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City Voices
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The survivalist case for environmentalism
Malt Schlitzman
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
A neighborhood where every roof has solar panels and rainwater recycling systems. Every yard is bursting with wildflowers and raised garden beds. You know this neighborhood is safe, because there is no want. There is food and water and electricity to spare, this buffer that allows people to survive the worst with grace. Community resilience is self preservation.
I want to address conservatives and libertarians who might have disagreed with my last article about rewilding yards. You have been sold the idea that ecological conservation is a radical left-wing idea. You have been told you can survive what is coming by stockpiling guns and hiding away from the world. You have been lied to.
Here’s the gist of it: Things are getting worse, and they are getting worse faster. We are going to need the most people possible to survive whatever’s coming, because we all have unique skills that combine together to stitch the quilt of civilization. But we are all low-lying islands in a rising sea!
Obviously it’s easy to imagine what happens to a society when no one can operate a nuclear reactor. Bad things! But you need more than just nuclear engineers, you need
WORCESTERIA
How I learned to quit worrying and just shove pie into my face
Victor D. Infante
Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
I have never asked much more out of a journalism career than to meet interesting people and to do interesting things. I've had the honor of interviewing politicians, rock stars, business leaders and witches, and that's just in the past few weeks. I've covered hip-hop shows, comic book conventions, city council meetings and boxing matches, and am usually game to experience something I've never done before.
So when Executive Editor Dave Nordman called to ask me if I wanted to compete in a pie-eating contest against 14time Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest champion Joey Chestnut, during the intermission of the Railers' first game of the season at the DCU Center, my instant response was, “Huh? Wait, what? I'm pretty sure there are better choices for this.”
Competitive eating is one of those things that absolutely did not appear on my bucket list. The only time I tried anything remotely like that, in high school, was some sort of Lime-Aid drinking contest, which had me vomiting in public, something I had sworn never to do again once my brief-lived punk band broke up. Moreover, I actually have developed a sensitive stomach and a weak metabolism as I've gotten older, so this prospect was all sorts of concerning. Besides, the last time I got
The Telegram & Gazette team of Victor Infante, left, and Craig S. Semon pack away blueberry pies as they challenge professional eater Joey Chestnut during a contest at the Worcester Railers game on Saturday. STEVE LANAVA
roped into a stunt with the Railers, I attempted to learn how to ice skate, and ended up with a sore back for days, so this was kind of a hard sell.
Nordman explained that myself and reporter Craig S. Semon would be teamed together to represent the Telegram & Gazette, and there'd be competitors from other media outlets. I hemmed and hawed in an uncharacteristic manner, but eventually relented, with the caveat that we would probably lose badly. I then promptly failed to think about it again until the day of the competition. Indeed, while most of my competitors were starving themselves to get ready, I made my wife and I a nice ravioli dinner beforehand, confident in the knowledge that it would not make a lick of difference.
Arriving at the DCU Center with Craig, who was wearing some sort of postmodern gonzo journalist costume — think Hunter S. Thompson meets Max Headroom and they create a comic book character together — I actually began to get a bit nervous. What had I gotten myself into? This was so far outside of my comfort zone as to be in a different state altogether. It helped a bit that I knew some of the other competitors — Sarah Connell Sanders writes for WoMag, in addition to cohosting the “Pop It” podcast with Molly O'Connor, and MassLive's Tom Matthews was known to me, although I think this was the first time we really met in person. Still, the idea of stuffing Table Talk pies in my face in front of a few thousand people was more daunting than I'd
HARVEY
Students have paid heavy price for year away from schools
Janice Harvey
Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
School’s back. Sorta.
Since my retirement from the Worcester Public Schools nearly a year ago, the question I hear most from educators still teaching is: “Do you love it?” The answer I give is: “Are you kidding?”
