Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 291

How the latest effort to repeal Obamacare would affect millions

Mitch McConnell (Credit: Getty/Drew Angerer)

At the end of July, the nation held its collective breath as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) looked poised to achieve his most formidable parliamentary accomplishment: the repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act.

But Republican hopes were dashed by one of their own, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who cast the deciding vote that appeared to decisively derail the multi-year effort.

McCain called to return to “regular order,” to work through committees, to bring in and listen to experts, to be open and transparent, and perhaps most importantly, to at least listen to both parties.

And indeed, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) went to work, bringing together demands from Republicans like more flexibility for states to waive certain provisions of the ACA, and demands from Democrats to provide cost-sharing subsidies, for example, to stabilize health care markets. The bipartisanship appeared to be spreading as Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) appeared to have reached an agreement on the future of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Now Republican hopes of repealing the ACA have been rekindled with the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson Amendment led by Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La).

Like all health care legislation, the bill is complex, but the broad outlines of it are rather clear: It would undo much of the reforms implemented through the ACA and then go a step further.

What’s in the bill?

Senate Republicans are rushed once more as they want to achieve health care reform by September 30, the deadline to pass the bill through the reconciliation process which requires only a simple majority. Indeed, due to their haste, the Congressional Budget Office will not be able to provide any estimates of the bill’s effects on the deficit, health insurance coverage or premiums.

Graham-Cassidy seeks to undo many of the reforms initiated by the ACA. For one, by 2020 it would eliminate the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, which has provided coverage for 12 million Americans for states that chose to expand their program. However, it would prevent new states from expanding their program by 2017. It would also eliminate the insurance marketplace subsidies to assist individuals purchase coverage and with out-of-pocket costs.

To soften states’ financial losses, Graham-Cassidy partially replaces funding for both components with a temporary block grant to states that would run out in 2026. Yet even with the block grant, states would see their funding reduced by a combined US$239 billion over six years, according to an analysis by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Graham-Cassidy also significant alters the regulatory reforms implemented via the ACA. The much-maligned individual and employer mandates would be repealed retroactively. The individual mandate requires that all people of a certain income buy insurance or face a penalty. The employer mandate requires that all employers of a certain size provide insurance to their employees.

While individuals still could not be turned down based on their health status, states could also obtain waivers to weaken or wholly eliminate preexisting condition protections. For example, the Center for American Progress has estimated that individuals could face insurer premium surcharges of $140,000 for metastatic cancer, $17,000 for being pregnant and $26,000 for rheumatoid arthritis.

In one analysis, states could choose to not cover well visits to doctors.

rocketclips/www.shutterstock.com

Similarly, states would be able to waive the ACA’s Essential Health Benefit provisions that required insurers to cover cost for expenditures like ambulance transport, prescription drugs and inpatient services. This would affect all individuals in the respective states because lifetime and annual limits apply only to the Essential Health Benefits. States could also waive the requirement to cover preventive services like immunizations and well-child visits.

Yet like most of the previous efforts to repeal the ACA over the past several months, Graham-Cassidy goes well beyond addressing changes brought about by the ACA. Most severely, the bill moves to dramatically slash and transform the Medicaid program. It would do so by establishing severe per capita caps: that is, it would provide a set amount of money for each enrolled individual compared to an open-ended federal match. These caps, which would affect children, seniors and individuals with disabilities, would also begin in 2020. They would be adjusted by inflation, but not the much larger medical inflation. They would thus result in further reductions over time. The resulting cuts would amount to $175 billion by 2026.

It would also allow states to establish work requirements for the program, defund Planned Parenthood and further expand Health Savings Accounts, among other things.

However, unlike most of its predecessors, Graham-Cassidy provides political protections for its supporters because the full extent and severity of its cuts would not fully emerge until 2027, at least two elections away for most senators. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimated that the effect in 2027 alone, the cliff year, would amount to $300 billion. California alone would lose $58 billion, while the state of West Virginia would lose $2 billion. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also expects that more than 32 million Americans would lose their insurance.

A step backward … and not addressing the real issues

In my reading, Graham-Cassidy, just like all its predecessors, does little to fix the problems of the American health care system.

Our system is generally of low quality. Medical errors kill more than 250,000 Americans each year, making it the third leading cause of death. Prescription errors alone are responsible for more than 7,000 deaths. Virtually the entire developed world, and many less-developed countries, are ahead of us with regard to infant mortality. The list goes on.

Despite these obvious shortcomings, our health care system is also, by far, the most expensive system in the world. We spend more than 17 percent of our GDP, or well over $9,000 per person, on health care. This compares to 10 percent and $3,700 for Japan, 11 percent and $4,900 for Germany, and 9 percent and $3,300 for the United Kingdom.

And yet, even after the coverage expansions of the Affordable Care Act, and after spending more money from the public’s purses than all but two countries, our uninsurance rates just inched below 10 percent, and more than 28 million Americans are without insurance.

Indeed, we do not even cover all children in this country, although the rate of insurance from children reached a historic high of 95 percent.

With low quality, high costs and lack of universal coverage, much needs to be improved about the American health care system. Unfortunately, Graham-Cassidy as currently written does nothing to improve quality, and it does nothing to reduce the underlying drivers of excessive costs. Indeed, it reverses the significant progress achieved under the ACA in offering coverage to all Americans.

Large-scale changes to the American health care system cannot and should not be quickly patched together without input from the Congressional Budget Office, policy experts, the public and the other party. Many lives and one-sixth of our economy hang in the balance. The American public deserves better.

Simon Haeder, Assistant Professor of Political Science, West Virginia University

 

These 5 insulting terms could make you sound racist

(Credit: Getty/Geber86)

The following terms belong to a different era and have no place in our modern climate of heightened awareness, inclusion and empathy. Be cool, be aware, and consider not using these terms.

1. “Ethnic food”

I get it: when you were growing up, this was an acceptable term that applied to everything from Cantonese Chinese to what you probably thought was Mexican (in reality, your nachos and quesadillas are actually Tex-Mex). Non-ethnic food meant good ol’ classic American food, like Italian, burgers and fries, perhaps even your Eastern European-inspired pastrami on rye. Never mind the fact that Italian, Mexican, German, and Chinese cultures are all ethnicities. And never mind that most of those “classic” American foods were actually borrowed from waves of new immigrant groups and simmered slowly into the big melting pot of American culture. What are you actually talking about when you ask your friends of family if they want to get “ethnic food” tonight for dinner? Indian? Thai? Turkish? Just say that, please.

2. “Bad neighborhood”

To be totally honest with you, I only learned how offensive this term is a few years ago, and used it myself up until then. It was tossed around casually when I was growing up, particularly by the parents of friends who encouraged us to stay away from the “bad” cities that bordered our wealthy suburban town.

What you really mean when you say “bad” is “poor.” And when you imply that poor people are bad, you assume that the people who live in those neighborhoods don’t want to change the things that both you and they know are real problems: things like drug use, gangs, gun violence, litter and boarded-up buildings. It’s victim-blaming, and nothing more.

3. “Transvestite”

It’s not an offensive term in itself, but you I bet you’ve been using it incorrectly. Merriam-Webster provides this handy definition:

Transvestite: a person who wears clothes designed for the opposite sex: a cross-dresser

An older term for crossdresser is transvestite. Crossdressers often dress only in certain situations. They do not usually identify as transgender — most identify as straight men. — Laura Erickson-Schroth

I don’t have much to add to this. If you don’t know any members of the trans community, and you’re innocently trying to open a discussion about Caitlyn Jenner or Chelsea Manning, know that transgendered people are born feeling that their gender does not match their sexual anatomy. They may not necessarily undergo surgery to change this (nor is it polite to assume or ask about somebody’s body parts, ever). And the clothes they choose to wear are just one of many forms of self-expression, not a one-note representation of who they are.

