Assembly of Governments

There were 3 items on tonight's Assembly of Governments meeting: relocating the IFC shelter operations from downtown, solid waste update, and a small area plan for Rogers Road. I expected the IFC discussion to be the same old same old, but I was very pleasantly surprised. The chair of the IFC board laid out the predicament by explaining how much funding they have lost over the past 3 years (HUD) and how much they need and want to provide the same type of quality facility and programming for men as they do for women. But to do that they need the 3 local governments to work with them. It went round and round (Eubanks Road too far out, don't want to run water/sewer into the rural buffer) with none of the elected officials addressing the request for partnership, until Steve Halkiotis pointed out that all the services that shelter residents need are contained at the Southern Human Services center and that there is plenty of room to put the shelter there. It was such a simple, obvious solution to a problem the community has agonized over for nearly 20 years. Everyone recognized the beauty of the solution and the partnership was formed. The IFC folks left very happy (and surprised).

The solid waste discussion focused on methane. Earlier today I had heard about the fact that the landfill doesn't generate enough methane to make it attractice to the utilities or to justify the investment in capture for onsite use. The elected officials have a very different opinion. They think the new transfer station, the animal shelter, and something else could be powered by landfill methane. And supposedly UNC has contacted the commissioners about piping it to Carolina North. It should be interesting to see which story lies closest to reality. In the meantime, OWASA is already doing it.

Black Thursday

The lottery opens today. Sad, sad day.

Feline Diabetes: Ketones & blood glucose levels

Edited from a post by Hilary & Zug (GA)

Ketones are a serious side effect of diabetes. Caregivers must test their cat's urine for ketones daily when blood glucose (BG) levels are high (over 300) and a couple of times a week as long as exogeneous insulin is being given. The explanation describes 3 conditions in which high blood glucose levels can lead to ketones and 1 condition in which high blood glucose levels rarely leads to ketones.

1. Insufficient insulin. Insulin allows glucose (energy) to enter cells. Without insulin, cells starve because they don't get glucose. Insulin's like a door key -- if the key's missing, you can't open the door, and all the glucose stays on the wrong side. If the cells don't get enough glucose, they try and compensate by breaking down lipids (fat) for energy, and that causes ketones.

2. Infections. The immune response to the infection can impair insulin usage. So it's like the doors are partly barricaded, and not enough glucose can get in to feed the cells. That's why things like UTIs or bad teeth can cause ketones, even at relatively innocuous numbers.

3. Insufficient food intake. This one often seems counterintuitive, and even grasping the physiology, it took me a little while to bend my brain around this. Because even at high numbers, a cat needs a fresh infusion of nutrition-wrapped glucose for the insulin to let into the cells. kind of like the cells are watching a stale buffet get staler, and waiting for the good fresh stuff to come out of the kitchen. when it doesn't, they start looking at ways to get more/better "food", and that can mean breaking down fats and causing ketones.

4. Too much glucose. Rebound is the bodies response to an insulin dosage that is too high over time (a positive feedback loop). In rebound, glucose still enters the cells at a good rate, but MORE glucose is being dumped into the bloodstream (well, technically, more glucose is being produced via glycosis, but...). So the cells aren't starving, and they don't "feel the need" to break down fats into metabolic products they can use. Plenty of food's coming in the door, there's just a lot more out there. So the physiological mechanism that creates the high BG levels is a very different underlying physiology that won't lead to ketosis. If your cat has high BG levels and you suspect it is due to rebound, you have a little more leeway to experiment without the threat of ketones hanging over your head.

So, to put it in really simple terms there are 3 ways to get ketones:

1. High numbers (not enough insulin/ineffective insulin) --> possible ketones.
   
2. Inappetance/insufficient food intake --> possible ketones
   
3. Infections --> possible ketones

(Note that the latter 2 issues make it possible for ketones to appear at relatively "low" BGs e.g., under 300mg/dl)

When you start combining these issues, you increase the probability of developing ketones, ketosis, and potentially fatal ketoacidosis.

Thanks to Hilary & Zug(GA)

Tarheels Beat Duke 83-76!

They came close at the Dean Dome, and succeeded at Cameron!

"The freshman-heavy squad of No. 13 North Carolina handed the senior-laded team of top-ranked Duke its second loss in as many games with an 83-76 victory in the ACC finale for both teams.

Tyler Hansbrough scored a game-high 27 points and added 10 rebounds as North Carolina's four freshmen outscored Duke's four seniors 55-51 in a game that again showed why ranking, statistics, age, beauty and credit rating mean nothing in college basketball's craziest rivalry."

http://www.newsobserver.com/122/story/414847.html

Too bad David Noel's leadership role isn't recognized in the N&O's reporting on this win. He's been my favorite player since he joined the team. Clearly Roy Williams feels the same:

"Carolina coach Roy Williams didn't recruit Noel, but he might just adopt him if Noel's family wants to share permanently. Williams was nearly in tears in describing what an unselfish and heroic effort Noel has given since the end of last season until now.

"I have a saying on my desk at my house," Williams said. "It says, 'Statistics are important, but relationships last a lifetime.' And the relationship I have with players has always meant more to me than anything.

"David Noel has done as good a job -- no one has ever done anything better than David Noel."

Getting Started with Feline Diabetes

The initial diagnosis of feline diabetes (FD) can be overwhelming. It adds a new dimension of caregiving to the relationship we have with our cat as well as changing the day-to-day routine we have all established around feeding. But FD is not a death sentence and the changes it introduces into our households can be routinized fairly quickly. It is a complex disease though, and there is a lot to learn. The best sources of information are the Feline Diabetes Message Board FAQs and the Pet Diabetes Wiki.

You should also read and post on the message board. Ask questions, then ask more questions. Also check out Making the Most of Your FDMB Experience.

In the meantime, you must still care for your sugar cat. Here are a few tips to help you get started. As you learn more about feline diabetes, each of these tips can be customized for you and your cat.

