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  • Julia Sneden: Niggly Things

     

    by Julia Snedenowners manuals

    I’ve been possessed of great good fortune throughout my life. I was blessed with a loving family and some good, hard life-lessons. The latter may sound like an oxymoron, but I’m a believer in the idea that while no one likes hard life-lessons, they produce a more resonant human being. Nothing promotes growth better than the solid evidence of one’s own fallibility.

    When I was a child, my parents encouraged (or discouraged) my independence, in appropriate measure. They shared their love of vigorous physical activity. They fed my curiosity and encouraged my mental growth. A kid couldn’t ask for a whole lot more. 

    By all lights, I should have matured into a calm, capable, well-adjusted adult, which, mostly, I think I am. But there are a few things in life that shove me over the edge into cranky-old-dame territory, and push my usually normal blood pressure into the red zone.  

    I’m not talking big things like human cruelty and injustice and poverty and pain. Those are things that make me incredibly sad, and even cause me to lose sleep, but they are part of the human condition, and afflict all of us.  

     

    To her, that meant getting a run in her stocking on her way to church, or having a lock of hair that slipped out of its bobby-pinned curl during the night and hung straight in the morning. Times were simpler, back then, and niggly things knew their place. 

    These days, however, it sometimes seems as if there’s a conspiracy of niggliness out there, one that just delights in producing things to drive us around the proverbial bend. My own, personal list includes: 

    1. … the kind of packaging that places objects on a bed of hard plastic, covered by a plastic bubble. Trying to get down to the staple-remover or whatever tool is in there demands patience of a kind that hasn’t yet been developed by the human spirit. (My husband tells me that some clever soul has actually developed a talon-like tool to deal with the problem. Guess who has added a talon to her Christmas list).
    2. … manuals for electronics and/or automobiles. These things are written by experts who can’t descend to the level of the person who must actually use the device; they presume you know as much as they do. Or perhaps the manufacturers have taken pity on people with short attention spans, hired them to write, and then failed to check their work. Whole sections leap over really important facts, like why the battery screen on the Prius suddenly changes from blue to green in mid-drive, inducing panic in the first-time operator. Of course there’s always the possibility that confusing manuals are produced by those monkeys who, we’re told, will produce the entire Shakespeare canon, given typewriters and enough time.
    3.  … kitchen implements that aren’t made to last. I have a short-handled spatula, probably from the ‘40’s, that my father-in-law used every weekend morning to flip his fried egg (and I’m sure it was also used by everyone else in the family for other things). The wooden handle long ago lost its paint, but the stainless steel part is as good as ever. Newer tools like ice cream scoops and spatulas may have plastic handles that last, but although the metal part starts life all bright and shiny, the coating soon wears off in ugly patches. The metal underneath doesn’t look like something you’d want in contact with your food, either. 
    4. … movies shown on television by networks that use a lower corner of the frame to promote next week’s offerings. Poor Kyra Sedgwick: I can’t imagine that she’d want to pop up like some annoying leprechaun, crouched to spring, disrupting Casablanca, let alone Schindler’s List. Talk about negative advertising! The Screen Actors’ Guild needs to do something, pronto.
    5. … kiddie beauty pageants with little girls dressed in sexy, most un-kid-like fashion. And their mothers worry about pedophiles?
    6. … tall supermarket shelves. The average American woman is five feet, four inches tall. It is humiliating to have to ask for help to fetch something that should be placed within reach. Not only that: small-package items are put up top. Who are the biggest users of small packages? The elderly, that’s who. Their families are grown and gone, and they do not want the large, jumbo, or super-sized packages. Those of us who have begun to shrink, or whose bones are brittle, or whose balance isn’t what it used to be, don’t need to be struggling upwards to grasp what we need. 

    Come to think of it, maybe my list isn’t really so niggly at all. Maybe it’s time for someone somewhere to start a list of niggles that could clue in those clueless makers of things that infuriate. I, for one, will offer up my little list to anyone willing to take on the challenge. 

    Any takers out there?

