There has been no response from Trump, so we can only assume that, whatever he means by a North Korean threat, that isn’t it. Fortunately for the world, it seems that he’s treating such promises the way he treats all his utterances — as infinitely subject to reinterpretation or even retraction.

* The president’s threats to use nuclear weapons may well be another instance of his well-documented “negotiating” tactics, in which he launches a bargaining process with a preposterous starting position in order to make the merely outrageous appear like a reasonable compromise.

* Even in the case of another U.S. adversary that may have sought nuclear weapons in the past — Iran — Trump has not been as decisively destructive as he could have been. Although he has railed endlessly against the six-nation nuclear agreement with Iran, negotiated in large part by President Obama, he didn’t tear it up recently (as he has often promised to do). Rather, he punted the problem to Congress, simply refusing to certify that Iran is abiding by the agreement, in spite of International Atomic Energy Agency assurances that it is. For a man who has an obvious urge to wield autocratic power, Trump is surprisingly willing to dilute it to get credit with his base while avoiding genuine action.

Those are modestly hopeful signs — although it’s hardly a hopeful sign of anything that the world is reduced to reading an American president’s words as if they were so many throws of the “I Ching.” Unfortunately, we must also consider ways in which Trump’s presence in the White House makes nuclear war more likely.

* He has repeatedly expressed a personal fascination with nuclear weapons, although he seems to have little idea of what their actual use might mean. In March 2016, for instance, he told “The O’Reilly Factor” on Fox News that he might even consider using nuclear weapons in Europe, which he called “a big place,” as if some parts of it might be legitimate nuclear targets. And he added, “I’m not going to take cards off the table.” At an MSNBC town hall that same month, he proposed using nuclear weapons against the “caliphate” of the Islamic State. Nuclear weapons directed against guerrilla fighters? That makes so much sense!

When Chris Matthews suggested that Japanese citizens might be nervous on hearing a presidential candidate bring up the use of nuclear weapons, Trump responded by asking, “Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?” It might be a reasonable question, if someone other than Donald Trump had been asking it.

When word first surfaced that his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had called him a “moron,” some of us wondered which of Trump’s many displays of ignorance had occasioned the label. Now we know.  It seems to have been the president’s suggestion, at a July 2017 national security briefing, that the United States should increase its current nuclear arsenal of around 4,000 warheads by a factor of 10.

* The advisers Trump seems to respect the most at the moment are generals or former generals, including his chief of staff John Kelly, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster. Commentators (including some on the liberal end of the spectrum) like to think of this coterie of military men as the “grown-ups” in the Trumpian room. I’m not convinced, but even if they are more temperamentally suited to governing than this president, they have a tendency, not surprisingly, to reach first for military solutions to diplomatic problems.

Mattis, for example, has warned of “a massive military response” to any North Korean threat to the U.S. or its allies. “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea,” he told the reporters in September, “but as I said, we have many options to do so.” Similarly, when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked McMaster, “[J]ust to be clear, threats alone will not provoke a U.S. military response, will they?” the general replied, “Well, it depends on the nature of the threat, right?” McMaster then essentially argued that, because Kim Jong-un has had family members killed and is cruel to the North Korean people, he must be too unstable to understand how mutually assured destruction (a Cold War nuclear strategy with the apt acronym MAD) is supposed to work. Oddly enough, another communist dictator, Joseph Stalin, who presided over party purges and the deaths of millions of Soviet citizens, seemed to comprehend the concept well enough, but those inscrutable Asians are apparently altogether different.

Even retired General Kelly has recently said that North Korea simply cannot be allowed to have “the ability to reach the homeland” with nuclear-armed missiles, “cryptically telling reporters,” according to CNN, that “if the threat grows ‘beyond where it is today, well, let’s hope that diplomacy works.'”

* Trump’s civilian advisors aren’t much better. In September, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the administration “wanted to be responsible and go through all diplomatic means to get [the North Koreans’] attention first.” But, she warned, “if that doesn’t work, General Mattis will take care of it.” Lest listeners should be confused about how he’d “take care” of that country, she explained as bluntly as the president had: “If North Korea keeps on with this reckless behavior, if the United States has to defend itself or defend its allies in any way, North Korea will be destroyed.”