1. If you are already using insulin, don't switch your cat to low carbohydrate diet unless you are hometesting. A low carbohydrate diet has a high probability of reducing your cat's insulin needs so when and if you do decide to switch, do so carefully. For details, read 10 Good Reasons NOT to Change that Diet Just Yet!
   
   
2. If your cat is on insulin, don't adjust dosages upward until your cat's body has had time to adjust to the current dose. This usually requires between 3-5 days. You can adjust downward at any time. Dose adjustments should be made in .2 or .5 unit increments.
   
   
3. Most FD cats benefit by being on a schedule, but don't be daunted by the prospect; most of us work and have a life, yet are able to manage our FD kitty by making a few adjustments in our day-to-day lives. If you choose to hometest, you can either test, feed, shoot OR feed, test, shoot. With fast acting insulin, such as NPH, you may need to wait for 30 minutes to an hour after feeding before shooting. Over time, you may refine this sequence to meet the needs of your unique kitty.
   
   
4. If you choose not to hometest, don't expect your vet will do everything for you. At minimum you need to know the clinical symptoms of hypoglycemia and be prepared to act quickly. Following a set schedule will help you recognize any odd behavior following an insulin shots.
   
   
5. Don't forget to test urine for ketones (weekly). If your cat has had ketones or DKA, you should test daily or every other day. Ketones and hypoglycemia are the most dangerous side effects of feline diabetes. Be sure to learn about both early on in your studies. -
   
   
6. Don't hesitate to ask lots of questions on FDMB. We've all been in your shoes, we like to share our experiences!
   
   
7. FDMB members have varying degrees of experience and knowledge regarding feline diabetes and often have differing opinions. Don't assume that what someone says is the one and only "right" answer. If you are asking for advice and getting divergent opinions, ask posters to explain why they are recommending a certain course of action. "Why" is an excellent question. Only you can decide what is right for you and your cat.
   
   
8. Don't piss off your vet over diet or hometesting. Your cat will need medical care beyond what you can do at home. Of course it is better to have a vet who will work with you on hometesting and dietary adjustments, but if you live in a small town and don't have choices, you need to find a way to work with the vet you have.
   Interviewing Vets for the Treatment of Your Diabetic Cat and
   Questions for Vets.
   
   
9. Don't feel like you are in this alone. FDMB is a community. We care about you and your cat. If someone doesn't answer your question right away, it only means no one is around who knows the answer. Be patient. If your question gets lost, repost it. Be persistent!
   
   
10. Don't worry yourself sick about feline diabetes. It is a manageable disease, especially if you don't stress yourself out. Go to the movies now and then. Take walks. Have fun. Your cat will be OK and you'll both be happier if you take as good of care of yourself as you take of your sugar kitty.

Remember, this is just a quick reference to help you start caring for your diabetic cat until you have time to read and understand the more technical information contained in the FAQs and the Pet Diabetes Wiki.

Bombast

"A life without bombast is not a life."

Steven Halkiotis, Orange County Commissioner, in response to chair Barry Jacobs' recognition of Halkiotis' 20 years of service. "We thank you for your compassion, your integrity, dedication, creativity and for your passion and even for your bombast on occasion." Halkiotis announced yesterday that he will not seek re-election.

I attended my first county commissioners meeting last week when OWASA was asked to explain to the commissioners how they handle assessments (adding service to existing neighborhoods with septic systems). The atmosphere was casual and collegial between the commissioners themselves and the presenters. I don't recall ever laughing out of amusement at a Carrboro or a Chapel Hill town meeting, but Commissioners Halkiotis' bombastic speech gave me a couple of good belly laughs that night.

I regret now that I haven't paid more attention to the county commissioners. We could certainly use more interesting characters in local politics. Sorry I missed the opportunity of getting to know Commissioner Halkiotis as a legislator and a bombast.

More on Net Neutrality

"Nothing less than the future of the internet is at stake in these discussions. We must preserve neutrality in the system in order to allow the new Googles of the world, the new Yahoo!s, the new Amazons to form. We risk losing the internet as catalyst for consumer choice, for economic growth, for technological innovation, and for global competitiveness." Vint Cerf , speaking to Congress on 2/7/06

GGC all -the-way

In my younger days, I ended many nights of partying on Franklin Street at Hectors. Not the best of places for vegetarians, but the GGC (Greek grilled cheese) all-the-way will go down in memory as one of my favorite foods.

Raspberries to the property owner that is forcing Hector's out of their space on the corner of Henderson and Franklin Street. I'm glad they'll be re-opening elsewhere but it won't be the same. Pretty soon all the remnants of old Chapel Hill will be gone. Thank goodness for the Shrunken Head!

First School

FPG Institute is proposing a new model of early childhood education. "This model offers a new way to think of children starting school that moves away from simply thinking of preschool, Head Start or More at Four as being an “add on” to the existing system, that is not fully integrated into how we think about educating children in our community." (Dick Clifford memo excerpted by Neil Pederson in his memo to the Sewell School Governance Committee)

The idea is to build the school at the back end of the Horace Williams Tract, close to Seawell School to create a natural transition from the preK-2nd students at First School into grades 3-5 at Seawell. On the surface, this is a great idea, like everything else that comes out of FPG Institute. Children from low-income homes are exposed to more non-educational television and less written and numerical materials than children in middle-to upper class homes. When they come to school, the disparity in readiness creates one of the most significant social problems of our era (IMHO).
I was happy to see the following also from the Dick Clifford memo (see above for reference):

"The model has as a major goal of reducing the achievement gap between children with great economic advantage and those with less advantages. About half the achievement gap exists prior to kindergarten entry according to recent studies. By reaching children earlier we have a chance to substantially reduce the gap at this point in their lives. We know that both your More at Four and Head Start programs have this same goal and we see a joint effort in First School as the next logical step in working toward school success for all. A clearly articulated model that cuts across the current age and grade configuration should be a major help in dealing with the achievement gap. We know that the school system has been committed to addressing this issue and believe First School will offer a new set of strategies to accomplish this common goal.