    © Julia Sneden for SeniorWomen.com

  • Updated Subsidy Calculator and 300+ FAQs Help Consumers Understand the ACA Marketplaces as Open Enrollment Begins

    ACA Open EnrollmentEditor’s Note: Yes, the election is important, but caring for the status of the Affordable Care Act in your life is on a par!

    Ahead of the annual Affordable Care Act (ACA) open enrollment period, the time during which consumers can shop for health plans or renew existing coverage, KFF has updated its Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator and its searchable collection of more than 300 Frequently Asked Questions about open enrollment, the health insurance marketplaces and the ACA. 

    KFF’s Health Insurance Marketplace Calculator provides estimates of 2021 health insurance premiums and subsidies for people purchasing insurance on their own in health insurance exchanges. Users can enter age, income, and family size information to estimate their eligibility for subsidies and how much they can expect to spend on health insurance.

    The FAQ database covers a wide range of topics related to obtaining or renewing Marketplace coverage, and has been updated to answer questions about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on this year’s open enrollment period, as well as recent policy changes that may affect women, immigrants, and non-traditional households. More than 180 of the FAQs in the collection are available in Spanish.

    KFF has also updated its overview of the financial assistance available for people purchasing their own coverage, including premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies. As plan premiums will change in 2021 and new insurers are entering the marketplace in many states, consumers already enrolled should actively renew coverage to ensure they receive the most accurate subsidy amount.

    Open enrollment for the Federal marketplace begins Sunday, Nov. 1, 2020 and ends on Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2020. In most state marketplaces, including new ones opening in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, open enrollment will end later. People in healthcare.gov states affected by natural disasters and/or the COVID-19 emergency can also request extended time to sign up.

    Organizations assisting consumers are encouraged to link to the FAQ web page. Each question and answer may be shared individually by direct link, via Twitter and Facebook.

    Visit https://www.kff.org/understanding-health-insurance for KFF’s most current resources for consumers looking for answers about open enrollment, the marketplaces and health insurance in general.

    Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues, KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California.

  • Decisions, Decisions: How National News Outlets Project And Call Presidential Winners

    Photograph of a television news production studio showing a wall of screens

    (llee_wu / Flickr / Creative Commons)
     
    By 

    October 26, 2020

    Before, on and after Election Day, thousands of Americans, many of them volunteers, will gather, process and count ballots for president and for national, state and local offices. That collective effort is the wizard behind the curtain of a core function of U.S. democracy — picking elected leaders.

    Similarly, news outlets call elections based on a combined effort involving statistical analysis, vote counts, surveys, exit polls and old-fashioned reporting. With varying rules and processes for how states conduct elections and tens of millions of advance ballots expected to be cast due to the COVID-19 pandemic, major news companies like ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC and The Associated Press are telling their audiences not to expect clear-cut results on election night.

    Eventually, however, the national media will call or project winners for thousands of races across the country.

    Here’s how they’ll do it.

    Exit polls, surveys and ballot types

    Decision desk staff at the AP and national TV news networks work separately but use similar methods to call elections, as Sam Feist, CNN’s Washington bureau chief and senior vice president explained during an Oct. 14 briefing hosted by PEN America. For the 2020 general election it won’t be a race among the news outlets to, say, be the first to call a state for a presidential candidate: “I can assure you — I can speak on behalf of CNN, but I suspect I’m speaking on behalf of others that we are not competing with each other. The numbers are going to dictate when we make a projection,” Feist said.

    ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC are part of the National Election Pool, which delivers exit polls conducted by Edison Research to those organizations. Exit pollsters use written questionnaires at voting sites to find out which candidates voters selected. During the 2016 general election, Edison polled 85,000 people at 1,000 locations nationwide and conducted phone surveys with 16,000 advance voters.

    The AP and Fox News left the National Election Pool after 2016. To replace traditional exit polling, those outlets partnered to develop a proprietary survey along with NORC, formerly known as the National Opinion Research Center, at the University of Chicago. The method surveys thousands of randomly selected voters in the days leading up to an election and combines that information with poll results from online panels to get a sense of who voters are and which candidates they’re leaning toward. During the 2018 elections, for example, the AP conducted 139,000 interviews with registered voters in every state.

