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9/1: Swine Flu from “Ground Zero”

September 1, 2009 | by

By John Sparks

The swine flu outbreak began last spring when the first cases were reported at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens, New York.  In an interview with the Marist Poll’s John Sparks, Assistant Principal Patrick McLaughlin recalls last April’s outbreak and addresses steps the school is taking this Fall to meet the threat of the swine flu epidemic.  Read the full interview below.

Patrick McLaughlin

John Sparks
One of the first incidents of Swine Flu, or what is now known as H1N1, began at St. Francis.  Were you surprised of the outbreak taking place at St. Francis?

Pat McLaughlin
We were very surprised.  In fact when we started having some cases come in, we didn’t know what it was, and that was about April 23rd or so of this year.  And, it took us a day to find out from the Department of Health that it may have been the Swine Flu going through the building.  So, yeah, we weren’t ready for something like that.

John Sparks
Have you ever been able to determine why it took place at St. Francis?

Pat McLaughlin
We had some senior students who went on a trip to Cancun, Mexico, and it was not school sponsored.  They went on their own.  We know that a couple of those students were ill when they came back from the trip and then came to school while they were ill.  So, as we look back, when they entered the school, I guess it was the 19th or 20th of April, quickly the organism, the pathogen started spreading from one student to another.  And, as you know, being in a classroom with bodies in close contact, it’s very easy for a pathogen to spread very quickly.  So, we think that’s how it started here.

John Sparks
As we approach the flu season, we’re also approaching the beginning of school for the Fall semester.  What preparations are you taking to meet the threat of the Swine Flu epidemic?

Pat McLaughlin
Just to say that we’ve been through this once, and that was a great education for us.  We did close for a week.  We removed people from the building – staff, faculty, and students.  We scrubbed the building down. Now, we think coming into September to a new school year, it’s a lot about education, and first and foremost, we’re going to meet with faculty and staff and students, and one of the first things we’re going to say is if you feel sick, don’t come to school.  If you have symptoms of a flu, don’t come into the building.  We’re going to say that at the assemblies.  We’re going to put it on the website.  We are going to have it scrolling on monitors that we have set up in the public areas of the building, the lobbies.  We’ll have it in much of our paperwork that goes home to parents as well.  So, we have to make a stand in terms of educating everyone within the community as to what the symptoms are of any type of flu and what precautions to take. So, that’s going to be one of the jobs we have at hand for the beginning of school.

St. Francis Preparatory School
St. Francis Preparatory School

Our nurse has been traveling throughout the summer to a variety of workshops to give her expertise to other educational administrators as to what she went through, and she also has come up with a plan for the medical office in terms of dealing with those students coming down with any type of illness.  And, if they show signs of fever and flu-like symptoms, they’ll be immediately quarantined into a part of our auditorium, and it’s been advised that they wear protective masks as well so they don’t transmit the disease to someone else.  So, I think coming into this school year, we’re ready in terms of getting the information out, in terms of educating the people within the community, and ready to just get into action with anything that we’re confronted with.

John Sparks
We conducted a national poll, and we asked the American public how concerned they were about Swine Flu, and about 36% of the American public said that they were very concerned or somewhat concerned, but 64% said that they were not very concerned or not concerned at all.  I’m just curious to your reaction to that and whether you anticipate another outbreak of Swine Flu?

Pat McLaughlin
Well, you can me put in the category that says very concerned at this point, because we’re dealing with a population that is a target population for the disease.  We’re dealing with a population that is always in close contact, and from our experience in the Spring, we saw how quickly the incubation period for the Swine Flu is.  So, it concerns us greatly that we have everyone onboard in terms of the information that we’ll give them, everyone onboard understanding what to do if they feel ill or if they see other people who are ill.  So, that’s a great concern for us.  And, I would dare there say that any school should be very concerned about the precautions that they need to take.  They should be very concerned about knowledge within the building of illness.  So, I think that’s something any school has to take seriously coming into the new school year.