I understand the concerns expressed elsewhere about institutionalizing children at such a young age. But this proposal is an attempt to provide exposure to words and numbers and other intellectual activities that low SES children do not always receive at home. Children in lower-income homes don’t have as many books, newspaper, or magazines available to them in the home; their parents are less likely to be seen reading or calculating; their neighborhoods have less signage; they don’t travel as much so their neighborhoods and homes are the environments that establish their frames of reference. In essence, their environment does not convey the message that literacy (words and numbers) is a vital aspect of everyday life. Schools are built upon the basic assumption that words and numbers are the basic operational tools of life. If children come to schools without already having embraced that assumption, they are at significant disadvantage. As are the schools that have to balance their services between those who already ‘fit the mold’ and those that don’t.

The school district needs all the help it can get in resolving the minority achievement gap, and I've long wanted to see more interaction between the university and the school district. But I am concerned that Seawell isn't the best choice for students to populate this program. For one thing, Sewell Elementary is doing a better job of bridging the gap than 4 other district elementary schools.

Excerpted from the Chapel Hill Carrboro School ReportCard for 2004-2005

Elementary School	Black	Hispanic	Economically Disadvantaged	Limited English Proficiency	Disabilities
Seawell	74.2	87.5	80	78.9	81.5
FP Graham	66.1	76.7	65.9	74.1	65.6
Glenwood	78.1	89.5	78.0	76.2	72
McDougle	71.1	66.7	69.2	50	68.1
Carrboro	63.3	67.5	60	51.3	51.9
Ephesus	57.1	85.7	68.1	78.6	51.4
Estes Hills	60.8	71.4	61	64.7	57.9
Scroggs	88.2	73.3	73.3	80	80.6
Rashkis	74.4	57.1	65.7	83.3	63.6

I hope the school board will consider an assignment plan that pulls students from Frank Porter Graham, Carrboro, Ephesus, and McDougle as well as Seawell if they go forward with this project. The goal should be identifying strategies for reducing inequities, but I'm afraid the money savings may get in the way of their focus.

Questions for now:

1. Who will be attending this new school? Will this new school taking students exclusively from the (middle class) northern neighborhoods currently served by Seawell or will it also pull from FPG elementary and Carrboro where there is a more diverse student population (racially and SES)?

2. The minority achievement gap is the most significant performance problem in our school district. According to the literature, children who come to school ready to learn lose the benefits of early age programming by late elementary/middle school. Where do the students of CHCCS most benefit--an additional readiness program or late elementary/middle grades programs that help prevent the erosion of benefits from current readiness programs? Does the financial situation dictate making a choice between the two?

3. What criteria will the school board use for making this decision? Can we take the financial aspects of it off the table for the first round of discussions? How will the school board and district administrators communicate with the public? Will public review come early enough to actually have an impact on decision making?

I'm much less skeptical of the programming part of this project than I was when I first heard about it. Hopefully, the implementation plan will focus on serving the most underserved children and not get too tangled up with finances.

Changing Paradigms

This week we saw the 'messiness' of appointing someone to a position that should have been filled through election. The public debate of the Carrboro Alderman was painful, circular, and at times appeared to be downright, heavy-handed bullying. For a while there was two groups on the board, publicly defined by the individual that group was supporting for the open seat.

The ideological differences between those two groups is of critical importance for members of the community to understand. Too bad those different positions were so singularly attributed to representation for the annexation area, to be referred to as northeast Carrboro from here on out (thanks for the suggestion Mark!). Certainly that was a consideration, but I think it was masking the deeper divide on issues of growth.

On one hand, there is the 'go slow, minimize change' group. Those individuals are working to maintain the status quo of Carrboro as a small, funky bedroom community of Chapel Hill. In many ways, this is the group I most closely identify with. At least, it is the group that has my emotional support. The other group is working from the assumption that future growth within the urban services boundary will take place in Carrboro and that we need to acknowledge the inevitability of change and to plan for it. While I don't like the way change is destroying the small-town, close knit community feeling of Carrboro, I also intellectually understand that denying this position will force development outside the urban services boundary and result in sprawl/environmental degradation.

Donella Meadows says that 'If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and to who has power over them.' (Rule 4 of Leverage Points) What do we know now that the 'no/limited growth' group has control of the rules?

• Environmental regulations within Carrboro zoning control will become stricter. On the surface this is hardly objectionable. And yet, we don't live in a bubble. What happens to growth that is kept out of Carrboro? We certainly won't stop it from occurring, so we should assume it will go where there are fewer restrictions, such as Chatham County. They may be downstream from our waterways, but their traffic certainly flows northward.

• The stock of affordable housing will increase. Again, hardly objectionable. And yet, focusing on supply through zoning ordinances/policy is tied so closely to development of luxury housing that we should be prepared for the current trend of decreasing proportions of low-to-moderate income residents to high-income residents to continue, creating a more economically bifurcated population.

• Taxes will most likely continue to increase. I'm not a no-government supporter. I don't object to paying for taxes that provide valuable human services and environmental protection. I do mind wasting my hard earned money on unsustainable infrastructure and administrative services. I definitely object to the impact annual tax increases is having on the composition of the community. Gentrification and out-migration of Carrboro's African-American population will leave this community looking more like Cary than Carrboro.

• The cultural divide between old and new Carrboro will turn local government into a war zone. The repercussions of the appointment process will have a significant and detrimental long-term impact on old Carrboro. There's no way to predict whether appointing someone from the newly annexed northeast Carrboro area would have smoother over the transition, but there is no doubt in my mind that the failure to appoint someone with a legitimate claim to representing those who were not able to vote will have a major impact on the 2007 election. Fortunately the residents of northeast Carrboro do have a strong environmental and social justice ethic, but they will change us in other ways.

Up until now, local growth has been caught up in a series of postive feedback loops ("any place where the more you have of something, the more you have the possibility of having more"). The more growth we see, the more pressure is placed on local government and human service agencies, the higher the taxes go, the more we need development to support the burden of growth. The reputation of our school system contributes to those growth pressures. The better our kids do on national tests, the more development occurs to support wealthy families who want their kids to go to school here.