There are two kinds of teachers engaging in this exchange. There are those who are close to retirement and counting the days, and those who have many years to go before they are anywhere near the 80% mark for a full pension. Regardless of this gap, their reactions to my retirement are quite similar: wistful envy.
The quarantine caused by the coronavirus changed teaching more than anyone imagined. Veteran teachers tell me that their students have lost so much more than a year of academics; students have forgotten how to be students. The Year That Wasn’t — 2020 — seems to have wiped away attention spans, common courtesy and the drive to learn. In many instances, their teachers are at a loss to repair the damage.
According to secondary teachers, a notable indifference
The quarantine caused by the coronavirus changed teaching more than anyone imagined. PIXABAY
to learning has replaced a desire for good grades. If it’s possible, students have become even more attached to their phones, having spent the better part of a school year sporadically attending Zoom classes while texting friends out of camera range. Separating a high school kid from a phone is akin to lopping off an appendage. This can eventually be dealt with if administration sets firm rules about phone use, but more serious side effects of quarantine have begun to surface. Apathy is one. Depression is another.
Students whose home lives were dysfunctional before the pandemic found themselves stuck spending all of their time in places they avoided by attending school.
For many children, school was and is a refuge from tensions and arguments, from poverty and domestic violence. Quarantine made these the ingredients for an explosive atmosphere as adults tried to cope with their own fears.
To tackle the frightening uptick in children’s mental illness, the first line of defense comes in the form of school adjustment counselors, who have seen a tsunami of cases of depression in students.
I spoke with one of these unsung heroes recently. She chose to remain anonymous to protect the children she serves. I will refer to her as A.C.
“What I’m hearing is loss, loss, loss … they’re grieving over the loss of friendships that were solid before the pandemic and are now gone. They’re socially stunted by the isolation they experienced,” she said.
“One boy told me he ‘sorta’ had friends before but now he’s forgotten how to interact. Depression in teens is normal, but what I’m seeing is something else altogether. I’m dealing with suicidal ideation in some instances.”
Anxiety is “through the roof,” she said. All of the things kids look forward to as high school students have either been taken away or are in limbo right now. Proms, football games, graduations — all the moments that make school memorable and enjoyable hang in the balance.
Added to this mix is social media, which simply amplifies those losses.
“For a year, they had nothing to do and nowhere to go, and now they’re back in school, feeling awkward and disconnected. Social media makes everything seem worse.”
Many teens have abruptly lost their childhood because
See HARVEY, Page 15
Infante
Continued from Page 13
imagined.
It was Chestnut himself who proved to be a calming influence. Chestnut radiates an aura of Midwest niceness that's kind of infectious. He was just so calm about the whole thing, and he gave us amateurs some great advice, most of which boiled down to, “don't die.” I thought to myself, “I can do this!” I mean, I knew I couldn't win, but I knew I could do it and not completely embarrass myself. I was remarkably calm when we were called to make our entrances. When they called my name and I stepped on the ice to thunderous and completely as-of-yet unearned applause, all I could think was, “The last time I was on the DCU floor, I was reviewing Phish.” At that concert, someone had passed me a joint, but since I don't smoke marijuana, I dutifully passed it on. Right that moment, though, I really wanted that joint to come back around. It did not. This was definitely not a Phish show.
When it came time to eat the pies, I devoured the first one as fast as I could, but the second one went slower, kind of gumming up in my mouth. I could swallow, but I felt like a stopped-up sink. The pie was sort of just oozing into my stomach, not plummeting. I started a third one, and got most of the way through it, before our 90 seconds were up. For anyone who thinks this isn't much — and I have read your emails and Facebook comments — I suggest you get a timer and try it. Please, by all means, post video!
Final verdict: Craig and I finished four pies between us, as did Matthews and his partner, Tim McKone, sports anchor at WBZ-FM 98.5 The Sports Hub. Connell Sanders and O'Connor were behind us with three, and the two guys who'd won a raffle to be there were ahead of us with seven. Chestnut smoked us all with 12, but I felt sort of relieved that most of us could only get two pies down. It's one area where I can say I feel completely content to be average. Will I ever enter the realm of competitive eating again? It's unlikely, but I'm proud I didn't puke, and we didn't even lose! Sometimes, you take your victories where you can.