John Sparks
Now, I spoke with some people in the health services community who told me that even if they put all efforts and resources toward manufacturing vaccine for H1N1, that there would not be nearly enough and that would also impact the reserves for what we call traditional flu vaccines.  I’m just curious, have any of your students been getting vaccinated?

Pat McLaughlin
I can’t speak to that right now, because they have not been in the school yet.  Our new incoming freshman class will be in the building starting on Monday and Tuesday.  So, that’s the first that we’ll see of them. But we don’t have a measurement on how many students or faculty have gotten the flu shot yet.

John Sparks
You mentioned about your school nurse and some of the things that have been going on.  I’m just curious what role the city or state health departments may have been playing in all this since the outbreak last Spring.

Pat McLaughlin
They were a tremendous help to us.  We immediately contacted the Board of Health. Again, when it first hit us that, I guess it was the Thursday the 23rd, and we had a number of students come down to the medical office ill, we didn’t know what it was.  We didn’t know whether it was a flu, whether there was something in the air or what it was.  So, we immediately contacted the Department of Health when we saw the numbers that we were facing.  They sent a person in the next day who did some swabs and identified that it was indeed the Swine Flu.  So, we followed their direction from that very beginning of the episode, and they’ve been extremely helpful.  They were in contact with us through the entire spring semester, the rest of the entire spring semester, guiding us, helping us, giving us feedback, and we have been awaiting their recommendations on what school should do for the upcoming school year.  So, we’re going to implement those as well.  But, I have to say that the Department of Health in consultation with the Centers for Disease Control and the mayor’s office were a great help to us in getting through this whole episode.

John Sparks
Since that episode last spring, has it had an impact on your enrollment for the fall?

Pat McLaughlin
I don’t get that impression.  In freshmen that we talk to and parents of freshmen who are incoming, that didn’t seem to play a role. I think people looked at it as we just got a little bit unlucky here in the spring, and it doesn’t seem to have played a role in the school itself, because I think people know the quality of the education here. They know that the — when they come here, they’re going to get a caring, nurturing environment.  So, I don’t think that episode really played a role in enrollment.

John Sparks
I’m just curious, Pat, how you might characterize the feelings of the parents, the students, and the faculty – fearful, cautious, anxious, unconcerned?

Pat McLaughlin
Learned. I think we went through a situation together, and I have to say that when the Department of Health followed up with a survey about what we did here and who got sick and what they did with medical care, we had a tremendous outpouring of parental support, and I think the people within the school also stepped up to keep everything going in terms of the academic work for the students.  So, it was… that was, I guess, the most positive thing that could’ve come out of a negative situation was that the community came together and realized that we just got a little bit unlucky, and we have to do the best with it as we could at that point.

John Sparks
I’m just curious in looking back, and hindsight is 20/20, what you might’ve learned from the incident last spring?  Was there anything that you would do differently?  And, as a result of what happened, I would think that, perhaps, Saint Francis certainly is doing everything possible to deal with this in the future.

Pat McLaughlin
I think if we knew then what we know now, we would’ve implemented the things that we’re going to implement this September. If we knew the Swine Flu was coming our way, there would’ve been a great effort on our part to educate people about the aspects of influenza, of the Swine Flu, and how to prevent it, also what to do if you feel ill.  If you have a fever and you feel sick, stay home. And, we had some students who felt sick, had a fever and still came to school and still tried to push it, and that’s commendable that they want to be in school, and they want to learn; but at the same time, it perpetuated the illness within the community and made it worse.  So, we learned that about the influenza at that time.  We also learned that if we do have a number of students come down with these symptoms, to quarantine them.  Our nurse’s office wasn’t big enough to take care of a quarantine at that time.  So, now we’ve… in our emergency plan, we have sectioned off a part of our auditorium where we can put those students and isolate them until we can make contact with their parents and have them come up and pick up their child to get medical care.  So, I think we learned a lot from that experience, and what we learned, we are now implementing at this point.

John Sparks
Pat, I sure appreciate your time this afternoon. Anything else that you would like to add or speak to in regard to H1N1?