    The AP also doesn’t project outcomes — it calls elections.

    “When we declare a winner, it’s our final word,” AP Deputy Managing Editor for Operations David Scott said during a Sept. 23 briefing hosted by the American Press Institute. “We don’t make projections at the Associated Press. We don’t make predictions. There are no apparent winners or likely winners when we make a race call.”

    The AP will declare winners in more than 7,000 races around the country after Election Day. The standard is simple: If there is a path to victory for only one candidate, the AP calls the race for that candidate. Its call on the presidential race will take into account on-the-ground reporting — roughly 5,000 AP reporters will fan out across the country and feed information to a core team of 60 analysts — in addition to statistical modeling, pre-election polling, voting history in polling districts, vote counts and votes left to be counted.

    At least 61 million advance ballots have been cast for the 2020 general election so far, according to the U.S. Elections Project led by University of Florida political science professor Michael McDonald. Advance ballots include mail-in and absentee ballots and early in-person voting. Roughly 140 million Americans cast votes during the 2016 general election and 41% of them voted before Election Day, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal clearinghouse of state-by-state voting information. Of those who voted early in 2016, 17% voted in-person at polling sites while 24% mailed their ballots.

    Exit polls may be less predictive this year, as decision desk editors at major media outlets estimate between 50% and 60% of ballots will be cast before Nov. 3. Decision desk editors also expect overall turnout to be higher than in 2016. It’s unclear whether those additional voters will show up in the advance voting numbers or whether Election Day turnout will also be higher, as CNN Politics Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta noted during the PEN America briefing.

    It’s also a near certainty that hundreds of thousands of votes will come in after Nov. 3 in the form of provisional ballots and mail ballots that arrive after Election Day in states where that’s allowed.

  • Stateline Editors Picks; What We’re Reading: Top State Stories 10/26

    The United States in Crayola 

    Map of the United States, depicted in the colors of the Crayola State Colors Collection, 2015. The twelve colors in the right margin were included in the collection, but not assigned to any state or territory; work by P Aculeius, Wikimedia

    Stateline is an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts*

    UT: Utah hospitals prepare to ration intensive care

    sltrib.com

    Under the criteria proposed by the Utah Hospital Association, which would require Republican Gov. Gary Herbert’s approval, patients who are getting worse despite receiving intensive care would be moved out first. In the event that two patients’ conditions are equal, the young get priority over the old, since older patients are more likely to die.

    GA: Georgia at high risk of militia threat around elections, new report says

    ajc.com

    A new report by a group that typically monitors political violence abroad named Georgia as one of five high-risk states for far-right militia activity around the November election.

    WI: Wisconsin contact tracers are overwhelmed

    jsonline.com

    With an average of 3,400 new cases pouring in each day just in the past week — the third highest per-person rate in the United States — Wisconsin contact tracers are now so overrun that some have begun to wonder whether the job is futile.

    NY: Lines stretch for blocks as New Yorkers turn out for inaugural early voting

    nytimes.com

    Voters in New York City waited hours to cast ballots during the first time early voting has been allowed in the state in a presidential election. Recent mishaps involving mail-in ballots seemed to drive many voters to the polls.

    MA: Source of infections unknown in half of Massachusetts COVID-19 cases, state says

    bostonglobe.com

    Massachusetts acknowledged it has not been able to determine the source of infection in about half of COVID-19 cases, an information gap that epidemiologists say could limit the ability to respond to outbreaks and control transmission of the disease.

    FL: Florida Democrats struggle to control state Senate

    tampabay.com

    Florida’s government could undergo a seismic shift it hasn’t seen in more than a quarter century. Democrats are three state Senate seats away from sharing power with Republicans, but doing so is harder than it looks.

    TX: Massive early voting numbers in Texas continue

    texastribune.org

    Experts are predicting that as many as 12 million people could vote in Texas this year. The state could reach turnout levels unseen so far this century.