4. “Urban culture”

Let’s put aside the fact that with the rapidly growing populations of our cities, “urban” has lost its prior implied meaning. Our nation’s urban areas are no longer delegated to black and brown peoples, and our suburbs are no longer 1950s-era white havens. Generally used in a derogatory sense by baby boomers ignorant of the many poverty-inducing factors that lead to inner-city strife, “urban culture” is not usually intended to include any of the magnificent artistic contributions of city-dwelling black or brown folks in an appreciative way. It’s usually used alongside negative stereotypes like sagging pants or loud music blasting from cars.

Lessons to be learned here: 1) stop thinking your culture is the only valid one; and 2) don’t lump all black and brown people into one bucket. There are many different styles of art, music, food, fashion, literature, and ways of life among non-white people.

5. “Indian”

Do you mean “Native Americans?” Then say that. Six-hundred years ago, Columbus landed in the Caribbean, and falsely believing he’d made it to India, named the indigenous peoples he came across (and later cheated, stole from and launched a genocide against) after an entirely different people he had never even encountered. It should blow all of our collective minds that anyone would use the word “Indian” when speaking about a person who does not originate from India, the populous country located in South Asia. But we still do. And it’s insulting to actual Indian people as well.

Moreover, not all Native American groups are the same. The Lenni Lenape of New Jersey and Delaware have almost nothing to do with the Navajo of the Southwest. These groups were only lumped into the collective “Native American” because we’ve put them all in a box and forced the term on them, just to distinguish them from ourselves, thus reinforcing the idea of an alien “other.”

The term “Native American” has come under heat from some indigenous groups, who feel the name is another product of colonizing language. There’s a strong possibility that one day in the future, I’ll be horribly embarrassed I ever advocated for the phrase “Native American,” as it will possibly be just as offensive and old-fashioned as using “colored people” in 2017. But if that happens, I’ll recognize that times and terms change. I’ll adapt, because I’m a grownup, and that’s what we do.

Do hurricanes feel the effects of climate change?

Flood water surround homes damaged by Hurricane Harvey, Saturday, Aug. 26, 2017, in Rockport, Texas. (Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Satellite image on Sept. 7, 2017 shows three hurricanes: Irma in the center just north of the island of Hispaniola, Katia on the left in the Gulf of Mexico and Jose in the Atlantic Ocean on the right.

NOAA via AP

Hurricane Harvey, with its historical amount of rainfall over Texas, followed by a string of Hurricanes Irma, Jose and Katia in the North Atlantic basin in 2017, has triggered longstanding questions about any linkage between hurricanes and climate.

Can we really blame these recent hurricanes on climate changes? Or are they simply a coincidence of nature happening once every few decades, similar to the triple of Hurricanes Beulah, Chloe and Doria back in 1967?

Answering these questions lies at the heart of the current hurricane climate research that atmospheric scientists are trying to understand. There are signs that climate change can influence hurricanes in several different ways. However, these signals are inconclusive due to our inadequate understanding of how hurricanes interact with the environment.

Link to ocean temperature

Much as a flu virus morphs in different environments and becomes more infectious in cold winter temperatures, hurricanes depend on the ambient environment for their existence and motion. To what extent the surrounding environment affects hurricane development is indeed among the most extensively studied topics in hurricane research.

Evidence of the environment’s role on hurricane development has been noted since the early 1950s, yet a major milestone was achieved by Kerry Emanuel at MIT in his studies of hurricane dynamics in the late 1980s.

His idea was to consider hurricanes as heat engines that can extract heat from the ocean surface and exhaust it at the upper troposphere. In this way, Emanuel was able to obtain a mathematical expression showing how the maximum potential intensity a hurricane can attain in a given environment depends on sea surface temperature and temperature near the top of the atmospheric troposphere around 14 kilometers, or 8.8 miles, above the sea. A warmer sea surface temperature would result in a higher intensity, according to Emanuel’s formulation.

The ‘fuel’ for hurricanes comes from the energy in the ocean’s heat.

NASA, CC BY

In essence, Emanuel’s relationship between hurricane intensity and sea surface temperature dictates how strong a hurricane can be for a given environmental condition. Numerous studies have then confirmed the importance of sea surface temperature in controlling hurricane maximum intensity, and suggest an increase of 2-3 percent in hurricane strength per 1 Celsius degree increase in sea surface temperature under favorable conditions.

From this perspective, it is thus very tempting to assert that hurricane intensity variations must be connected to the global climate due to the vital role of ocean temperatures in hurricane development. Indeed, many studies of hurricane intensity climatology consider ocean temperature as a main proxy to detect the future trend in hurricane intensity change.

The common consensus among these studies is a conclusion that future hurricanes will tend to be stronger than those in the present-day climate, assuming that sea surface temperature will continue its current warming trend into the future.

Global distribution of tropical cyclones with generally higher hurricane intensity in the northwest Pacific basin due to warmer sea surface temperature.

NOAA, CC BY

Looking at extremes for clues

While we can expect an increase in hurricane intensity as a result of rising ocean temperatures, how to interpret this result to one specific hurricane turns out to be very different.

For an intuitive illustration of how difficult this can be, consider how climate change can affect aspects of our weather, such as the daily variation of temperature.

For instance, a future air temperature warming of 0.5 degrees in the next 10 years would be mostly masked out by any daily temperature variation, which is in the range of 10 degrees between day and night. In this sense, it would be hasty to jump to a conclusion that the high intensity of Hurricane Harvey or Irma is caused by climate changes, simply because fluctuations in local weather conditions could contribute much more than climate change signals.

On top of the day-to-day intensity fluctuations due to local environmental conditions, hurricanes may also possess chaotic behaviors that cause their intensity to highly vary. A recent study showed internal variations of hurricane intensity could be as large as 10-18 miles per hour, which is larger than what would be induced by climate change.

On the other hand, one should not naively deny any claim that the extreme impacts of Hurricane Harvey or Irma are symptoms of climate changes.

Extreme events, such as the rain associated with Hurricane Harvey, provide an opportunity for researchers to study the effects of climate change because they are outside the day-to-day variability of weather.

AP Photo/David J. Philip

Some research has indicated that the change in global climate could lead to a shift of the jet stream behaviors over North America. Flooding related to Harvey was unusual in part because the storm stalled over Texas for much longer than any other hurricane. So while our current knowledge does not allow us to connect Harvey’s intensity to any specific changes in climate, the abnormality of the Harvey stalling for a long period over land could be a manifestation of the shift in global circulation in a warmer climate.

Likewise, the emergence of triple hurricanes in the Atlantic basin during September 2017 could be another potential signal of the more favorable conditions for hurricane formation from climate change.

From the climatological perspective, it is the frequency and magnitude of these abnormal extremes, such as the prolonged period over land of Hurricane Harvey or the extreme intensity of Hurricane Irma, that are often of utmost interest to researchers. This is because these extremes are signals of climate changes that can be distinguished from day-to-day variations.

Limits of our understanding

Along with direct impacts of climate on hurricane intensity, another conceivable influence of climate on hurricanes is the shift of the hurricane track pattern in the future climate.

In principle, a change in global air circulation patterns could influence the steering flows that guide hurricane movement, much like a leaf carried away by a river. As such, variations in global circulations associated with climate change could introduce another degree of variability to hurricane impacts that we have to take into account.

A recent climatological study led by James Kossin at University of Wisconsin suggested a poleward shift of the hurricane maximum intensity location in a warming climate. But unlike the connection between hurricane intensity and the ambient environment, the linkage between global circulation change and hurricane movement is much harder to quantify at present.