Certainly, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has repeatedly brought up the need to keep communication channels open to North Korea, even in the face of Trump’s tweeted advice “that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man.” Nevertheless, he seems to expect diplomacy to “fail.” On October 15th, Tillerson explained to CNN that “those diplomatic efforts will continue until the first bomb drops.” Until? Why does he assume bombs will fall? And exactly who does he expect to drop the first one? Is he talking about a possible U.S. first strike?

It’s as if the entire administration has accepted the inevitability of an otherwise optional war. If you want an analogy, consider the way George W. Bush’s administration maintained the pretext of being open to negotiations with Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein until it launched its preordained invasion and the first bombs and cruise missiles began to hit Baghdad on March 20, 2003.

* Trump wants to rule by command. The niceties of the Constitution, the law, and the doctrine of the separation of powers have made this harder than he thought. So far, his attempts to run the country by executive order have largely failed, with his “third one’s the charm” Muslim ban once again stalledin the courts. Even his latest move to dismantle Obamacare by ending federal premium subsidies won’t take immediate effect. Indeed, it already faces legal challenges from at least 18 states.

He’s frustrated. Why can’t he just wave a hand, like Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the Starship Enterprise, and order his underlings to “make it so”?

As it happens, there is one realm in which the Constitution, the legal system, and Congress make no difference, one realm where he can do exactly that. He, and he alone, has the power to order a nuclear strike. The more that what remains of law and custom can still prevent him from ruling by fiat elsewhere, the more likely he may be, as Senator Bob Corker has warned us, to put the world “on the path to World War III” and to the first use of such weapons since August 9, 1945.

Pull his fingers off the button

Congress would still have time to stop this madness, if it had the courage to do so. There are a number of actions it could take, including passing a law that would require a unanimous decision by a specified group of people (for example, officials like the secretaries of state and defense together with the congressional leadership) for a nuclear first strike.

Better yet, Congress could reassert its long-abdicated constitutional right to declare war. It could, for example, approve a simple piece of legislation introduced in January by Representative Ted Lieu of California. According to the Congressional Research Service, his bill, House Resolution 669, the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2017, “prohibits the president from using the Armed Forces to conduct a first-use nuclear strike unless such strike is conducted pursuant to a congressional declaration of war expressly authorizing such strike.”

Congress should act while there is still time.  Removing Trump’s ability to unilaterally launch a nuclear attack might ease some fears in Pyongyang. And the rest of us might once again be able to sleep at night.

Meet the 12-year-old trailblazer fighting for equality in kids’ books

(Credit: Sandra Whittington/Narratively)

Marley Dias, who is 12, arrives in New York’s Fashion District wheeling a suitcase filled with blazers, sneakers, and ten pairs of eyeglasses. She’s traveled in a town car from her home in New Jersey to be photographed for a publication that is presenting her with an award in November, which will debut this winter. She’s wearing a translucent pink plastic pair of glasses, Converse, a three-quarter-length baseball tee, and cut-off jeans.

Dias’s publicist hugs her and steps back like a mother surveying her daughter who’s just come back from college, commenting on how tall Dias has grown. The publicist introduces Dias around to the camera crew, who has been toying with the placement of stacks of books against a stark white backdrop. There’s a lot of chatter at once as the makeup artist and stylist size up Dias and lead her into the dressing room for privacy. The windowsill is lined with clip-on bows and jeweled hair accessories. Tomboy suits hang off the clothing racks. There’s a suggestion that Dias wrap her hair into pigtails, and then some discussion about whether that will look too childish. Dias sits in the dressing chair. As the makeup artist begins dabbing the brush in the liquid foundation, the publicist interjects to say she doesn’t want Dias to wear too much makeup. She should look her age.

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Her mother, Janice Johnson Dias, who is the president of the small non-profit GrassROOTS Community Foundation, asked Dias over breakfast one morning what she had learned over the year. Johnson Dias likes to pose the question, “What happens when you see your own problem? What are you going to do to solve it?” Dias, then only 11, said she wanted to attempt to collect one thousand books that featured black girls as the main character. She had been reading stories in school, like “Where the Red Fern Grows,” that featured “boys and their dogs” and couldn’t relate to these protagonists. In November of 2015, Dias, then in sixth grade, launched a campaign called #1000BlackGirlBooks.

“I thought that was a very big problem,” she says of being assigned books that featured mainly white men and boys, “because kids don’t experience the same thing.”