What steps/policies will the new majority on the BOA undertake to break the growth cycle? Will they be successful or will they create more turmoil? Will they acknowledge the complexities or fall back on positions they've shared in previous contexts? And how much pressure will they feel to act quickly before the 2007 election? Will they dance with the system or try to control it?

The question that can never be answered but which we should never forget, is how the use of appointment rather than election impacts everything that happens over the next couple of years. Yes, I know there was no way around appointment. But the appointment could have been made on the basis of the last election by appointing the 4th runner up. That one little decision may be the one flap of a seagull's wings for Carrboro.

And where does Dan Coleman fit in all this? Without his participation in the electoral process and having been subjected to the intense questioning of groups like the Sierra Club, we really don't know but we might have a clue. In one of his pre-campaign season editorials, he speculated about a candidate of the future: "In the future, Carrboro may find itself on the horns of a dilemma: On the one hand, a marvelous case study that small really can be beautiful; on the other, a small town facing the challenge of trying to affordably meet the expectations of an increasingly affluent population....Some future candidate might posit a merger with Chapel Hill as a way to resolve this tension."

Where's my crystal ball? Certainly sounds like a campaign issue that would get him traction with Carrboro's newest neighborhoods in 2007.

Point In Time Count

Last week, we did a community point-in-time count of homeless people here in Orange County. The goal is to count everyone in the county who classifies as homeless by HUD standards. By far the largest portion of our homeless population is covered by the service agencies, but we also had to count those individuals who live on the street and don't use the services. In the past, the street count portion has been handled by the police exclusively. As part of our effort to increase the accuracy of our reporting, we decided to try using volunteers rather than the police this year. Since it was our first time to use volunteers, we decided to start slow and partner volunteers with police officers and then use those volunteers to develop a training program for a summer count. Our goal is to make this an entirely volunteer activity; it's going to take much more training and preparation than I anticipated.

I went out with the Carrboro officer from 9:00 pm - 11:30 pm. It was a very cold and windy night so fortunately we only found two guys, both of whom were willing to talk with us. We began by driving around looking for anyone walking. Next we began checking out a list of places that had been compiled by the other officers on the force (underpasses, abandoned houses, etc.). Fortunately, we only found two guys out that night. They were just walking around trying to keep warm. When we pulled up in the car, they were very hesitant to talk with us at first (no surprise there!), but the the police officer really knew how to talk to them and help them relax their guard. They told us that homelessness, substance abuse, and unemployment are a vicious cycle. If you drink, you can't hold a job; if you can't hold a job, you lose your housing; if you lose your housing, you can't get a new job; if you can't get a new job, you keep on drinking.

It's interesting to see the town late at night from the eyes of a cop. I had no idea that people hangout in the rafters of road overpasses, or that there are small communities of individuals living in tent cities within the urban area. All we saw was the sites that night, but one place we went really scared me. Besides being outside with only industrial plastic covering beds that had been pulled out of dumpsters, the amount of trash spread around the site was just unbelievable. I've lived in cities so I've seen desperate poverty, but this was different. I can't imagine living like that or how it must feel to be so totally cut off from the wealth and prosperity that is this community. It was a very humbling experience.

...homelessness deprives people of far more than shelter. They have no place from which to be productive and giving, to be restored, to be welcomed, to be themselves, to give physical expression to their personalities. The homeless are, quite simply, deprived of their humanity. Restoring that to them requires more than grudging public expenditure and warehouses where they can sleep at night....I don't know the solution for homelessness. What I do know is that it requires more than an impersonal institution that removes the homeless from our sight and our minds. It requires some attention, some engagement from all of us, some willingness to focus on homeless people not as statistics but as individuals, needing care, needing to be welcomed back as full members of the human race.

--Donella Meadows, Being Homeless is More Than Being Without Shelter

Net Neutrality, or Keep the Internet Free

Net neutrality is the basis of the Internet, the assumption that 'all users are entitled to access content and services or run applications and devices of their choice.' A couple of posters to Squeeze the Pulp don't want a municipal network because they fear government would destroy the concept of net neutrality.

But it's really the big businesses are that systematically attempting to destroy free and open access of the Internet. Cable providers (telecomms) and phone companies (telecos) are at each others throats in their attempts to protect their communications turf. On January 11 representatives from Verison, Time-Warner, Bellsouth, and others met withe NC Revenue Laws Committee to try and convince our legislators to regulate use of the Internet. The telecomms want to prevent telecos from offering video services, and the telecos want to prevent the telecomms from offering voice over IP telephony.

The companies that control the pipes want to discriminate in favor of their own applications, while shutting out or slowing down competing services. These companies have a business incentive to create their own affiliates to compete with the most popular applications — like search engines, voice-over-the-Internet, and streaming video archives.

They now seek to pad their pockets further by becoming gatekeepers to all things digital — deciding what content, applications and services we can use. The telco and cable giants — which dominate 98 percent of the broadband market — not only expect consumers to pay to access the Internet, but they want to charge content producers for using their wires to deliver it. (Deadend for the Internet)

Businesses have every right to expect reasonable profits but access to the Internet and other telecommunications services can no longer be considered luxury service. Local news sources do not provide indepth reporting and analysis; more and more businesses will only accept online job applications; schools budgets don't fund print reference books, etc. Without access, living and working in this community is seriously curtailed.

Access has two components. First, is the information available and representative of all views and second, is it available to everyone, regardless of income level. Through a municipal network we can assure access on both levels.

Here's what I believe:

• A municipal networks is the only means of protecting our free and open access to the Internet and all its associated benefits.
• Local government should support the creation of a non-profit organization that would oversee the design, installation, and ultimately the management of the service; but that service should be protected against any interference by local governments in policymaking, etc.
• Local governments should commit to use the service to support their own operations, thus creating a significant market demand from the start and reducing their own municipal expenditures for network access.
  
• The service should be low-cost but not free. It should follow the similar cost of service principles written into the OWASA charter.
  