Pat McLaughlin
Well, I just want to say, John, that we do a cleaning during the summer anyway. The building’s spotless when the students come back, and we did the same thing.  And, when this first hit on the 23rd, that weekend we spent the money, we brought a crew of our maintenance people in, and they scrubbed down the entire building.  So, I’d like to say that we’re ready to go with the school year; we’re prepared, and I’m hoping that the information that we have will help us deal with anything that comes in.

** The views and opinions expressed in this and other interviews found on this site are expressly those of the speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Marist Poll.

Related Stories:

9/1: Off Guard…Concern About Swine Flu Low Among Americans

9/1: Preventing Swine Flu…An Interview with the CDC

9/1: Preventing Swine Flu…An Interview with the CDC

| by

By John Sparks

Should Americans be concerned about H1N1 influenza, and what precautions should they take to be protected from the swine flu? The Marist Poll’s John Sparks talks with Joe Quimby of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Read the full interview below.

©istockphoto.com/DNY59

©istockphoto.com/DNY59

John Sparks
Joe, The Marist Poll conducted a national survey of the American public, and we found that 64% of the American public told us that they were not very concerned or not concerned at all about H1N1  Should folks be concerned?

Joe Quimby
Short answer to that is yes, the American public should be concerned about 2009 A H1N1 influenza because flu is very unpredictable.  We’ve had over 8,800 hospitalizations to date since April, and 556 people have died in the United States.  Although we don’t know the exact number of people who have been ill, as of late May, we knew that well over a million people had either been sick or were sick and certainly that number’s increased.  So, people do need to be concerned with this and both seasonal flu.

John Sparks
Well what precautions should people take about H1N1?

Joe Quimby
Well, it’s the same precaution for this flu as for seasonal flu.  They need to … if they’re becoming ill, they need to stay home and stay — self-isolate themselves.  If they have an underlying health condition, they need to seek attention from their medical provider, particularly people like pregnant women, who, unfortunately, of those who have died, we’re seeing about an unproportional number of deaths of pregnant women, 6% on average, whereas only 1% of the population is pregnant at any one time.  People who are asthmatic, other people with underlying health conditions certainly should not wait at all, should contact their health providers. But a generally healthy person who becomes ill should not flood to emergency rooms or whatever and be overly worried.  If you’re in generally good health, you’re going to probably pull through this in a couple of days, probably don’t even need to see a doctor, but that’ll be an individual call.  But we want people to be prudent about seeking medical care, particularly if they do have an underlying health condition.

John Sparks
You know you mentioned seasonal flu, and we are approaching the seasonal flu season, and of course the word always goes out that people should get inoculated.  Should people get H1N1 shots?

Joe Quimby
Well, first of all, a seasonal flu vaccine is in doctor’s offices now as we speak. I know here in Georgia it’s out, and it’s going to be distributed in the coming days across the country if it’s not already in your doctor’s office.  So, people should first get a seasonal influenza shot.  80% of the Americans fall into the groups of people who are recommended for seasonal.  And ,if you are recommended for a 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine, certainly please get in line. There’s 159 people who are recommended, and people like I talked to before of, with underlying health risk and particularly pregnant women… and healthcare workers and children, school aged children, need to be vaccinated as soon as possible.

John Sparks
You mentioned getting in line, is there enough vaccine for H1N1 for everyone in America that needs it?

Joe Quimby
We believe that there’ll be enough vaccine starting in about middle of October.  About 45 million doses will be initially available for those who want to have a vaccine.  Like seasonal influenza, this is a voluntary vaccine program.  So, we believe that with the initial 45 million and then follow-on distributions in the days and weeks that follow and months that follow, that everybody who wants a vaccine should be able to get one.

John Sparks
I know that CDC works in cooperation with city, county, and state health departments on something like this.  I’m just curious what some of these other agencies are doing in preparation for the fear of a pandemic?