Kathleen Horning, the director of Cooperative Children’s Book Center, which documents the number of books by and about people of color, found in 2013 that of the 650 young adult fiction books it tracked that year about humans, only 36 featured people of color as the main character, about five percent of the total. Two years later in 2015, the organization found eight percent of children’s books featured African Americans as main characters, less than one percent Native American, three percent Asian Pacific, and over 73 percent white characters. Twelve percent featured “animals, trucks, etc.” which shows there were more kids’ books being published about inanimate objects than about people of color.

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Several organizations are trying to address the disparity, including Writing in the Margins, which mentors emerging writers and We Need Diverse Books, which advocates for change in the publishing industry. Its co-founder Dhonielle Clayton, who was a librarian for six years, said she wouldn’t have been able to fill one shelf of books that featured children of color as the main characters. One student, a girl of color, asked Dhonielle to pick out a book for her about a witch, one who looked like she did, and Clayton couldn’t find one.

“We’re looking at stereotyping and erasure as a form of censure in children’s books. You can see how children’s books are a form of programming in this country,” she says.

“It’s exhausting to talk to people who are ignorant and don’t get it,” Clayton continues, speaking about the lack of diversity within publishing houses, as well as in the books they put out — where a 2015 survey by Lee and Low Books showed that 79 percent of people in the industry were white and only four percent black. “You give up, you hit roadblocks, people think you’re trying to dispossess them. Diversity is not about replacing. It’s about enhancing and adding. The pie is not going to be gobbled up by one group.”

* * *

Twelve days from Dias’s scheduled deadline to collect her 1,000 books, which was set for the end of January 2016, she had only received 200 books, which she planned to donate to a school in St. Mary, Jamaica, where her mother is from. But the campaign grabbed the attention of the local FOX news station, “Good Day Philadelphia” — where she was interviewed wearing lime-green sunglasses — and afterward, the media and press requests began pouring in. Shortly after, she appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” as her parents proudly beamed from the audience.

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The campaign blew up from there, turning Dias into a sought-after mini celebrity. Later that year, the Poughkeepsie School Districted paid her $6,500 to give an hour-long speech to staff and a workshop to fifty students.

“The first time I saw her on T.V., I cried,” says Sonia Fergus, the mother of Dias’s childhood friend, who accompanied her to the photo shoot. “Most people don’t get to do what they love and she’s getting to do that.”

Almost two years since the campaign began, Dias has now gathered over 10,000 books, and about 2,000 unique titles with donations from places like Barnes & Noble. She sent the donations to schools and social service organizations across the United States and Jamaica. Last summer, she was asked to create a zine for Elle.com, which was a big deal for her because her life goal is to become a magazine editor. She interviewed Hillary Clinton, filmmaker Ava DuVernay, and Misty Copeland, who she’s a “huge fan” of and says she models her life after the ballet dancer’s “grace and elegance.” Her first book will be published by Scholastic early next year, which Dias describes as guide for girls over ten that shows how they can change the world “in their own way that’s not just in a soup kitchen.”

Dias wants to keep working on issues of diversity and literacy, hoping one day to perhaps host or produce a show and empower other kids to speak out.

Johnson Dias says her daughter is not afraid to stand up for others, like helping friends who are challenged by schoolwork. Though much of her job requires being in the spotlight, she doesn’t like to draw attention to herself. When she first noticed the lack of diverse books in her school, she kept mum and didn’t appeal to her teachers. However, Dias’s new role has matured her beyond what many young teenagers experience.

“She has changed. I think she’s more serious with the social responsibility. It’s no longer about her and she’s carrying that weight more than I as her mother would have liked,” she says.

* * *

Before the four-hour long photo shoot begins, Dias’s makes sure she eats eats lunch. A caterer has delivered salmon, kale salad, and an assortment of cookies. Dias is still hungry for the fish after it’s gone so the publicist slices off a piece of hers and puts it on Dias’s plate. As she eats, Dias takes out her cellphone and starts scrolling through her Instagram page to show off her school friends, who she says are so diverse, they’re like the United Nations.

“Only ten percent of people are left-handed,” she says, changing the topic with a fact she repeats later for the camera crew.

Her first outfit change is a plaid navy jacket under a white collared shirt, pants, white high-top Converse and clear eyeglasses. She’s decided to try the pigtails. They’re secured with little bows.

She sits cross-legged on the floor against the color-coordinated stacks of books, switching between making silly faces and pretending to read. The photographer sits bare-footed a few feet away, directing Dias where to sit, when to stand and how to pose.