While research on hurricanes gives us a good sense of how hurricanes would change in a warmer climate, measuring this change and, in particular, tying a unique feature of one specific hurricane to climate change are beyond the current level of confidence.

In reality, there are several other factors that could strongly interfere with hurricane development, such as the change of atmospheric temperature with height. These factors directly affect the interaction of hurricanes with the surrounding environment. However, these are very difficult to quantify in the context of climate change due to the different time scales between hurricane development — measured on the order of days and weeks — and climate change, which occurs over decades.

From a scientist’s perspective, the lack of understanding of climate impacts on hurricanes is disappointing, if not irritating. On the other hand, these uncertainties continue to motivate us to search for any possible link between hurricanes — including their intensity, frequency, time of formation and location — and climate. Better understanding of hurricane-climate relation is needed, as ultimately that knowledge can help serve society.

Chanh Kieu, Assistant Professor of Atmospheric Science, Indiana University

A borderline intimate education

(Credit: Salon/Ilana LIdagoster)

Not long ago, I was a college freshman sitting on the cold tile floor of the English building, pretending to read “Pride and Prejudice,” and not long ago, Professor Fuller walked across those same cold tiles, into an empty classroom and into my life. It was the first day of our writing workshop, a required course for all students. He introduced himself briefly: Mid-thirties. MFA from a prestigious school. Book published the previous spring. He used “whom” when he spoke and told us to buy a pocket dictionary because our cell phones would disturb “what John Gardner called the vivid and continuous dream.” Going over the syllabus, he told us class was canceled for a week that semester for his book tour. His eyes were glazed with subtle contentment when he told us — he was a writer, a published writer.

He was the first writer I ever met. I graduated from high school with plaques and cords and what I thought was a good idea of what the next four years would look like. I declared a major in English and enrolled in the most collegiate sounding courses my university offered — philosophy, political science, Latin. I knew I wanted to write, but I also knew that writing is supposed to be a side effect of living, and I wasn’t doing much living. At 18, I had avoided alcohol, drugs and anything else that might be a risk or might lead to one. The most intimate I’d ever been with someone was when my prom date put his hands on my hips when we posed for pictures, and that alone had been enough to make my palms damp. After Fuller’s class that first day, I was more optimistic than I’d ever been about my writing. He was a real writer, and he could show me how to be a real writer, too.

I read and reread the stories he assigned. I let it slip that I was taking Latin, because I knew that he had minored in it. I asked for his help with declensions that I could recite perfectly. I bought a pocket dictionary and even started using it.

A few weeks into the semester, the English department put out a cart of free books in the hallway near Fuller’s office — the professors’ reject pile, mostly obscure critical theory dissertations from the ’60s and ’70s written by authors with heavily voweled last names. I began to walk away with one of the dusty slabs when he came out of his office.

“Read this,” he said, handing me a stiff paperback. “It’s better than anything on that cart.”

The cover was a black-and-white photograph of a woman. Sunglasses covered most of her face, blocking out any distinguishable quality she had. It was easy to see myself. White woman? Check. Throw on a pair of sunglasses and I was her, I thought. Maybe he had thought the same thing, I told myself. Maybe he had thought it the moment I walked into his class on the first day and had been waiting for the right time to give me the book.

It was “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” by Joan Didion. I had never heard of her or read a collection of essays before, and I had no idea what the title meant, so I headed to the library to find out. As I hurried across campus, the October air was alive and the dead leaves moved in broken circles at my feet.

A rough beast’s hour had come round at last.

* * *

That night, I got an email:

I’d start with the last essay. –JF

I lingered on those last two letters. They were more personal than his first name. They were something only someone who knew him could decipher. They contained a relationship, a past shared between sender and receiver. I grabbed the book and turned to the last essay:

It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

I finished the collection the next day, and after our next class he gave me Didion’s “The White Album.” When I finished that, he gave me a short story by Chekhov. Next came Cheever, Carver, Calvino. Graham Greene. Denis Johnson. Karl Ove Knausgaard. I fell more in awe with each new title. I felt lucky that I found someone who had already sifted through so many pages, dog-eared the ones worth reading and was willing to share his findings with me. We’d discuss the stories during his office hours until there was a line of other students waiting their turn. After a few weeks, he asked if I could start coming one hour before our class instead of during his scheduled office hours so we wouldn’t be interrupted. Meanwhile, the emails steadily became more frequent and longer.

It was the beginning of something — I just couldn’t tell what it was. Everything prior to meeting Fuller felt trivial, boring, childish. I didn’t tell anyone about our arrangement. He existed only in emails and in my mind, the only two places where I could give him room to grow.

* * *

Within a few weeks, the topics of our conversations, both in person and over email, broadened. In addition to stories and poems, Fuller started sending music. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert. The Velvet Underground, the Pogues, the Strokes. He’d write me about the first time he heard them — where he was, who he was. When he went on his book tour, he sent a picture of the Chicago skyline. When he needed feedback, he sent sections of the novel he was working on. When he wanted to learn about trees, we showed each other interesting leaves we found outside, squinting at their veins and edges, locating their names in the heavy leaf anthology I took out from the library. When he wanted a plant for his office, he asked for help picking a type. A few times, when the night sky was particularly clear, he’d email me urgently, insisting that I go outside and look at the moon.

There were always postscripts in his emails. There was always something else to say, an implicit promise that the conversation would be continued. That his interest didn’t waver was a continual surprise to me. I felt increasingly indebted to him; his time was valuable and he, for some reason, was giving it to me. By November he asked if I’d be willing to walk around campus with him rather than sit in his office. Walking helps with writing, he said.

We meandered all over campus, down past the gym and football field, along narrow, winding bicycle paths. When the temperature dropped, he wore a peacoat and wrapped his neck with a pale blue scarf. On the days I knew I’d see him, I’d wear knee-length skirts and sheer tights, trying my best to look older and scholarly, but I always just ended up looking cold, my knees glowing red beneath the thin netting.

Still, it felt good to walk with him. His steady pace was metronomic. He was about half a head taller than me, but we somehow walked in sync, hands burrowed in our pockets, looking straight ahead. There’s something comforting about moving through the same space with another person, like two people listening to the same song from one set of headphones. In an email, he described something he had observed about me when we walked:

When you find something interesting, you squint your eyes and look straight ahead, considering what you just heard. You purse your lips, and it looks like everything might come out at once if you were to open them. After a moment, you look up at me, your eyes wide and bright with wonder.

He said we should walk because it helps with writing, but I began to wonder if it was so we wouldn’t be overheard. He would talk to me about a dream he had or his relationship with his parents or his ex-girlfriends. He never mentioned his wife. Their wedding picture, next to the picture of their two kids, sat on his desk back in his office.

Occasionally, we would cross paths with a student he knew. The student would say hello, look at me and continue on their way. I never worried about running into someone I knew because I didn’t know anyone on campus. There were some familiar faces from classes, but by the end of my first semester I had made no friends. I was too busy writing emails. My memories from that holiday season are quotes from his emails, words on a screen. Thanksgiving: He was thankful to have met me. Christmas: Listen to “The Fairytale of New York.” New Years: He met a few amazing people this year, one being his daughter, who was born last spring, and another being me.

My nineteenth birthday fell a few weeks into the winter recess. Fuller was teaching a class in Manhattan then and wanted to go to the Met for my birthday. His class was over by 10 a.m. and he could meet me at Penn Station, he offered around Christmas. I wanted to say yes, wanted the anonymity that only the city could offer, wanted to be missing from my regular life, belonging only to him for a few hours, but knew I couldn’t. I told him it wasn’t a good time. Not now, but not never.