• Taxes should not be used to fund ongoing operation although municipal funding will be necessary for start up costs.
• Such a service will create new, well-paying jobs to support our local economy and will continue to support economic development by reducing business costs and creating new business opportunities, especially if we can bundle Internet, telephone, and cable services.

Ultimately, I want telecommunications in southern Orange County to be treated as a utility--a basic function necessary to life in the 21st century. Just as I trust OWASA to protect my water supply, I will trust a similarly structured utility to protect my access to a free and open Internet.

The Free Expression Policy Project has put together an excellent "overview of the mass media system and the concerns of the media democracy movement"

Feline Diabetes

My lovely Lucy was diagnosed with feline diabetes in September 2004. Initially we were told to give her 1 unit of Humulin L every 12 hours. Between September 2004 and March 2005 she had 4-5 UTIs and lost 4 pounds. She had complete workup done in April and came home limping badly. The bloodwork was another $300 and told us nothing. So I started looking for a new vet. Before I was able to make a well-cat appointment, something happened, I don't know what, but Lucy developed a huge abscess on her belly and nearly died. She has very thick fur and has always hated having her belly touched so it took several days to figure out that her malaise and inappetance was due to something other than the diabetes or another UTI.

Fortunately, I was able to get an appointment with one of the vets I had on my list; she found the abscess and rushed Lucy into surgery. She spent the next 3 weeks recovering. But she didn't really recover. By big, funny, pesky girl was wasting away. She stayed curled up in a ball sleeping 24 hours a day. If I picked her up, she just laid there--didn't try to bite or get down, very abnormal behavior. Every morning I expected to find her gone. Everytime I left the house I was scared to come back in. Nothing helped. She had a very odd, intermittent twitching in her head and her eyes were scarey looking. She just looked at me like I was failing her. I was miserable.

All this time, we followed the vet's advice completely. We had bloodwork whenever we were told, and I fed Purina kidney formula (dry) for CRF. My friends were all telling me to let her go, but I had to try one more time. I found a vet who would come to the house and hoped that she would see something different since Lucy wouldn't be as stressed out if we went to a clinic. Lucy was doing the twitching thing right in this vets lap. Another big bill with no advice other than making the end of her life as comfortable as possible.

That's when I took charge. I found the Feline Diabetes Message Board (FDMB) where I was told to begin hometesting. Why didn't I think of that before? No physician would ever allow a human patient to take insulin without a blood glucose check. In retrospect, I believe the twitching was a result of low blood glucose. I'm not sure if she ever had a full-blown hypo, I was too ignorant to recognize it if she did. We also switched to a high-protein, low carbohydrate canned food (Fancy Feast) and then to Wellness. That change along brought almost normal BG levels. Following the recommendations of the folks at Phydeaux and some FDMB members, we then changed to a raw diet (Nature's Variety frozen medallions). Within a week, Lucy was off insulin.

Within two months, due to dietary changes, Lucy went from near death to being a diet controlled diabetic, the twitching ended, and her eyes took back their normal mischievious glint. She's gained her weight back, along with her fractiousness. Her neuropathy is gone (methyl-B12); she runs, she plays, she growls at the mailman and neighborhood cats who come into her yard. My old friend once again helps me type and read the newspaper. She demands her breakfast as soon as I open my eyes every morning. I can't believe I waited so long to take charge.

I've offered to show the vet how we do the hometesting and share my data with her, but she's not interested. I've written to the North Carolina Veterinary Medical Association to encourage them to stop prescribing dry food and to start expecting owners to hometest. No one, human or feline, should have to settle for the uninformed care Lucy had for the first year of her diabetic life. Vets are professionals who should be more willing to work with us than to demand that we put everything about our cat's health in their hands. I'm still hoping to find someone with the right attitude; I will never again be a passive caregiver.

Accountability

On November 8, the Board of Education for the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School System enacted a policy, effective this year, that requires all students in the 8th grade and higher, to pass end-of-course exams in order to pass the course associated with that exam. Although students who do not pass the exam on the first try will be given additional opportunities for remediation and retesting, the fact is that kids who worked hard all year long, were assessed by their teachers to be proficient in the topic, could still find themselves judged to be inadequate based on a single test. These 10 new high stakes exams are in addition to an already full agenda of placement tests, achievement tests, graduation exams, and of course, course exams.

The justification for this new policy is accountability. But accountability for what?

• Holding students accountable for their own performance? Their semester-long record provides that data in a much more timely fashion.
  
• Holding teachers accountable for teaching the standard curriculum? Should students be penalized if their teachers are not aligning their instruction with state standards?
  
• Holding administrators accountable for placing well qualified teachers in each classroom? Again, should students be penalized if the district is not performing up to expected standards?

I believe in accountability, but in this instance, children are being victimized by adults who are misapplying the concept. If we want to make teachers accountable for teaching the standard curriculum, then let's adopt item banks of assessment items within each content area and require teachers to use those items in their course exams throughout the school year. Then if students are not doing well, we can more easily trace the problems back to individual student performance or to teachers who are not following the standard curriculum.

Assessments are intended to provide feedback in a timely fashion. When offered in a timely fashion, this feedback allows students to review materials before progressing on to the next unit or course and lets teachers know when they need to review materials that were inadequately taught the first time. End of course testing is an inspection process that punishes students in an attempt to “make teachers accountable in teaching the N.C. standard course of study.” You cannot inspect quality into a product on the assembly line, and you cannot inspect quality into a student at the end of the year.

When provided throughtout the school year, standard assessments, such as shared item banks of test questions, can ensure that teachers are counseled and/or replaced without punishing students by causing them to retake a course. And if we really believe in accountability, then let's look at data on minority student achievement over the past 20 years. That cumulative data speaks volumes on the LACK of accountability we impose upon the district administration, including the Board of Education.

Teachers and administrators do need to make sure that students are proficient in one course before moving on. But adding new high-stakes tests is misguided at best and at worse it will further erode the confidence of all children who are already stressed by the sheer volume of testing.