Joe Quimby
Well it’s not the fear of a pandemic, we already have a pandemic.  It’s getting ready at all levels has been a top priority at all levels of government.  As you know, the president called for a flu summit, if you would, in the early days of July, and three cabinet secretaries got together along with hundreds of people at state and local and federal levels to begin their plans, if they already hadn’t.  And, I think we’re seeing now with the beginning of schools, some people becoming ill in school settings and colleges and universities, we’re seeing the execution of well played — well laid and planned scenarios to take care of sick people and to keep healthy people healthy.

John Sparks
The last time I remember the country getting this excited about Swine Flu, Gerald Ford was president. I recall lining up at a shopping center and getting a free shot for the Swine Flu.  Are we going to see something of that level again?

Joe Quimby
What we will see will be a combination of things.  We’ve been effectively distributing flu vaccines through primary care providers, different scenarios for decades, and so we’re going to see a combination of vaccine distributed initially to all the states on a prorated basis so that if 4% of the population lives in a particular state, that’s how much of the initial vaccine they’ll get.  And, various states and cities, depending on the population, will adapt and employ different scenarios.  So, the first and foremost thing that people can do to find out about vaccines in their area is to contact their primary care provider; and certainly when H1N1 vaccine becomes available, people are going to know about any public offerings in a community setting, in addition to in their physician setting.

John Sparks
Joe, I know it’s hard to look into a crystal ball and into the future and see what we might expect, but do you have any prediction on what we may experience this flu season in regards to H1N1?

Joe Quimby
Actually if I had a crystal ball, it’d be real easy to predict what the flu season would look like, but we don’t have a crystal ball.  What we can say is that flu is very unpredictable.  We just don’t know what the extent of illness will be when you combine a new influenza strain as the 2009 H1N1 influenza combined with an act of seasonal influenza season. Our seasonal flu season is October to May.  We’ve seen the flu activity throughout these past couple months in the summer at unprecedented levels, and not since the pandemic of 1968 have we seen such an active flu activity summer — flu activity in the summer months.

John Sparks
How well would you characterize our preparations?  Are we going to be prepared?

Joe Quimby
Well, I think it’s a little too early for us to give ourselves a report card. I think the report card and any kind of grading of such will come afterwards. But, I believe that – – I know in my heart of hearts that there are 14,000 people here at the CDC, and there are thousands more at the federal level and state level and at schools and cities across the country, in health departments that are ready, have been working really hard and you’re going to see a true combined effort. But, you asked me first what can people do, there is a shared responsibility. It’s not just what the government can do for you, it’s what people can do for themselves to protect themselves against becoming exposed.  Simple things:  Keep your hands washed.  Wash your hands with soap and water often. Use alcohol-based hand gels. If they’re coughing, cough into their elbow and avoid the people who are ill, and if you are ill, stay at home, self-isolate and don’t return back to society, be it school or work environment, until you’re free from fever 24 hours without taking anything to suppress that fever.  So, there’s some — a lot of personal responsibility that each individual in America can be accounted for.

John Sparks
Joe, I appreciate your time. Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Joe Quimby
No, just that it’s going to be a very unpredictable flu season and that for each American out there to do their part to protect themselves, their children, their parents, and the people that they live, work, and play with and go to school with.  And, if we all work together here, I think we’ll all get through this.  But, it is a combined effort at all levels of government and certainly with the personal efforts of the people.  We don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think you’re going to see a good effort at all levels.

** The views and opinions expressed in this and other interviews found on this site are expressly those of the speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Marist Poll.

Related Stories:

9/1: Off Guard…Concern About Swine Flu Low Among Americans

9/1: Swine Flu from “Ground Zero”

 

8/18: For Better or Worse…Palin Packs a Punch in the GOP

August 18, 2009 | by

If some GOP leaders want Sarah Palin to fade quickly and quietly from the media scene, she is certainly not being particularly cooperative.

Lee Miringoff

Lee Miringoff

With as yet undisclosed electoral plans, Palin packs political clout with rank-and-file Republicans.  According to the latest national Marist Poll numbers, 73% of GOPers have a favorable view of the former Alaska Governor, and she ranks right up there with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee as their morning line pick for the 2012 presidential sweepstakes.  This is the case despite a slim majority of Republicans who think her early resignation as governor was a mistake.