Instead, he sent a copy of Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” one of his favorites, to my house around New Years. On the title page, he wrote small, careful letters for me to read the book slowly, so that I reached the last page on my birthday. One day, newly 19, I sat in bed and read the last page:

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

Give them space. For months now, I had become Tantalus, starving, stranded, everything I wanted close but out of reach. It was tortuous. My face broke out, worse than it ever had. I stopped participating in my classes, so stressed that I would say the wrong thing that I just said nothing at all. My older sister Margaret called me out a few times for minimizing my internet screen whenever someone walked by my room, which made me even more panicky. I couldn’t bring myself to see how deep in the inferno I was or even think about getting out.

I had a Smith Corona typewriter that belonged to my grandmother who died before I was born. When I told Fuller this, he asked if I would write him something on it, so after he sent “Invisible Cities” I typed him a thank you note. I tried to make it thoughtful but as innocuous as possible, but still, there was something about being able to hold the letter that made it feel incriminating. I was reading Fitzgerald’s letters at the time and found a quote from a letter he wrote to his daughter Scottie, urging her to improve her reading choices. In the note, I thanked him for the book, and quoting Fitzgerald, thanked him for helping me make the right reading choices. He emailed me from the train into the city where he read the letter, saying that he would keep the letter in his coat pocket the whole day.

When the spring semester started, we fell back into the same pattern. We picked a new day and time to meet and walk. The cold was relentless. One day in February, he asked me to come to his office early. He had a surprise. Two coffees, two doughnuts, two chairs in front of the computer screen. He showed me the film “The Third Man,” which had come up during one of our talks and was also his favorite movie. I was able to feel his eyes on me as I watched. I don’t remember anything from the film, except for the closing image. The female lead walks down a street lined with tall leafless trees on both sides, while the male lead leans against the side of his car in the foreground, watching the woman become smaller and smaller, disappearing into the vanishing point at the center of the frame. Fuller loved that shot, and so did I. Maybe it was the womanly way she walked, maybe it was knowing how she felt, that feeling of being observed by someone whom you wanted to be observed by, bonded together in a fleeting moment.

A few days later, Fuller told me about a recent morning he spent in a nature preserve nearby and suggested we go together. After spring break, I told him, trying to buy some more time. After a winter of record-breaking low temperatures and snowfalls and wind chills, I grew more and more uneasy when everything began to thaw.

* * *

Things fall apart.

It fell apart; I fell apart.

It was spring break and I was sitting at a table in my town’s library studying for next week’s midterms with my sister Kelly when I checked my email. There was a notification in a small font at the bottom of the page: “Open in 1 other location.” I clicked it, and it took me to a page with an IP address. I copy-and-pasted into Google, and a pixelated image of a small house with a bluish-gray roof appeared.

It was my house. Someone was reading my emails.

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Margaret had broken into my account and read my exchanges with Fuller. She had brought it — whatever “it” was — to my parents. Across from me, Kelly’s eyes widened. She began texting feverishly. Then she looked up but avoided eye contact.

“We’re going home,” she said.

I didn’t ask why, didn’t play dumb. I gathered my notebook and American Lit anthology and walked to the car. The low afternoon sun was stunning as we rolled down a long stretch of road in silence, no stop signs or traffic lights, just the pavement and a 50-miles-per-hour speed limit. It felt like we had been slingshotted, the string of hair salons, restaurants and dog groomers blurring into a single motion. It was a road made for stretching your arm out the window, allowing the air to tug at your fingers. I tried to remember the last time I had done that but couldn’t. I leaned my head against the warm glass of the window, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the road for a moment longer.

* * *

My parents asked questions I couldn’t answer. They were the same questions that had been in my mind for a while now, questions I couldn’t bring myself to voice, let alone answer. The worst part was not knowing what to call it — I still don’t know. I never thought of it as being a romantic relationship, never considered it dating. I never called him by his first name. It was always Professor Fuller. There was nothing wrong with this, I told my parents, my voice wearing thinner each second.

But it was pointless. They could see where this was headed. They had read the emails. They had read when he said I looked like a young Natalie Wood. When he told me he was going through a rough time before this year and that meeting me somehow helped him. Someone had run a plumber’s snake down my throat, pulled out every terrible thing inside me and put it on display for everyone to see.

It didn’t take long for my mom to convince me to go to the school. “Even if he just goes away, you have to make sure he doesn’t do this to anyone else,” she said.

I kept thinking, Do what? What exactly had he done? Could anyone tell me what had happened?

Lying in bed that night, I heard her printing out our emails to bring to the school. I listened as the printer pitilessly spat out page after page of my infatuation, my humiliation. Cold awake, I forced my lids shut.

* * *

There was a moment I kept returning to. It happened toward the end, on one of the walks. His alma mater had asked him to participate in a mentoring program. Interested students would email him, introduce themselves, and he would pick one to give literary career guidance via email and video chat. There were two students interested: a boy and a girl. He chose the girl.

He was telling me about something that came up during his discourse with her, something about mentoring, something that made him think of me. He paused and looked at me.

“Not that I think of this as mentoring,” he said quickly.

I don’t remember what came after that. I don’t remember what he was talking about with the girl or why it had reminded him of me, but I remember that line, that throwaway, that glimpse into what this was in his mind, not mentoring, the closest thing I have to an answer. When I go back to that moment, I grab myself by the shoulders and shake them violently. Ask him. What does he mean? What does he think this is?

And every time I watch myself keep walking with him, so good at silencing the version of myself who asks the hard questions.

* * *

“Was it ever . . . physical?” the woman asked.

She said it like she had just thought of the question, but we both knew that wasn’t true. This question was the purpose of the meeting. This question meant the difference between slapping a wrist and cutting off the whole hand.

“No,” I said after a moment.

It was close enough to the truth. There was never any significant intimacy. An occasional brush of shoulders when we walked. A momentary hand on my back. Always just enough to send a jolt of adrenaline through me. Once he held my coat open as I slipped my arms into the holes. Another time he leaned in and gently wedged his headphones into my ears.

“I’m not looking to get him fired,” I said. “I just want to end communication.”

I was surprised by how composed and businesslike I sounded to myself. My answers came mechanically. I was working off a script I had never seen, playing a role I had never auditioned for. The woman was using a script too, and her lines were full of important-sounding words. Legal words. Mandated words. Title IX words.

I could hear the call she would make to him after I left: She won’t be coming to see you today.

And I could hear the silent confusion on the other end, the destruction of a world perfectly constructed.

* * *

I was informed that he had a meeting with the Title IX coordinator and the head of his department. That was the end of it. I dropped my writing minor. I cried through an art history exam. I cut holes into my acne until my face throbbed. He was everywhere. In my bookcase were books that he’d recommended. In my iPod were songs he’d told me to listen to. In my closet were outfits I thought he’d like. In my head were stories and movies and anecdotes and advice I had thoughtlessly sucked in, not once considering how I felt about it all.

I had sleepwalked through my first year of college.

Any tall, dark-haired, white man on campus would send me in the opposite direction. I could always tell when it was him, though. His walk gave him away every time, the steady pacing which now seems eerie to me, like a shark moving behind glass.

The inevitable intersection happened a week after the Title IX meeting, ten minutes before my American Lit class. The door to the room, which was just down the hall from Fuller’s office, was locked, so I had to wait outside. I considered waiting in a nearby bathroom, but seeing as there was a group of students forming in the hallway, I decided to wait, toughen up, not be so ridiculous.

It was laughable, how quickly he had appeared.

He walked up and talked to two classmates who were standing next to me, a casual conversation that flowed so easily. Meanwhile, I was trying to gain control over whatever inside me had just dropped and shattered. So what are you taking this semester? Shards everywhere. And what class is this? Watch your step. Oh, you’re taking my fiction class next semester? Beyond repair.