Lost Opportunities

I've been overwhelmed by the costs of NOT acting (opportunity cost) lately. Here's a list of lost or potentially lost opportunities in our community:

• If Katrina Ryan is not appointed to fill Mark Chilton's seat on the Carrboro Board of Alderman, will that signify the last possible opportunity for bringing the northern residents into the community or will it be the last straw that makes them fight for years to change the community? Will we lose Carrboro through the disenfranchisement while trying to save it from Katrina's different way of looking at the world?
  
  
• If Chapel Hill doesn't move more quickly on creating a wireless network, will they lose the opportunity to telecommunication lobbists that want to stop municipal networks altogether?
  
  
• Is there any chance that the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools can really improve minority student achievement now that they've enacted the requirement for passing end-of-course test in order to pass the course? Or have they further alienated students who already feel marginalized?

Downtown Wifi Update

Yesterday the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership Board of Directors voted to survey downtown business owners about their current provision/costs/use of wireless internet connectivity, their perception on customer demand for the service, the benefits, and the challenges of offering it as a town-supplied service.

I have four concerns with this approach:

1. Business owners are not the only stakeholders in downtown. Such a survey would omit the interests and perspectives of students, residents, and visitors. If we believe the decision to take action on a municipal network (in either direction) should be an inclusive process, then we need to survey everyone simultaneously, ensuring that the surveys are aligned with one another for planning purposes.
   
   
2. What happens if the business owners express their lack of support for the project? Does it get put on hold or is the town's technology committee then forced to move forward in opposition to the business owners?
   
   
3. We've talked this issue to death without providing compelling reasons for moving forward. Here’s my compelling reasons: a) Wireless should be undertaken to ensure regular & reliable access to broadband service, a basic need for participation in the political and economic sectors of our community. b) Wireless has been demonstrated to significantly improve the responsiveness of emergency services such as police and fire. With all the complaints about crime in downtown, how can we possibly consider a municipal network as a business amenity only? I do not support the creation of a municipal network just because it might bring more shoppers into downtown Chapel Hill.
   
   
4. Reliability on surveys requires some degree of common understanding respondents. Demographic questions provide a way of determining how understanding might vary among different categories of respondents. To be fair, the researcher proposing the survey will be adding demographic questions to the draft survey, but I don't believe we know enough about the downtown business owners understanding of wireless to determine what demographic factors may influence their responses. Does business size matter (number of employees, net income, etc.)? Current use of technology (backend system, basis for operation, nice-to-have)? etc. The only thing I know about this group is that, according to the news media, several of them share an assumption that they would be expected to pay for this nework, including deployment into adjacent low-income neighborhoods. That's a pre-conception that could significantly bias this survey. While I support the concept of internet access becoming a public utility (a necessity), there are many payment options that need to be publicly explored. Until we have some ideas for how the network should be designed (address based, mobile, combination), there can be no real understanding of upfront or maintenance cost except in comparison to current charges through Time Warner or one of the other telecomms.

Until we have a real plan for how to move forward, including information on different levels of service and payment options, ie product proposals, I do not believe a survey is the best first step. We need a needs assessment that begins with open-ended data collection methodologies, such as interviews, focus groups, etc. to determine the interests (need) and concerns of each stakeholder group. With that broad data in hand, then we could construct survey(s) that will provide us with more reliable information on how to structure services/products options. That is the data business owners, elected officials, and other stakeholders will need to make an informed decision on whether or not a municipal network is worth undertaking.

Wireless, Community Development & Sustainability

Evolution of the Network Idea
Two years ago the Chapel Hill Information Technology Committee began discussing a town network. At that time, we were focussed on laying conduit for future fiber that would support municipal services such as traffic signals, police and emergency services, transit and the town's Internet access. The intent was to reduce the town's costs for telecommunications while improving operational services.

Community Development
The IT Committee met with Council in October 2004 to discuss e-democracy. One of the concerns Council expressed about e-democracy was the digital divide. Will Raymond introduced the network issue to Council at that time by assuring them that we have the technical capability to provide Northside and Pine Knolls residents with free Internet access as an outgrowth of a network in downtown. Since that meeting, we have promoted the community development benefits of a town-wide network and for better or worse, it has superseded the previously promoted improvement of town services & reduction in fees paid to Time Warner. It appears that we've confounded community development (the social justice issue) and economic development (bringing new businesses & cost efficiencies into town). The community appears to be split on their willingness to fund the network as a community development project.

Sustainability
According to the Wikipedia, sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, and environmental aspects of human society. The Carrboro model (also known as StarBucks or free love model) of free roaming wifi service with bandwidth contributed by one or more business entities has become the only approach Chapel Hillians understand and/or are willing to discuss. It's the highly visible, local model so it makes sense from a cognitive perspective, but it's also frustrating. The possibilities are getting lost in complaints that coffee drinkers and poor people don't need broadband. Community development is economic development. School aged children need Internet access to do their school work. It's virtually impossible to apply for a job without Internet access. The high cost of rents in downtown could be offset through more affordable telecommunications. Town services could be greatly improved (and some automated). But instead, we debate whether or not poor people need broadband.

Current Status
As of yesterday, the Downtown Partnership is taking the lead on determining the viability of setting up a Chapel Hill Downtown wireless network. I have no details other than they will not be including service to Northside or Pine Knolls or improved town services in their investigation. I hope that decision is reconsidered. If not, the investigation will basically be determining whether the Carrboro approach will work for Chapel Hill. Some will be happy, but for how long?

Mobile Media
In Athens GA, the University and the Town partnered to create a wireless network called WAGz. Although it works in coffee shops, it isn't free and it was developed to serve as a research testbed for the development of new mobile media applications.

The Wireless Athens Georgia Zone (WAGz) lights the public areas of downtown Athens with WiFi (802.11b) connectivity. Anyone with a WiFi-enabled device can access information about Athens and web-based projects designed by NMI students. In the WAGz, people can send and receive a variety of text, audio, and video information.