    LA: Louisiana GOP lawmakers call for end to coronavirus restrictions

    theadvocate.com

    Louisiana Republican lawmakers sent the governor a petition to cancel all virus restrictions, from the mask mandate to rules requiring social distancing at bars and restaurants. But Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards showed no indication he would play along.

    CO: Colorado health order limits personal gatherings to 10 people

    cpr.org

    Personal gatherings are now limited to 10 people from no more than two households in all Colorado counties at all three “Safer at Home” levels. Some counties, like Denver, Adams and Boulder, have already instituted stricter orders on gathering sizes.

    AZ: Arizona COVID-19 cases rising at fastest rate since June

    azcentral.com

    Arizona reported nearly 1,400 new COVID-19 cases, the most in about a month. The past several weeks have seen relatively higher daily case reports as the virus spreads at its fastest rate in Arizona since June.

  • National Institutes of Health (NIH) Scientists Use Gene Therapy and A Novel Light-sensing Protein to Restore Vision in Mice; NIH-funded therapy will now be tested in humans

    A newly developed light-sensing protein called the MCO1 opsin restores vision in blind mice when attached to retina bipolar cells using gene therapy. The National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, provided a Small Business Innovation Research grant to Nanoscope, LLC for development of MCO1. The company is planning a U.S. clinical trial for later this year.

    Nanoscope’s findings, reported today in Nature Gene Therapy, show that totally blind mice — meaning they have no light perception —regain significant retinal function and vision after treatment. Studies described in the report showed that treated mice were significantly faster in standardized visual tests, such as navigating mazes and detecting changes in motion.

    Opsins are proteins that signal other cells as part of a cascade of signals essential to visual perception. In a normal eye, opsins are expressed by the rod and cone photoreceptors in the retina. When activated by light, the photoreceptors pulse and send a signal through other retinal neurons, the optic nerve, and on to neurons in the brain.gene therapy

    A variety of common eye diseases, including age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, damage the photoreceptors, impairing vision. But while the photoreceptors may no longer fully function, other retinal neurons, including a class of cells called bipolar cells, remain intact. The investigators identified a way for bipolar cells to take on some of the work of damaged photoreceptors.

    Nanoscope researchers Samarendra Mohanty and Subrata Batabyal

    “The beauty of our strategy is its simplicity,” said Samarendra Mohanty, Ph.D., Nanoscope founder and corresponding author of a report on the mouse study that appears today in Nature Gene Therapy. “Bipolar cells are downstream from the photoreceptors, so when the MCO1 opsin gene is added to bipolar cells in a retina with nonfunctioning photoreceptors, light sensitivity is restored.”

    The strategy could overcome challenges plagued by other approaches to retinal regeneration, according to the researchers. Gene replacement therapy has thus far worked principally in rare diseases that leave photoreceptors intact, such as Luxurna for Leber congenital amaurosis. Bionic eyes, such as the Argus II retinal prosthesis, require invasive surgery and wearable hardware. Other opsin replacement therapies require the intensification of light in order to reach the threshold required for signal transduction. Intense light risks further damage to the retina. Nanoscope’s therapy requires a one-time injection into the eye and no hardware. MCO1 is sensitive to ambient light, so no need exists for strong light to be shined into the eye. And therapy with MCO1 could treat a wider range of degenerative retinal diseases, since photoreceptor survival not required.

    The researchers found no concerning safety issues in treated mice. Examination of blood and tissues found no signs of inflammation due to treatment and the therapy had no off-target effect — only bipolar cells expressed the MCO1 opsin.

    Under a best-case scenario, the therapy could help patients achieve 20/60 vision, according to the researchers; however, no one knows how the restored vision will compare to normal vision.illustration of eye

    “A clinical study in people will help us understand how signaling through bipolar cells affects vision quality; for example, how well treated eyes can pick out fast-moving objects.,” said Subrata Batabyal, Ph.D., lead author of the manuscript. The therapy will likely be limited for treatment of patients with severe retinal disease.