I finally walked down the hallway and hid around the bend. Tears clouded my eyes but for the first time in months I was able to see myself clearly: I was alone, had no friends on campus, no one to turn to, nowhere to go, and was stuck with what had caused it all, what I was most desperate to escape from — myself.

* * *

It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends.

Years somehow slipped by. I saw him occasionally after that year, but it stopped bothering me as much. He was promoted. For the rest of my time at the university I worked on the campus magazine, where I found a home among big-hearted, bitter misfits my own age.

For a while, I kept writing for revenge. I’d imagine Fuller hearing about all the things I accomplished, all the things I did without his help. This got me nowhere. I was writing for him, not for me. I also wasted a lot of time questioning if I could be a writer without his help and if being a writer was what I really wanted to do. I’ve stopped asking these questions.

But where his influence ends and I begin is something I’m still figuring out. Is “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” the greatest book ever written? No. Is Calvino boring sometimes? Yes. Does walking help the writing process? Probably, but not when wearing tights in 20-degree weather. I wish I hated everything he showed me, that I could lump my poor judgment with poor taste. I wish I hated “Do You Remember the Mountain Bed” and Denis Johnson and the Velvet Underground. I wish I didn’t wish “Fairytale of New York” was the only Christmas song ever written. I try to enjoy these things despite my earliest memory of them, try to scrub them clean of that initial read or listen.

Sometimes I get lucky, like I did on this one December day. The magazine staff would get to pick the music for an hour on the campus radio station each week, and that day someone suggested we play a Christmas song. A good Christmas song. A friend of mine immediately started swinging his arms and bellowing wrong lyrics: “They’ve got cars big as balls . . .” We cued the song. The brassy voices pounded against the walls of the decrepit sound booth. We all flinched when we heard a forgotten curse word, violating our agreement with the station. Then we laughed. Too late. Oh well. Make it louder.

I can still hear it, buried in the space between each note, the sound of a song being rewritten.

Raising bilingual kids? Get creative

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If you’re raising your kids to be bilingual, you’re probably aware of the usual methods parents use to encourage kids to speak two languages. But there can be bumps in the road. Kids resist. You get worn down. And the language of kids’ peers prevails. That’s when you need to get creative — and maybe even sneaky — to nurture your kids to speak in your native tongue.

Try these media and tech tricks to keep kids on track.

Change your TV’s Secondary Audio Programing (SAP)

Most providers, such as Comcast, Verizon, and DISH, allow you to change the language of the broadcast. Simply set it up through the remote control menu and have your kids watch all TV and streaming programs in the second language when available. Your kids may complain, but eventually they’ll be happy to get to watch TV at all. Turn it into a fun conversation and point out how great is to see their favorite character speaking the other language, which means he or she is bilingual too.

Watch YouTube videos

You can find lots of bilingual shows on regular TV. But YouTube — since it’s global — has thousands of shows in other languages. For younger kids, search for programs they like in the language you want them to learn. You might be able to find fully dubbed versions of their favorites or kids’ fare from other countries. (Check them first to make sure that they’re age-appropriate.) For older kids, you can find practical lessons for many languages. Create playlists so that all your kids need to do is click on the shows you’ve saved.

Listen to audiobooks

Bilingual books are great to help your kids learn a new language. But recorded books expose your kids to the sounds of the language, help with pronunciation, and improve comprehension because kids are hearing stories in context. Try Lucy & Pogo and Roxy and the Ballerina Robot, which offer narration in several languages. Add tales from your own culture to make it a more immersive experience.

Read the news from other countries

Do you have a child interested in what’s happening in the world? Reading current events can be another strategy to help with vocabulary development and comprehension. Websites like Newsela offer age-appropriate news and nonfiction articles in various reading levels in English and Spanish.

Watch thought-provoking movies and documentaries

If you can’t find movies in the language you want your kids to learn, try films and documentaries about the people who speak the language and their culture. If your kid is learning Spanish or is interested in learning more about Latin culture, try 10 Inspiring Movies for Latino Families. Or share the experience of four students in the San Francisco schools’ dual immersion programs in “Speaking in Tongues.”

Follow bilingual celebrities

Reinforce the value of bilingualism by following the social media feeds of celebrities who speak two (or more) languages. Every so often, stars such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who speaks French), Natalie Portman (who speaks Hebrew), Sandra Bullock (who speaks German), and the many actors who speak English and Spanish, including Zoe Saldana, Diego Luna, Gina Rodriguez, and Salma Hayek, will tweet in another language or post a message that supports language fluency.

The South Vietnamese who fled the fall of Saigon—and who returned

(Credit: Associated Press)

More than 120,000 people fled Vietnam after the North Vietnamese captured Saigon on April 30, 1975.

This chaotic evacuation has been captured in iconic photos, documentary films and oral histories. How did the Vietnamese seeking safety actually get from small boats or rooftop helicopters to the United States?

First, they went to Guam.

In response to the emergency, the U.S. military established a refugee camp on this small island in the Pacific. On Guam, the U.S. government planned to assess the crisis and process individuals while preparing camps on the mainland for the incoming Vietnamese. However, approximately 1,500 Vietnamese had another idea – refusing resettlement in the U.S. and returning home.

I first learned of these events when I discovered images of the repatriates in the U.S. National Archives and found “Ship of Fate,” the memoir of a South Vietnamese naval officer, Tran Dinh Tru. His story and that of other repatriates shows the real risks of repatriation if there are no guarantees of protection. This is an important lesson today given the U.S. government’s current steps to make it harder for refugees to enter the country.

Captain Tran Dinh Tru

Tru was a respected career South Vietnamese naval officer. In the chaos of April 1975, Tru evacuated with other naval officers, and he organized for a ship to save his wife, who was stranded far outside Saigon. However, the ship failed to rescue his wife. Like many family members across South Vietnam, she was left behind with their three children to navigate the new political landscape.

Waiting on Guam alone, Tru despaired that he would never see his family again.

Tru was one of more than 1,500 Vietnamese on Guam who did not want to resettle in America. They called themselves the repatriates, and they wanted to return to Vietnam for a range of reasons.

Many were young South Vietnamese sailors who were aboard South Vietnamese ships as the North Vietnamese advanced on Saigon, and their captains had directed the ships out to sea and never returned to port. These young men did not see themselves as refugees.

In other cases, older men and women decided they did not have the stamina to start again in America. Others, like Tru, had family members who had missed connections, and they faced .

The repatriates turned to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the U.S. government and the Guamanian public to make the case that they should be allowed to return to Vietnam. They wrote letters to the Guam newspaper and built massive billboards within the camp demanding their return. The UNHCR and the U.S. could not guarantee their safety on return, and so they made no plans for their repatriation. Frustrated with the lack of action, many of the repatriates escalated their protests.

The repatriates built a makeshift stage. Men shaved their heads in front of a banner that proclaimed boldly in English, “Thirty-Six Hours, Hunger Sit-In, Quiet, Hair Shaving Off, To Pray for a Soon Repatriation.” The repatriates also organized hunger strikes, militant marches through the streets of Guam and eventually set fire to buildings in the refugee camp.

This was a situation no one had anticipated. The repatriates did not want to go to the United States, the Guamanian government did not want them to stay on Guam and the U.S. government did not know what to do. Notably, the new Vietnamese government did not want them back.

The ship of fate

In the end, the U.S. government granted the Vietnamese a commercial ship, the Viet Nam Thuong Tin, to return home. Tru agreed to be the captain due to his experience and skill. The Vietnamese repatriates knew the communist government saw them as hostile interlopers, traitors and possible CIA plants, but they still felt strongly that they must return.

The voyage took roughly two weeks, and the atmosphere on the ship was tense and cautious.