But the WAGz really isn’t about wireless technology. The WAGz is a mobile media sandbox in which we want to discover the compelling applications for wireless. The WAGz provides us with a real-world research test-bed where we can explore the types of mobile media content that will drive the wireless industry.

Open Letter to Donna Brazile

Dear Ms. Brazile,

I appreciated your Washington Post Op-Ed on the rebuilding of your New Orleans home. Watching your home being devastated and your neighbors being sacrificed must have been a heartbreaking experience and you and the residents of New Orleans have my most heartfelt sympathy. I am proud that my state of North Carolina has been so generous in rushing to send aid and comfort.

However, before you fully embrace the President's beginning of an outline of a plan, I hope you will also consider the poor and ignored citizens in other parts of this country upon whose backs this rebuilding will occur. Where will the money come from to undertake this massive reconstruction? Precedence says it will come from human services. Who will profit from the rebuilding efforts? Precedence says it will go to large, ridiculously wealthy corporations. Are you ready to rebuild your home on the backs of the poor here in North Carolina? Are you ready to sacrifice future generations to even more staggering debt?

I too want to see New Orleans rebuilt, but the conditions under which that occurs must not take away from the poor, the aged, the already underserved elsewhere. I urge you to use your powerful voice to seek equity and justice for everyone as the plans for rebuilding take shape.

Sincerely,

Terri Buckner
Carrboro, North Carolina

Failure of Compassion

This is an outstanding pictorial timeline of Hurricane Katrina and the federal response.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/3/201947/4345

Other timelines

Bush's Disastrous Response: A Timeline http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/4/111017/0402

Timeline of Reactions to Katrina News
http://scoop.epluribusmedia.org/story/2005/9/3/161145/0263

Washington Monthly: Kevin Drum
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_09/007023.php

From dKosopedia, the free political encyclopedia
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina_Chronology


Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/katrina-timeline/

A society is measured by how it treats the weak and vulnerable
George W. Bush, State of the Union, Feb 2, 2005.

The Big Boot, The Wall and The Mirror

This is an essay from Elisabeth Gleckler, Assistant Professor, University of New Orleans, Health Promotion Program. She evacuated to Baton Rouge before Katrina hit.

The Big Boot, The Wall and The Mirror
It is early in the school year and I should be setting up my students with internships and arranging for my students in health classes for their field experiences in one of the New Orleans public schools. On Saturday afternoon, I was supposed to attend the wedding of one of my favorite undergraduate students. Instead I am writing from a coffee shop somewhere in Baton Rouge with everything I own in my car and homeless. How I ended up here in dirty clothes and needing a shower instead of grading class assignments is story worth telling. This essay, my first reaction to Katrina, takes the form of a warning to the rest of the nation. As an educator I have a tendency to use mnemonics to help people retain lessons. So, here is my Katrina mnemonic: the big boot, the wall and the mirror.

First, the Big Boot
I take this lesson directly from anti-racism training by The People’s Institute in New Orleans. We live in a worldwide economic system of oppression. Deliberately, I do not use “United States” because with the way that modern economies and governments are constructed; this goes beyond national geographic borders. There is enormous wealth and power concentrated in the hands of few. The way to gain more money and power is by exploiting the powerlessness and poverty of the many. It used to be that we believed the American dream that anyone could succeed and, occasionally there is a freak of nature and a few people do rise to a level of control. By in large, if you are born in poverty you will stay there.

Even beyond the lack of access to opportunity, people are robbed of their vision of personal agency because of the predominate belief that the poor are in that state because they did something to deserve it; circumstances of the destitution be damned. I do believe in personal responsibility, but I also believe in the power of the environment and context. In a twisted way, a certain amount of poverty is good for business. Poor people means there is cheap labor. It has become irrelevant if those cheap workers are in the US or in Indonesia. Exploiting their destitution offers profound economic benefits to the powerful. The Big Boot is the economic structure hovering over the masses of us who do not have power – which is most of us, whether we recognize it or not.

In a disaster there is an additional boot - charity. How dare the people who are taking our charity ever have their own perception of our magnanimity! There are very clear behaviors that need to be acted out when charity is handed out and if you are receiving charity, those relationships had better not be violated. Never mind that the role of a civilized government is to step in to protect the individual when they are powerless. Ideally, people should expect that without having to beg or grovel.

New Orleans’ particular piece of the boot is an abandoned population who at minimum wage, truly and metaphorically, changed the linens of the people who came to New Orleans to gorge on food and drink until they threw up on Bourbon Street and made it to a street where residents didn’t even visit. There is a pattern of exploitation and the people left behind in Katrina had plenty of reason to act out, not that I approve of shooting or attacking anyone. The destruction of New Orleans is based on a long, complex and profound history of betrayal of public trust.

The lesson we need to learn from watching Katrina is that we need to wake up to the system and deliberately examine it without the fantasy of the American Dream or without thinking that this country is a functioning democracy that can operate without active oversight by the public. Labor unions are a good thing. Local politics closely observed by citizens is a good thing. Investigations into the motivations of public officials are good things. Investigations into the financial dealings of corporations are a very good thing. Not buying from corporations that take advantage of people is a good thing. Demanding a piece of the profits of industry to be returned to support the community in which they operate is more than a good thing. It is necessary.

The second point is our distance from the wall
Once, my brother tried to explain advance mathematics and chaos theory to me. Always the patient educator, he said it was like standing next to a wall. When you look at the view in front of it, all you see is disordered marks. When you step back a little you see that what is in your view is actually lines of something bigger. A little further back finds that it is not disordered scratches on the wall but a picture. With enough distance, what is rendered on the wall becomes a picture. In the case of Katrina, please step far to the rear to see that the picture is a repeating pattern at the global level.