    “If this optogenetic approach using cells spared in degenerated retina can prove to be effective in vision restoration in humans, beyond light perception, it could offer a valuable alternative to the retinal prosthesis approach for people with late-stage retinitis pigmentosa,” said PaekGyu Lee, Ph.D., NEI’s program officer for the Small Business Innovation Research program.

    Right, detail shows structure of retina, including location of a bipolar cell expressing Nanoscope’s MCO1 opsin.

    This press release describes a basic research finding. Basic research increases our understanding of human behavior and biology, which is foundational to advancing new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. Science is an unpredictable and incremental process— each research advance builds on past discoveries, often in unexpected ways. Most clinical advances would not be possible without the knowledge of fundamental basic research.

    The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is a competitive awards-based funding mechanism that supports U.S.-based small businesses engaged in research and development that has the potential for commercialization. The NEI SBIR program specifically provides funding to companies developing technologies and innovations relating to blinding eye diseases, visual disorders preservation of sight, and addressing the special health problems and requirements of individuals with impaired vision.

    NEI leads the federal government’s research on the visual system and eye diseases. NEI supports basic and clinical science programs to develop sight-saving treatments and address special needs of people with vision loss. For more information, visit https://www.nei.nih.gov.

  • Jill Norgren Reviews a New Inspector Gamache Mystery: All the Devils Are Here

    Reviewed by Jill Norgren

    All the Devils Are Here
    By Louise Penny
    Published by Minotaur Books, 2020
    (Chief Inspector Gamache Novel, 16)

     

    Louise Penny has just given us the gift of another Chief Inspector Gamache mystery.  All the Devils Are Here is the sixteenth book in the wildly popular Gamache series.

    With this many stories under her belt,  it is fair to ask whether Penny has succeeded in keeping her characters interesting and her plots compelling. All authors of series mysteries face this challenge: how to be inventive and avoid the predictable while writing about the same locale and using the same central characters.  In her latest work Penny addresses the problem of too-familiar characters with too-familiar habits by changing the locale and many of the major characters.  And it works brilliantly. Loyal series readers will enjoy a trip abroad while first time readers will have no trouble slipping into Gamache’s world.

    Penny takes Armand Gamache away from his familiar Canadian home for a vacation in Paris. His grown children, Annie and Daniel, have relocated to the city of light. The Chief Inspector and Madame Gamache have flown there to be present at the birth of their daughter’s second child. But suitcases have barely been unpacked when the Chief Inspector’s wealthy godfather is targeted by a hit-and-run driver and the chase begins.

    Penny has built the Gamache series around characters most of us would love as neighbors. They are caring, community-minded people. Jean-Guy Beauvoir works under Gamache at the provincial police force for Quebec. In a mid-series plot turn, he falls in love with and marries Annie Gamache. Other recurring characters are citizens of Three Pines, an idyllic village in the province of Quebec:  painter Clara Marrow, bistro owners Olivier and Gabri, brilliant and eccentric poet Ruth Zardo and, of course, her pet duck. 

    But, as close as Gamache is to the people of Three Pines, they are not family and in All the Devils Are Here Penny has chosen to ask deep, often painful questions about our relationships with those sharing DNA and a family history. She explores both the nature of abiding love and the cause of being estranged while moving her characters around the streets of Paris, up the Eiffel Tower, into corporate offices, and down the stairs of a national library. 

    Penny has won a large international audience — her books have been translated into more than twenty languages — with books that pay as much attention to character as to plot. This makes them rich and well-paced. Gamache, the cop who refuses to be disillusioned, sarcastic, or unhappy holds it all together, but never on his own. He believes in the abilities of others and draws upon their wit along with his own. In Paris Penny lets Gamache draw upon the intelligence and skills of several women, including his wife, trained in library science. The scenes describing their work are among the highlights of this new book. 

    In interviews Louise Penny has said that she is drawn to writing about love and friendship, belonging, hope, and kindness. This could be cloying but, in her hands, it is not. There is blood and violence in her books but never unnecessary brutality or dehumanizing sex. There is evil but, always, justice. It is one of the pleasures of the mystery genre that it is sufficiently capacious to embrace so many styles.