When the ship arrived in Vung Tau, a southern Vietnamese port, the Vietnamese government saw Tru as suspect and counterrevolutionary. They ignored his repeated wishes to reunite with his family, and the government imprisoned Tru in its network of “reeducation camps,” where he suffered for 13 years. These camps punished South Vietnamese men who had fought against North Vietnam and allied themselves with South Vietnam and the United States. They combined prison labor and forced ideological training. They were marked by hunger, indefinite detention, and ongoing physical and psychological hardship.

My research into the limited reports of these events shows that the repatriates’ sentences ranged from months to many years. As captain, Tru suffered their arbitrary brutality the longest.

Tru eventually resettled in the United States with his family in 1991.

It’s worth noting that Tru’s long voyage is unusual. Most of the more than 120,000 Vietnamese who fled Vietnam sought and soon in the United States. President Gerald Ford’s administration allowed them to enter as “parolees” – a loophole in U.S. immigration policy, which did not make provisions for refugees at that time.

However, by the time Tru was released and decided to immigrate to the United States, he was able to do so through the U.S. Humanitarian Operation program. The U.S. government designed this program for South Vietnamese officers and reeducation camp survivors in the late 1980s, and it expedited immigration processes for this population who had suffered directly because of their affiliations with the United States. The U.S. accepted over 70,000 Vietnamese who had been imprisoned in Vietnam.

In my view, the Vietnamese repatriates’ story challenges us to recognize the risks and fears individuals face in moments of crisis, and ponder the difficult decisions that must be made at the end of a war.

Jana Lipman, Associate Professor of History, Tulane University

 

Revealing the mysteries of the magnificent, elusive whale shark

(Credit: Wikimedia/Zac Wolf)

Being in the presence of the largest fish in the world is a wonderful feeling. Your eyes can’t help but gaze at its intricate pattern of spots and lines and the way they reflect in a mosaic fashion against the rippling sunshine from the sea surface. There’s a soft sway to its massive caudal fin as it serenely propels the animal forward through the endless blue. I imagine it feels similar for the entourage of tuna, remoras and other hangers-on that seem to admire its underbelly and innocently chase a free ride from its slipstream. Yes, a whale shark is a thing of wonder. But more so, it’s a thing of mystery.

We don’t know much about the whale shark, and what we do know was difficult to uncover. I know, because that’s my job. As a marine biologist, my focus lies in the diversity and health of aquatic animals and their environment, at study sites from the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico and the Galápagos Islands of Ecuador, to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena. On our most recent expedition, to Cenderawasih Bay, in Indonesia’s West Papua area of New Guinea, a team of researchers from Georgia Aquarium, Conservation International, Indonesian partners and I have been opening up a new frontier in this quest for whale shark knowledge.

Gathering useful research data about this elusive and mysterious species is difficult for many of the same reasons that make it so spectacular: size, speed and a habitat that spans two thirds of the globe. Sure, you can observe the grandeur of its external characteristics; a juvenile male whale shark can be up to eight meters in length. We can track their movements across the globe using satellite tags to better understand their migratory patterns, and we can count the number of whale sharks to make estimates about the health of a population’s numbers. But simply counting animals as a measure of health is a blunt and imperfect instrument.  What we really want is to understand what happens inside the animals.

Gaining access to valuable health data is a logistically complex and physically grueling endeavor, and to this point has proven a nearly impossible feat. Imagine trying to collect a blood sample from a fish the size of a school bus with skin like sandpaper that’s four inches thick and a mouth wide enough for a human to comfortably nap inside of. The massive fish move at a pace that only an Olympic swimmer could keep up with for any length of time. Trying to swim at that pace, burdened with scuba gear, while gathering measurements, assessing body condition and attempting to gather a blood sample is like struggling to knit while riding a bicycle. As a result, nearly everything we know about this incredible species has been gathered during very brief 30- to 60-second encounters that really limit what you can do — until now.

With the help of Indonesian fishers and their government, and a unique partnership between a public aquarium and a conservation NGO, a whole world of data from wild whale sharks is now at our fingertips thanks to an unusual interaction between whale sharks and a type of traditional Indonesian fishery in Cenderawasih Bay.

Formally called a bagan fishery, this square-framed lift net has been used by Indonesian fishers for decades. They target schools of baitfish by lowering large nets beneath specialized floating wood or bamboo platforms and use bright lights at night to attract the baitfish above the nets—which are then quickly lifted to catch the entire school at once. This “free” meal is too good to pass up for whale sharks, which can be seen feeding on the baitfish around the bagans all year round. In the process, the whale sharks can accidentally trap themselves in the nets. Fishers, who regard whale sharks as a sign of good fortune, release them after clearing the nets of their catch. Working with the fishers during the day, we can also target specific animals, enticing them into the net with scoops of baitfish.

These whale shark catches provide just enough time with the animal sitting still to conduct comprehensive medical examinations including drawing blood samples for the first time ever, taking measurements and attaching satellite tracking tags. It’s a low-stress interaction for both the animals and the biologists.  Whale sharks differ from many shark species in that they do not need to swim forwards in order to breathe, and they seem perfectly happy to wait quietly in the bagan until they are released, when they usually circle right back around and start feeding again!

When a blood sample is collected from a whale shark, which can be from any of 5 different places on the body, it is brought to a nearby makeshift lab on the research boat to begin testing. We are looking for several things: properties of blood gases, blood cells, and blood chemistry, including indications of infectious disease or pollution exposure. What we find tells us not just about the internal health of the whale shark, but the health of the waters it so gracefully resides in and how that can be impacted by human activity.

One of the research questions I’ve been eager to address is what effect, if any, does plastic pollution have on these filter feeders that skim the water’s surface to collect their meals, exactly where tiny particles of marine plastic also accumulate. Because rapid development has outstripped waste management infrastructure, Indonesia is one of the top five plastic polluting countries in the world (the other four are also in Southeast Asia), so it’s an ideal place to conduct this kind of study.

Measuring the effects of pollution scientifically can help organizations like Conservation International coordinate their outreach programs in places where endangered animals like whale sharks are found, helping governments and empowering local communities to reduce damaging pollution. Back at Georgia Aquarium, in Atlanta, we can use this information to inform discussions with guests and with companies in the United States that may be manufacturers of some of the plastics that are turning up in our oceans. These might seem like disparate entities, but supply chains are increasingly globally connected, and the ocean is too, so it will take collaboration and cooperation on a global scale to work toward a healthier and more sustainable ocean.

While the human population of West Papua is diverse, many Indonesians, notably the fishers, revere the whale shark as a sign of good luck. I’d say I agree. Lucky is exactly how I feel every day about working with these animals whether it’s in Southeast Asia or at the Georgia Aquarium, the only institution in the Western Hemisphere that provides care for these incredible creatures. It’s a privilege to be learning new things about them all the time and sharing those findings with members of the public who visit the aquarium and are unlikely to see a whale shark anywhere else in their lives.

While slowly uncovering the mysteries of the whale shark, we are beginning to piece together a puzzle of both this endangered species and the broader health of our one globally connected ocean, which is the dominant geographic feature of our planet.

I moved to Colorado for more than marijuana

(Credit: Getty/RapidEye)

I remember why I chose to move to Colorado. It was early 2016, I was 23 and I was going through a breakup with my toxic birth family back in Nebraska. I’d decided to cut contact for my own health. My friend, let’s call her Renee, loved the idea of me starting fresh with her family’s help and was aflutter with sparkling, idealized images about her parents adopting me and us being sisters. So when her parents, let’s call them Carol and Rob, asked me to live with them, I thought I’d gained a new family and a nest where I could heal. I could be near my best friend and live in one of the most vibrant cities in America: Denver.