As the campaign snowballed, Johnson Dias expected her daughter’s grades to dip, but Dias continued to qualify for honors classes.

“I think there are moments when she likes this and moments when she dislikes it,” Johnson Dias says about her daughter. “It’s uncomfortable when it interrupts her being a kid.”

Dias echoes that sentiment. She doesn’t always like to dress up and prefers not to stay out late. She gets to travel now and meet influential people, but she can’t see her friends all the time and has missed some school. She acknowledges that being in the public eye means her freedom is limited compared to other kids.

“People like to think of me as an author or a personality,” she says during the shoot. “But childhood is a very special time in your life and you never get that back.”

But she’s forging ahead with the pursuit as a means to pave the way for other kids.

“I want to actually change the system we live in,” she says.

The mental health toll of Puerto Rico’s prolonged power outages

Jose Garcia Vicente holds a piece of plumbing he picked up, as he shows his destroyed home, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, Monday, Sept. 25, 2017. The U.S. ramped up its response Monday to the humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico while the Trump administration sought to blunt criticism that its response to Hurricane Maria has fallen short of it efforts in Texas and Florida after the recent hurricanes there. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) (Credit: AP)

More than a month has passed since Hurricane Maria’s initial landfall in Puerto Rico, but around 80 percent of the island still remains without power.

As residents grapple with the immediate damage, it’s worth asking what the health effects will be over the long term. How do we identify those most vulnerable, and, with limited resources, tailor public health interventions?

I have studied various disasters’ effects on health, from the Sept. 11 terrorist attack to Hurricane Sandy. Based on my studies of hurricanes and power outages, we can expect to see a number of lasting effects on Puerto Rico in the months ahead, including mental health issues.

Lasting impact

After Hurricane Sandy, the power was out for about 12 to 14 days, with variations across the eight affected counties in New York City.

We found that Hurricane Sandy had immediate effects on certain types of mental health problems. Residents reported more emergency department visits due to anxiety and mood disorder after the hurricane, compared to the same period pre-Sandy.

Most emergency department visits due to mental health after Sandy involved substance abuse. This was especially true during the power outage. There were about 200 emergency department cases of substance abuse during Sandy and the blackout period, about four times as many as usual.

According to the data we’ve collected and are still analyzing, the negative effects from Hurricane Sandy on certain mental health illnesses — such as mood disorder and substance abuse — lasted anywhere from three months to as long as one year after the disaster, depending on the county.

Why did the stress endure for so long? Hurricanes and loss of power also lead to a loss of essential services for communities — such as access to food, clean water, transportation and communication. Lasting home damage can induce anxiety and depression among the residents in the affected areas, especially for those with preexisting mental health problems.

Puerto Rico is missing these basic services, making daily life more stressful and thus more likely to cause mental suffering over the weeks and months ahead.

Who’s affected?

Mental health issues reach all demographic groups. However, some seem to be more strongly affected by power outages than others.

During the Northeast blackout in 2003, which occurred over three hot August days, women and the elderly had 19 percent and 158 percent higher risks, respectively, for respiratory hospital admission than during the nonblackout period.

Our research suggests that socioeconomic status also significantly influences people’s susceptibility to adverse mental health after a disaster. Generally, groups of low socioeconomic status are more susceptible to heat’s impact. But, when that heat coincided with a blackout, we found that the trend reversed: Higher socioeconomic status groups were more likely to be hospitalized during a blackout.

Hospital admissions for respiratory diseases among high-income people significantly increased by 23 percent after the Northeast blackout. Our preliminary data also show that whites had significantly higher rates of emergency department visits than black and Hispanic individuals after Hurricane Sandy.

Why? One possible explanation is that groups of high socioeconomic status are more likely to use nebulizers, air conditioners or other electric home aids. Their dependence on this equipment could make them more susceptible to a hurricane’s effect during a power outage.

What this means for Puerto Rico

It’s not easy to recover after an unexpected disaster.

Rebuilding the transmission and distribution network will be an enormous task. With the help of outside aid, Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rosselló hopes to restore electricity to half of the island by Nov. 15 and to 95 percent of the island by the end of the year.