    For these difficult times, an evening with All the Devils Are Here is the perfect balm. 

    ©2020 Jill Norgren for SeniorWomen.com

    Jill Norgren is a retired member of the faculty of John Jay College, and the Graduate Center, of the City University of New York. She is the author, most recently, of Stories from Trailblazing Women Lawyers.

  • Kaiser Health Foundation: Distributing a COVID-19 Vaccine Across the U.S. – A Look at Key Issues

    A Young Boy Receives the first of the Polio vaccine

    The National Trial of the Salk vaccine began in 1954, when Richard Mulvany introduced an injection to a child in McLean, Va. Yale Medicine Magazine

    A COVID-19 vaccine or vaccines may become available in the United States in the next several months, at which point the process of actually delivering vaccines to most, if not all, of the population will begin. Although the U.S. has some experience with mass vaccine distribution, including during an outbreak, COVID-19 represents an unprecedented challenge that will require a scale not previously undertaken. Planning has already been underway, including the release of a federal distribution strategy and the federal government’s advance purchase of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine candidates. Even so, numerous outstanding questions and challenges remain regarding vaccine distribution, including:

      • Funding for Vaccine Distribution. A critical and potentially limiting factor in the distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine is resource constraints faced by state and local health departments. Public health has long been underfunded in the U.S., and the health and economic impacts of the pandemic have further strained the public health infrastructure and reduced revenues. To date, just $200 million in federal emergency funds has been directed to state and local health departments for vaccine distribution.
      • Supply, Logistics, and Monitoring. Distributing potentially hundreds of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines rapidly, effectively, and equitably represents a public health logistics effort on a scale not seen in the U.S. before. In addition to the challenges of the sheer number of doses likely to be needed, other logistical issues include identifying and vetting a broad network of sites for administration, ensuring cold chain requirements are met, monitoring delivery of multiple doses, and tracking vaccine safety.
      • Federal, State, and Local Authority Over Vaccination Requirements. There remain outstanding issues concerning the relative roles and responsibilities of the federal, state and local governments in vaccine distribution in the context of a pandemic which crosses jurisdictional lines. A complicated patchwork of rules and regulations across jurisdictions could result in differential access to vaccines and varying levels of success in controlling COVID-19. Some policy considerations include whether or not vaccine mandates or changes in scope of practice regulations regarding who can administer a COVID-19 vaccine will be pursued.
      • Insurance Coverage and Out-of-Pocket Costs. Ensuring that COVID-19 vaccines are covered by insurance and available at no-cost to individuals would greatly enhance access. Both the Administration and Congress have taken steps to address this issue, including advance purchase of millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine candidates and legislative requirements to provide no-cost COVID-19 vaccines under private insurance, Medicaid, and Medicare, building on existing protections under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Despite these measures, limitations and gaps remain and some individuals may still face cost and access barriers.
      • Addressing Racial and Ethnic Disparities. COVID-19 has had a significant impact on communities of color in the U.S., and the pandemic threatens to further widen racial and ethnic disparities. People of color may face greater challenges in seeking and receiving Covid-19 vaccines due to cost and access issues and may be more reluctant to get a vaccine due to mistrust of the medical system. Taken together, these issues present formidable challenges not only to reaching people of color with a COVID-19 vaccine, but to the success of the overall national COVID-19 vaccine effort.
      • Communication and Trust. Except when individuals may be subject to a vaccine mandate, receiving a COVID-19 vaccine will be voluntary, so high vaccination rates will depend on the public’s willingness to be vaccinated. People will have to trust the vaccine, the authorities overseeing distribution, and the provider administering the vaccine. All vaccines face issues of public confidence to one extent or another, yet there are indications that distrust of COVID-19 vaccines may be greater than other vaccines, and concerns about politicization of vaccine approval and distribution. Overcoming this trust deficit will likely require robust communication and trust-building efforts.