Of course I moved. Besides, I’d always felt like my soul belonged in Colorado. I’d visited several times as a child and never stopped being in awe of the landscape. I fell in love with the powerful, protective aura of the mountains and how their shadows zigzagged across the horizon like nature’s skyscrapers. I loved the beauty of it, how the sun dipped behind the mountains and cast the whole valley in swaths of pink and gold and purple. And I loved Denver, a city buzzing with 2.5 million more people than in my hometown and each of those new people singing promises of bright new possibilities. I went to Colorado for healing, for change, for the mountains’ beauty, the hope of a new family and a new future.

I moved to Colorado for so much more than the marijuana.

But the marijuana was a perk. In 2012, I had been diagnosed with a rare nerve disorder. Surgery and cannabis were the only known treatments. I’d had the surgery to get it corrected, but some problems remained. My Nebraskan surgeon quietly suggested cannabis and told me to try it if I had the chance. Naturally, I was ecstatic to finally move to a place where getting marijuana treatment was legal and safe.

I assumed Carol and Rob would understand. They were the picture of parenthood to Renee, and magnanimously offered that same relationship to me by dubbing me their “fourth child.” They offered to take care of me and let me live with them free of charge until I could get my feet on the ground. They made me feel at home, like I’d finally been granted a foster family to love me and help me heal. I saw no reason to keep my cannabis use a secret.

One evening I asked Carol if I could use her back porch to smoke.

It was immediate: the sharp hitch of silence, her frozen expression. In a second of panic I realized I’d said too much.

“Sure,” she said stiffly. And that was all.

I see now that was the moment I became a stoner in her eyes, and absolutely nothing more.

Our relationship ended there. Carol began stonewalling me, sending her husband Rob to deliver messages. I’d catch her saying I’d moved to Colorado “for the marijuana,” and this reflected in her attitude toward me. I tried everything to appease her and earn my keep by doing housework. It didn’t work. One afternoon she finally admitted to disliking me, citing our “different values” about drug use. I was heartbroken. I felt like I’d lost my mother all over again. Renee’s vision of me becoming her adopted sister had all but shattered. On the eve of Thanksgiving 2016, I was given four hours to move out and find a place to live elsewhere. Rob, once again speaking for Carol, insisted that I’d smoked indoors the previous night. I hadn’t. Still, I slept in my car for the next three days.

Growing up, I’d been warned there was a cost to smoking marijuana. The cost, I was told, would be brain damage, not being successful, or becoming a thug. But now I realize the cost of marijuana can be a social one, a label that separates you from your family and your friends by branding you a stereotype. Last year, the stigma separated me from Renee’s family and robbed me of the relationship I’d wanted with them. Now, in 2017, it robs me of my peace of mind when I’m meeting a new person, applying for jobs or choosing a roommate. Now I’m constantly examining myself and monitoring what I say. I have to think closely about those around me: Will my new roommate accept how I smoke in the evenings to ease my pain, or will I have to move out? Will my employer be compassionate about my cannabis treatment, or will I be subjected to mandatory drug tests? I live every day knowing that my choice of treatment may cost me my next job, my next friendship or even my next family member.

While I eventually recovered from being evicted last Thanksgiving and found shelter, I was left reeling with the bitter realization that prejudice could again put me on the street. I was forced to accept that whether in Colorado or not, the stereotype that marijuana users are social deviants lives on. And the social cost of using cannabis can remain steep, even where it’s legal.

Can tech help teens who feel unmotivated about school?

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High school is a challenging time in many teens’ lives. They have way more demands, responsibilities, and complex social lives than in middle school. Managing this transition, along with the focus on academics and achievement, can make some teens unmotivated, prone to withdraw — or even shut down. Teens who have special needs are often especially at risk in this new environment. The key is knowing why your teen may be unmotivated, so it’s important to discuss your concerns with your teen and the teacher.

Technology can be beneficial for many teens because it gives them an alternative to traditional learning methods. In some cases, kids may feel more confident about their tech skills than they do about school. The right tools can give kids who are frustrated or unmotivated a new way to participate in school, one that allows them to control the pace and minimize distractions.

The main areas that tend to be frustrating are note-taking, math, and reading. Here are some ideas to give your kid a boost.

Note-taking. Taking notes can be extremely frustrating for some students. Experiment with different note-taking apps to see which ones help your kid and restore their confidence in this essential skill.

Math. Many teens struggle with math concepts. If your teen is telling you that they hate math, try these apps and sites.

Reading. A little extra support can make a big difference for kids who struggle with reading. Ereaders provide lots of options to make reading easier (and more fun). Fonts can be enlarged, a built-in dictionary can reduce frustration for kids who may not understand a word, and highlighting features are available to help kids remember important parts of a book. Help get your teen into reading with these strategies, and try these apps.

Not a mosque, and not at Ground Zero

Demonstration opposing the proposed Islamic community center near ground zero (Credit: AP/David Goldman)

New York, 2010

Am I safe in here? Do they know I’m a Muslim? Can they tell by the look on my face that I’m one of them? Don’t look them in the eye.

I lowered my gaze and walked into the crowd, making my way through the meeting hall, up the aisle, through the rows of people waving posters saying, “No Mosque at Ground Zero.” I found my way to the back, out of sight of the protestors, and took a seat.

I am surrounded by hate.

I had been volunteering in the office of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan. When one day the imam had described his vision of a Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan, I couldn’t fathom that I was in the moment of “history in the unmaking.”

A space for faith, fun and fitness, R&R, and interfaith gatherings! A place of our own—to meet and greet, to learn and share, to feast and celebrate, to swim and gym, with room for all faiths. Cool!

I was there when the Finance Committee of the Community Board reviewed the project. Sitting along the wall, I had watched Imam Feisal present the concept of the equivalent of a YMCA and 92nd Street Y. I was elated when the committee, giving their approval, asked, “How soon can you start?” I had noticed members of the press scribbling notes. I had stepped out onto Chambers Street, the majestic Municipal Building towering beyond; the evening was still bright, the spring air brushing my cheek, as I made my way to the number 6 subway train.

“There is bound to be an outcry,” said my husband, who had attended the meeting with me. The stop sign stopped me and I glanced up at him.

“Why would anyone object? Look at how supportive the committee was.” My husband and I had yearned for a community center for our children; it didn’t happen while they were growing up, but it was going to happen now.

I had gone home on a high; and the next morning my hopes were dashed. Having arrived early at the office, I picked up the phone on the first ring.

“This is WABC. We would like to interview the imam about his plans to build a mosque at Ground Zero.”

A what? At where? Where did that phrase come from? It’s not a mosque we are building, and it’s not at Ground Zero.

The phone rang again. “This is WCBS . . .”

I called the imam on his cell phone. “Are you on your way to the office? The major media networks are lined up to interview you. Just so you know, they are calling your proposed Islamic cultural center downtown ‘the mosque at Ground Zero.’”

That day, as I put on the hat of media scheduler, reporters of leading networks bumped into each other as they entered and exited. Watching them interview Imam Feisal, I knew that my husband had been right. A Sufi imam, dignified in demeanor, gentle in his expression, building bridges between Muslims and non-Muslims, and honored and acclaimed for his interfaith work, was now the focus of outrage—accused of insulting the memory of 9/11 victims and the most tragic violence against our country.

Why didn’t I see it coming? I was so close on the inside. I just answered my question.

It’s not a mosque, it is a community center, the imam explained to the interviewers over and over again.

It is not at Ground Zero, the imam said once more, and explained, once again, that this was to be a space open to all New Yorkers, a platform for multi-faith dialogue, a center guided by the universal values of all religions, a place of healing.

The real battle is between extremists and moderates on both sides

I took note of Imam Feisal’s mantra, “The battle is not between Islam and the West; the real battle is between the extremists and moderates on both sides.”

It didn’t matter. The phrase “mosque at Ground Zero” was too inflammatory to let go. It had too much potential to be put to rest as a mere community center. The opportunity was irresistible.