The power outage in Puerto Rico has already lasted almost four weeks, much longer than the blackout in New York City during Hurricane Sandy. We should expect to see a corresponding increase in disease — not only mental health issues, but also diseases that depend on electricity for treatment, such as renal failure, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Effective responses by different levels of governmental agencies are critical after a natural disaster. Public health officials need to monitor consequent mental health cases. A medical monitoring or surveillance program to follow up with the long-term health impacts would also be beneficial to the local residents.

Shao Lin, Professor of Public Health, University at Albany, State University of New York

5 ways to avoid a marijuana-related trip to the emergency room

(Credit: Getty/Juanmonino)

Millions of people manage to use marijuana without suffering any deleterious consequences, but a few do manage to get so messed up they seek help at hospital emergency rooms. You don’t have to be that person, and if you can avoid doing some dumb things, you won’t be.

What dumb things, you ask? We have some answers, thanks to a study just published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. The study examined hospital ER visits in Colorado since marijuana legalization and found five leading causes for marijuana-related hospital visits.

Before getting to the don’t-do list, it’s worth remembering that although reports of pot leading to people being rushed to the ER sounds pretty scary, no one is dying of a marijuana overdose or suffering heart attacks or organ failures. A bad marijuana experience can be frightening and panic-inducing, but it’s not going to kill you.

It’s also worth noting that two of the top five causes don’t actually have anything to do with consuming marijuana, although they are “marijuana-related.”

That said, here are five things to avoid doing if you want to stay out of the ER.

1. Don’t let your kids gobble up marijuana edibles. Pediatric ingestion was the number one reason for pot-related ER visits. Before legalization, the fear was that it would drive up teen use, but teen marijuana use rates stayed unchanged since legalization. The real problem with youth and weed turned out to be little kids eating what looked like candy or cookies. Colorado addressed the issue with a law that went into effect October 1 banning the production and sale of edibles that might appeal to children, but there is also an issue of parental (or guardian) responsibility here. If you’re using edibles and there are kids around, you need to ensure they can’t get at them.

2. Don’t get too damned high. The second leading cause of marijuana-related ER visits was acute intoxication. Now that you can go to the pot shop in Colorado and buy not just high-octane weed, but also concentrated concoctions like wax and shatter with staggeringly high THC levels and yummy edibles where you can’t eat just one, it’s easy to get too high. That can result in very unpleasant anxiety attacks or panic reactions. Fortunately, people reporting to the ER for acute intoxication are back out the door in a couple of hours. And lots of them are tourists, the study reported. If you’re a newbie, start slow with a couple of puffs of bud or pulls off the vape, not with 90% THC dabs and a blowtorch. If you’re doing edibles, start with a 10 milligram dose and wait at least an hour before deciding you’re not feeling it and need to do more. Be cautious, not reckless.

3. Don’t keep on using if you’re busy puking your guts out. Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome — uncontrollable vomiting and epigastric pain — was the third most frequent cause of pot-related ER visits. CHS reportedly afflicts chronic, heavy marijuana users. First reported in the scientific literature a little more than a dozen years ago, the condition is considered rare, but here it is showing up with some frequency. The nature of the relationship between marijuana and CHS remains murky, and the only known treatment is to stop using marijuana.

4. Don’t use fake weed. I mean really. If you’re in a state where you can grow real weed or buy it at the pot shop, why on earth would you use nasty synthetic cannabinoids? Yet people messed up on K2 and Spice and the like are the fourth most common “marijuana-related” cause of ER visits. Unlike real marijuana, synthetic cannabinoids can cause “metabolic derangement,” organ failure, and death, not to mention psychotic breakdowns. Stick with the real thing.

5. Don’t blow yourself up trying to make cannabis oil. People trying to extract cannabis oils using inflammable solvents such as butane were the fifth most common pot-related reason for heading for the ER. As with the fake weed above, this doesn’t actually have anything to do with consuming marijuana (unless being too baked while cooking played a role), but instead with people messing around with things that explode and/or catch fire. If you insist on doing it yourself, create your own honey oil or dabs with safe extraction methods, and don’t risk blowing yourself up.

Although marijuana is pretty darned safe compared to other drugs, it is an intoxicating substance, and with mass use under legalization problems can arise. But most of the actual marijuana-related emergencies were the result of overindulgence, whether through naivety or accident, and resulted in nothing more than a few hours of medical attention for disorientation or panic. The number of those visits can be minimized with some basic common sense and as the public becomes more accustomed to the presence of pot.