    Josh Michaud  and Jennifer Kates 

    Published: Oct 20, 2020; Kaiser Health News (KHN) is the premier source of health policy journalism. Its staff reporters, public radio station partners around the country and freelance contributors cover politics and issues playing out in Washington and the states. 

  • Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Masterpiece Home Office: How to spiff up your pandemic pad with art from Mia

    By Tim Gihring, Minneapolis Institute of Art

    With work-from-home in full swing, are you finding your quarantine quarters a little lacking? Do you dread logging into the morning meeting, coveting your colleagues’ digs while you slump at your desk seemingly made of Legos and leftover Ikea hardware? Yes, the ideal home office is the new status symbol, and Mia is here to help with Zoom-ready rooms straight from the galleries.

    Dining Room in the Country, by Pierre Bonnard, 1913. Collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

    Pierre Bonnard was an artist and illustrator in fin de siècle France who considered himself the last of the Impressionists. In fact, he was one of the first Post-Impressionists, for those keeping score, influenced by the graphic arts of Japanese printmakers like Katsushika (The Wave) Hokusai. He made a comfortable living at it, in any case, and in 1912 he bought a country house in a small town on the Seine. That’s his wife leaning in, but the rest is more or less a feeling rendered in color, a desire you may be harboring right now: to throw open the house and take in some fresh air.

    St. Jerome in His Study

    St. Jerome in His Study, by Albrecht Dürer, 1514. Collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

    When you have the patience of a saint, maybe you can work with an enormous lion at the foot of your desk. Of course, St. Jerome was said to have removed a thorn from the lion’s paw, so a grateful lion may be the best coworker of all —no one will bother you with an unwelcome ask, at least not more than once. The natural light is pretty great, too, coming through those circular panes, but if that’s not enough you’ll always have the supernatural light from your halo. Assuming, like St. Jerome — diligently translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin — that you’re doing the Lord’s work.

    The writing nook of the Purcell-Cutts House

    Inside the Purcell-Cutts House, a historic home in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

    Almost too modest to be called an office, this little nook in the living room of the Purcell-Cutts House was the sublime sanctuary of Edna Purcell, the wife of architect William Purcell, who would write letters and sort through photos here. In spring and summer, she could look out the long, rectangular window onto the blooms of a wildflower garden —replicated, abstractly, in a flower pattern on the window itself. The house was designed, in the Prairie School style, to make efficient use of space and to break down some of the old barriers between dining, living, and study spaces. “The useless division,” as William Purcell called it, “quietly slipped away,” replaced by spaces “all free and open, filled with soft light.”

  • A GAO* Report: Workplace Sexual Harassment; Experts Suggest Expanding Data Collection to Improve Understanding of Prevalence and Costs

    What GAO Foundny senate site

    Limited nationwide data hinder a comprehensive understanding of the prevalence and costs of workplace sexual harassment. According to GAO’s analysis of available federal data and literature review, the few reliable nationwide estimates of sexual harassments prevalence vary substantially due to differences in methodology, including the question structure and time period the survey used. Moreover, the likelihood of experiencing workplace sexual harassment can vary based on an individual’s demographic characteristics — such as gender, race, and age — and whether the workplace is male- or female-dominated. For example, women, younger workers, and women in male-dominated workplaces were more likely to say they experienced harassment. GAO did not find any recent cost estimates of workplace sexual harassment, but identified four broad categories of costs: health, productivity, career, and reporting and legal costs (see figure).

    Examples of Costs Associated with Workplace Sexual Harassment

    Examples of Costs Associated with Workplace Sexual Harassment

    The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), as part of its mission to prevent and remedy unlawful employment discrimination, maintains data on sexual harassment and retaliation charges filed against employers, but cannot systematically analyze the relationship between the two for all charges filed nationwide. After filing sexual harassment charges or engaging in other protected activity, employees may experience retaliation, such as firing or demotion, and EEOC data show that retaliation charges constitute a growing portion of its workload. EEOC’s planning documents highlight its intention to address retaliation and use charge data to inform its outreach to employers. However, while EEOC can review electronic copies of individual charges for details, such as whether a previously filed sexual harassment charge led to a retaliation charge, its data system cannot aggregate this information across all charges. Without the capacity to fully analyze trends in the relationship between sexual harassment and retaliation charges, EEOC may miss opportunities to refine its work with employers to prevent and address retaliation.