How did a unanimous approval last night turn into a poisonous inflammatory label this morning?

Months earlier, when the imam and Daisy Khan had run this by the civic, faith, and community leaders, the 9/11 families and 9/11 Memorial team, the mayor, and political leaders, no one had objected. After the imam had announced the project at an interfaith iftar in a church, the New York Times had run a front-page story on the project in December 2009. There had been no outcry then.

Why now?

It was the power of words: Mosque at Ground Zero.

Calls were made to community leaders and 9/11 families, trying to ease their anxiety.

Once they understand what this center stands for, any misgivings they may have should subside.

I am surrounded by hate

Of course, that didn’t happen. When I walked into the Community Board hearing, the place was packed with people holding placards with anti-Islam slogans that do not deserve mention. Taking my seat, I looked down across the room, spotting my husband and son in the speaker lineup. As the speakers took the mic, the room shuddered and shook with the sounds of hatred.

If they just listen—9/11 is not about Muslims vs. Ground Zero. Muslims also perished in 9/11. We are not trespassers—Ground Zero is sacred to us too; it is our tragedy too. If they just listen.

Testimonies against the project were amplified by cries of “Terrorists,” “Down with Sharia,” “Don’t insult the memory of 9/11”; testimonies supporting the project were drowned out by booing and hissing. I forgot to breathe. It seemed that the walls holding the roof would give way.

Don’t they see that we are not those people? Are we destined to carry the burden of their actions? This is not the America I know. Does America have two sides?

On the cold, hard bench, I felt warm tears on my cheek when a 9/11 family pleaded for tolerance; I said a prayer when clergymen from all faiths urged interfaith harmony; and I felt a surge of gratitude when politicians appealed for a place and a space for Muslims. I trembled when I heard voices calling, “We don’t want you here.” Islamophobia had reared its head, and I was witnessing humanity at its best, and at its worst.

Are they going to yell at me?

I cried when my son Asim spoke to the audience of his shock at seeing the smoke gushing out of the tower as he looked out from the window of his office building, of his flight up the streets, with the wall of soot chasing him, of his reaction when he turned to look back and could no longer see the tower, of the shouts of “Go back to where you came from” when he and the faithful walked out of the mosque on a Friday two days later. I recalled how hard I had prayed for his safety when I couldn’t reach him by phone, how terrified I was.

Put yourself in their shoes. How would I feel if the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor took the shape of a Shinto shrine? It’s not the same, but that is how it has been spun. They have been misfed, misled, and now it’s too late to un-spin it.

Enraged by a speaker supporting the project, they stood up and, waving posters, started to shout the speaker down.

Should I duck?

The chairwoman issued a warning: those out of order will be escorted out. I saw the guards take their place behind the table where the board members were seated.

Exhale.

The community board voted; the project was approved. I watched the protestors leave. It wasn’t defeat I saw on their faces; it was determination.

What is going to happen now?

I walked down into the pit, where my husband and son were standing with the imam. I can’t say, “Congratulations, project was approved.” What is there to celebrate?

I was spent. We all had the “What now?” look on our faces.

I fought a surge of bitter taste. Too often we are asked, “Why aren’t the moderate Muslims speaking out?” The community center was to be a forum where American Muslims would stand side-by-side with men and women of peace, promoting religious tolerance. The extremists had drowned out the voices of the moderates.

Leaving the scene

Hate mail and hate calls paralyzed the office. Daisy Khan and Imam Feisal needed me, and I abandoned them. My father, who was suffering from leukemia, had taken a turn for the worse. I walked off the set and took the first flight out to Pakistan. Planning to stay for two weeks, I ended up staying for three months.

I was in Pakistan, nursing my dying father, when the uproar around the community center project, now dubbed Park51, reached hysterical heights. Swept away in doctor visits, arranging for blood donors, transporting blood bags for transfusion, monitoring medications, hospitalizations, visitors, I was barely in touch with the news. Then my mother took a fall, fractured her hipbone, and was immobilized. Park51 fell off my screen.

My brother in Pakistan brought me back to this world. “Have you heard the news about what’s happening in New York? Some Muslims have decided to build a mosque at Ground Zero. Why would they do something like that?”

Even Pakistanis have fallen for the rhetoric.

Picture the look on his face when I told him that his sister was one of those “some Muslims.”

Friends from my college days came to visit. Park51 must have hit an even higher high, because they brought it up. “Unnecessary provocation,” one of them said. There I go again, explaining the intent of the project.

My uncle advised me, “It would be wise if you built it someplace else.”

Death threats

After burying my father, I returned home to New York. The storm of Park51 had blown over, and I walked into the office to face the debris: ashes, soot, mud, and smoldering black smoke. The place was a fortress, buttressed by security. I walked into a new world trying to reconcile hate mail with warm and tender letters of support; trying to fathom how far one should go in standing by principle without taking the world down at the same time; how hard does one push in paving the way without causing a stampede; how does one amplify the voices of moderation without having those voices drowned out by the thunder of the extremists; and how do we carve a space for ourselves without stepping on the sentiments of our shared pain? Imam Feisal was not around—he had been advised to take the death threats seriously.

“You knew when to leave, and you knew when to come back,” Imam Feisal said to me when he returned. I chuckled.

Go where?

Were we naïve to have believed that there would be no outrage over a Muslim center four blocks from Ground Zero? What now? Should we back off, avoid the fallout, and move the center some place less controversial? Should we? A friend came to offer her condolences on my father’s passing. Commenting on Park51, she said, “If you agree to move the project to another location, you will be setting a precedent: “Push, and we shall move.” And move where?

“Ten blocks North?

“No, that’s not far enough. Go to the upper tip of Manhattan.

“Not Manhattan. Go to the outer boroughs.

“Not New York City. Go Upstate.

“Not in my state.

“Perhaps not in the US?”

Dream, but don’t get real.

The Fallout

The circuit breaker tripped right after the November elections. The crisis was over. Just like that. But it’s not over. We got burnt, and Muslim communities across the nation felt the heat. Park51 never got built as originally envisioned. A planned mosque in Staten Island never rose. Approvals for a mosque in Tennessee came under fire. Mosques were vandalized, hate crimes increased, there was a Qur’an burning by a pastor in Florida. . . .

And whereas the dream of a Muslim community center was not realized in bricks and mortar, we did build a community without walls, gathering in spaces offered to us by churches, synagogues, and community centers, and offering faith-based and interfaith -programs of learning, arts, culture, music, with room for people of all faiths and leanings. Come in . . . and welcome to America.

America, the nation that went through a soul-searching moment when anti-Muslim placards clashed with the red, white, and blue voices of compassion and tolerance, and when President Barack Obama and Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood up for what this nation stands for. We saw moderates of all faiths being galvanized to push back the forces of Islamophobia. Our comrades became our ambassadors, and we made friends.

I made my peace with the Islamophobes, acknowledging that we had not done enough to amplify the voices of moderation. Their vitriolic voices made me realize how much more work we had to do, and how much further we had to go to dispel the misconceptions about Muslims and to make ourselves known.

Will history report how so many were disenfranchised because of the acts of a few? Or will America change its course and make space for its Muslim citizens, so we can claim that we truly did overcome? Time and time again, our nation has exhibited resiliency in springing back, in pushing through the dark clouds and allowing sunshine to prevail, in letting the best in us outshine the worst. America, the nation I choose to make my home, will part the sea. In my home, I will feel at home.

And to think that when I first came to the United States as a Pakistani bride, I had no intention of making America my home. I had arrived with the belief that America was no place to raise a child Muslim. I had plans for my yet-to-be born children. I was coming for two years, and when my husband completed his medical residency, we were going back to Pakistan. That was forty-four years ago.