New Orleans and the gulf coast have been your canary in the coal mine. It is us in New Orleans now; it will be you a little later. The water off the coast was 91 degrees as Katrina passed over it. Put a storm system over that heat and you are just pouring fuel into the tank of the hurricane. The wetlands that could have helped protect from storm surge are decimated because no one wanted to flood the wetlands with silt-rich water from the Mississippi River to keep the ratio of nutrients and water supporting wetlands vegetation. Real estate developers had laid down miles of housing tracts in the land that needed to be periodically flooded. Canals and pipelines had been dug, for oil and chemical companies, into the marshes which changed the flow of water and brought new salinity into tracts of marsh. Chemical companies released effluents and warm water. They cooled their plants with water from the aquifer and dumped it back out. For decades oil companies have reaped enormous profits from sucking oil from below the earthen plate that is the Mississippi delta as the land began to sink and the coast line receded. The present White House is lead by two ex-oil industry executives who have turned over consumer and environmental protections to the control of industry influenced policy wonks. This is about looting citizen control of government and letting business interests dominate over health and welfare of the public. And where is the leadership for the common man that we say is part of the American system of government? It is in the hallways of Halliburton.

And finally, they way we see ourselves, The Mirror
I watched the media coverage of Katrina in the houses of my friends. Until September 1, several days into the disaster, the only talking head who put a moment of deep reality into their commentary was Winton Marsalis, a man who is always astute about race and poverty. He talked about the desperation of people in New Orleans, indirectly saying, “What do you expect?” when the TV interviewer asked him about the rioting in the streets when social control collapsed. It took several more days for people to begin to think past the inflammatory images, to reflect upon the status of people left behind – figuratively and literally. Of course a rapper had to yell at the president on a telethon and a congresswoman had to threaten him with bodily harm before a little better analysis began.

The opposite of the stepping back from the wall is modern commercial television reporting. By dint of the technology, cameras only catch a tiny picture of the horizon and not smell, feeling, and only some filtered sound. The view is interpreted by talking heads who gain a direct benefit of inflating frightening and shocking images and stories. Add to this a cadre of people who earn their money and power by being seen in front of a TV camera talking about New Orleans without knowing the city or commenting about the situation without being there; having no training in disasters or in interpreting human behavior. It becomes a nasty gumbo of near-reality and manipulation.

TV makes people think they are really there, experiencing the event. One sees the image and it triggers a belief that they have an understanding of the issue. It is a dangerous mix of confidence builder and a profoundly small frame that is made smaller because of the interpreters who stand between viewer and the images. The stories come at us so fast that they can’t be processed and only some stories make the screen. It is clearly not reality yet it provokes strong emotions as if it were.

Many people have commented about the racism of the images and the media coverage. Sure there is institutional racism and clear cases of overt racism in the coverage. The color of the skin is a proxy identifier for oppression, poverty, and powerlessness. There is nothing inherent about the nature of skin color except that it has been western civilization’s visual cue to dehumanize the person in that skin for some form of economic profit. So, what TV producers have done in capturing images based on deeply imbedded racism is a reflection of our civilization’s overall pattern of brutalization. That’s not to make an apology for the disgusting coverage. One would think if they get paid the big salaries to be commentators and reporters they should have enough wits to see this clearly and earn their keep by actually offering some meaningful text.

But, the people who are in the frame need to keep many people watching so that advertising time is sold. The whole system exists to increase consumption of a lot of stuff that none of us need. One example was that in the midst of the first days of the Katrina TV coverage, there was an ad for an SUV. How close to the wall are we standing for that not to provoke outrage?

TV does not encourage us to step back and process the sad irony of global warming and big, fat cars that waste precious oil and a city inundated with water in the midst of a weakened wetland. I see lots of SUVs proudly displaying George Bush bumper stickers. The reflective moment does not make good TV, so we get “fair and balanced” “headline” news on tickertapes across the screen masquerading as useful information.

So, the wall holds the mirror and we hope, as in other times in history that the boot is ready to kick it.
When we bring these little lessons behind the mnemonics together, there is a profound warning. The Mayans in Central America had a great civilization. They suddenly imploded and disappeared as a dominant social force before the Spanish came to the “New World.” Recent theories point to an ecological disaster that finished their cities and political systems. We are no better than the Mayans and their fate will be our fate.

We can’t wait for the President of the United States to decide to accept a theory of global warming until it becomes economically convenient for himself and his friends. If he is blinded, then we need to take off his blindfold. We should be demanding stronger federal tax breaks and outright funding for non-oil technologies. We need to invest in public transportation and quit dicking around and use it. Forget the “death tax.” Tax the rich, they are good at making money and they owe it to the system where they made it. All that garbage you see on TV, turn off the tube and don’t buy it. You don’t need the newest junk to be a well-rounded and personally rich human being. Buying packaged goods from China? Well, don’t be surprised if you end up getting laid off from your job. Are you buying from a mega-plex shopping box store? If you end up having no viable local businesses, then you only have yourself to blame. Ever wonder what happened to local farms? Then purchase your food from people closer to the producer instead of massive markets. Hate the corruption in government? Then oversee it and get involved. Run for office, get on a committee. You should have more time to assure that it protects the interests of you and your children if you stop watching re-runs on TV. We have to turn the American capitalism around to operate farther from the wall, put the boot down and look in the mirror.

I really loved and hated New Orleans. People are lying or they are tourists if they say that they loved it without hesitation. Great art and music came from the depths of its poverty. The corruption was colossal and evil. When you worked there you have to have a special touch to get things done because people thought about things differently than in other parts of the country. You had to stop, watch and suspend judgment to learn the lessons that the city had to offer. As a professor in a state university located in the city, I had a lot of respect for my college students. Many were the first one in their family to go to college, most worked low paying jobs and had spouses and children on top of class and assignments. My heart aches for New Orleans. I already miss people and relationships and it has only been a week since Katrina hit as I write this. The thing that New Orleans had that I have never found anywhere else was a kind of “old school” combination of strong community, wry insight into humanity, awareness of oppression and racism, mixed with social irreverence and understanding of what is truly valuable in life. The streets stank because life sticks but it did not stop people from their lives and loves. There was really was no other place like this city and the people living there. The rest of the country may not yet understand the loss, but this city provided something irreplaceable. I hope you all take the warning.