    Experts at GAO’s roundtable said nationally representative surveys would help to improve available information on workplace sexual harassment. Expert recommendations focused on three main areas: (1) survey administration and resources, including advantages and disadvantages to various federal roles; (2) methods to collect data, such as using stand-alone surveys or adding questions to existing surveys; and (3) content of data to be collected, including employee and employer characteristics and specific costs.

    Why GAO Did This Study

    While many workers in the United States experience workplace sexual harassment — resulting in substantial costs to them and their employers —the extent of sexual harassment and the magnitude of its effects are not fully understood.

    GAO was asked to examine the extent to which reliable information is available on workplace sexual harassment’s prevalence and costs. This report examines (1) what is known about the prevalence and costs of U.S. workplace sexual harassment, including the federal workforce, (2) the extent to which EEOC collects sexual harassment data, and (3) data collection approaches experts recommend to improve available information. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed EEOC data and survey data from other federal agencies, interviewed officials and reviewed documentation from multiple federal agencies, and interviewed experts on sexual harassment. GAO also convened a 2-day roundtable of experts, with assistance from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and conducted a literature review.

    What GAO Recommends

    GAO recommends that EEOC assess the feasibility of systematically analyzing its data on retaliation charges and the associated protected activities, including those related to sexual harassment. EEOC did not state whether or not it concurred with GAO’s recommendation. GAO continues to believe this recommendation is appropriate, as discussed in the report.

    For more information, contact Cindy S. Brown Barnes at (202) 512-7215 or brownbarnesc@gao.gov.

    * The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress. Often called the “congressional watchdog,” GAO examines how taxpayer dollars are spent and provides Congress and federal agencies with objective, reliable information to help the government save money and work more efficiently.

    For example, we identified $214.7 billion in financial benefits in fiscal year 2019—a return of about $338 for every $1 invested in us. We also identified 1,418 other benefits that led to program and operational improvements across the government. Read the press release about these record numbers.

  • Jo Freeman Book Review: Stealing Our Democracy; How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation

    Jo Freeman Review

    Stealing Our Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation

    by Don Siegelman, Political Prisoner #1

    Published by NewSouth Books, Montgomery, AL; 2020. 279 pages with photographs　

    Life was golden for Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman for the first 56 years of his life. He had served in all of the his state’s top political offices — secretary of state, attorney general, Lt. Governor and Governor — even though he was a liberal Democrat in an increasingly Republican state. He had friends and contacts, a good marriage and two fine children. He was planning to run for President as soon as he was re-elected in 2002. Then he was slammed with a political hurricane, which went by the name of Karl Rove. Life’s been a steady slide downhill since then. Trial, imprisonment and appeal is a very complicated story which you will have to read the book to appreciate.  Siegelman’s experience reads like a horror movie. 

    This is his story, though it’s been told and retold in the press for almost two decades.

    DS was born in Mobile, Alabama’s most cosmopolitan city, to a middle-class family with German working-class roots. He started running for office in middle school. Campaigning for something became his way of life. He had a talent for cultivating mentors and contacts.

    He also had a strong interest in education. When he ran for governor in 1998 his primary plank was an education lottery similar to the one in Georgia. It would fund free pre-K and college or trade school so deserving students wouldn’t have to pay tuition.

    This proposal was a threat to the income of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, whose casinos had a monopoly on legal gambling in those two states. Their money flowed through their lobbyist to Karl Rove to be used to defeat anyone who supported any other type of legal gambling. 

    Rove and his partner, Bill Canary, came to Alabama after Bush ‘41 lost the 1992 election. They had both married Alabama women. Their political consulting company was dedicated to eliminating Democrats and liberals from public office by fair means or foul — for a price. They were largely successful, but not against Don Siegelman. He was popular.