Schlitzman
Continued from Page 13
metalworkers building replacement parts. That means you need miners and smelters to provide the metal to the metalworkers.
It’s the same thing with a farm. You need a farmer to plant the seed, and pollinators to make the fruit. If you’ve got pests, you need pest-pests to eat the pests before they can pester your peas. Beneath every layer is an additional layer of complexity, and we are losing them at a distressingly rapid pace.
We’ve got to save more than just the bees. The fastest way to do that is to turn grass lawns into meadows, this is accomplished by the arduous task of not mowing and just letting awesome wildflowers do their awesome stuff. By letting yards become meadows, plant roots reach deeper into the earth, sequestering more water and building up a thicker layer of topsoil. In addition to better surviving storms and providing more wildlife habitat, this creates a huge amount of farmable land in a very short time, without clearing forest habitat or importing huge amounts of biological material, which will be unavailable after crisis.
We need to create this farmland now, before we need it in five years. If you are someone who truly believes America is heading for a collapse, you understand on some level you will need to provide food for yourself and your family. You have a vested interest in ensuring there is quality, poison-free soil and water around you to grow in. The best way to provide this is to take care of your neighbors.
Likewise, if you believe that emergencies will drive people to commit crimes of desperation, why not take steps now to help them escape desperation?
Caring for your neighbors is self-defense. If you think there isn’t enough of something to go around, money, food or housing, ask yourself, who created that scarcity? Who got rich hoarding themselves a silo of grain while our neighbors starved in the street?
There is enough wealth for us all to survive what’s coming. It has been hoarded by those who will profit most from the emergencies they create. If we want to survive, we need to take back the wealth they stole, and give it to those most in need. If you think that’s socialism, fine. The alternative to socialism is you dying cold and alone in a bunker, eating potato slop from a bucket. Shrug emoji.
If the Apocalypse was a problem you could survive by shooting enough bullets through it, America would already be saved. That’s just not the case. We only have each other. No one else is coming to save us. The wealthy are divesting themselves from society, and Earth itself. But Jeff Bezos wasn’t ever going to help us in the first place, and furthermore, we don’t need him to. We have each other. Our labor built their wealth. Our labor built their empires. They clearly think we are powerful enough for them to survive off of, why wouldn’t we do the same for each other?
When sailors fall overboard, they form rings. They hold together. If they all tried floating on their own, they would freeze and drown. The storm is now. We are all overboard. Hold tight! Your life depends on it!
Malt Schlitzman is a writer living in the Worcester area.
Harvey
Continued from Page 14
they were thrust into the role of caretaker for younger siblings if their parents were essential workers. For those kids, any sense of safety and comfort disappeared in March of 2020.
According to A.C., the system in place to help kids is overwhelmed. In the past, the 18-year veteran was always able to utilize community services for children in need of immediate attention, but COVID-19 changed all that.
“It took two weeks for a child who expressed suicidal thoughts to be seen. Two weeks. I spent a major part of every day with her until partial hospitalization was available.”
Therapy for kids is backlogged, she said. There’s no question in her mind that more adjustment counselors need to be hired now.
“What these kids need to do is talk,” she said. Teletherapy sessions are not useful in most cases, for a variety of reasons.
“Kids can’t be their authentic selves talking to a screen in their own homes. They can’t say they have an issue with Mom or anyone else if that person is standing in the kitchen, listening.”
“These kids don’t just need to talk. They desperately want to talk,” she said. There just aren’t enough ears to go around.
A bee pollinates a wildflower growing near a pollinator garden at Bare Cove Park in Hingham. ROBIN CHAN/WICKED LOCAL
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