Is the GOP nomination within her sights?  You betcha!  Palin could carry her intense following into key caucus and primary states.  But, herein lies the rub.  Palin trails President Obama by 23 percentage points nationwide in this same Marist Poll.

Cause for GOP worry?  Absolutely.  Palin attracts only 4% of Democrats in this hypothetical matchup to Obama’s 20% of Republican voters.  President Obama may be slipping lately among all-important Independent voters (his marquee bi-partisan appeal may have lost some of its luster).  But, he still leads Palin by 15 percentage points with these persuadable voters.  And, there is no reverse gender gap in the numbers.

OK … there are still more political scenarios between now and 2012 than there are icicles in Alaska.  But, this one spells potential trouble big-time for the GOP.  John McCain’s 2008 parting gift to the Republican Party may carry over into the 2012 presidential election cycle with GOP hopes of recapturing the White House evaporating along the way.

Related Stories:

8/18: 2012 Prospects: Palin a Force in GOP But Not Within General Electorate

8/14: Is the Economy Recovering?

August 14, 2009 | by

By John Sparks

Has the U.S. economy turned a corner, and how is the Obama Administration handling the nation’s economic conditions?  Dr. Ray Perryman, economist and founder and President of The Perryman Group, offered his take when he spoke with The Marist Poll’s John Sparks.  Read the interview transcript below.

John Sparks
Ray, in our most recent survey, 52% of the American public told The Marist Poll that they approve how President Obama is handling the economy. This is right on the border of being a majority, given the margin of error, so it’s sort of teetering at the midway point. How do you perceive that the Obama administration is handling the economy right now?

Ray Perryman

Ray Perryman

Ray Perryman
Well, it certainly hasn’t been perfect, but I think they’ve done a good job, and I would have been among your 52% if I would have been in the survey. They inherited some significant problems and took some bold actions.  Like a lot of actions that happened with the economy, they get bogged down in bureaucracy. They don’t always move as fast as you would like them to through no fault of anyone. It’s just the nature of the system as it exists today, but on balance, I think the administration’s done a good job.

John Sparks
Now, it’s interesting you mentioned…your belief that he inherited the current economic conditions. In fact, we did poll the public as well, and 74% of the American public told us that they, too, believe that he inherited the current economic conditions, and they are not a result of his own policies. So, I take it that you agree that the problems have been inherited, but when do you think that it will become his problem? In other words, just how patient do you think the American public will be with the president in solving our current economic woes?

Ray Perryman
Well, there’s certainly a lot of people on the other side and a lot of people in various media outlets trying to make it his issue. In fact, even before he was sworn in, some of them were calling it the “Obama Recession,” but I think people do recognize that the seeds of this go way back. A lot of it did happen in President Bush’s administration, but some of it, even the seeds of this were planted in President Clinton’s administration, so it’s not something that happened overnight. It took a series of events and eventualities to make it happen, and a lot of people besides presidents were involved in it. I hope the American people continue to recognize this, but I feel fairly sure over time that number will diminish as people’s memories are just really short on these things.

John Sparks
The mid-term elections will probably be a definitive report card on how the people feel the administration has been handling the economy. Do you have any predictions, if things continue as they are, what we may see next November?

Ray Perryman
Well, I’m not a political forecaster. I’m an economist. But, just making the observations just of what you typically see, you typically see the party out of power make some gains in the mid-term elections. It’ll be interesting to see exactly where the economy is as those elections approach, because if the recovery is in pretty good form, it may work well for the incumbents and the parties in power, but if there’s rising concern about deficits and maybe the economic recovery is not as fast, it’ll favor the ones out of power. I think the stars will add up pretty well for the incumbent, given where I think the economy will be at that time, but nonetheless, I’d be surprised if you didn’t see some attrition just because that’s the typical situation.

John Sparks
50% of the public told us that they believe things are going in the right direction. Now, that certainly is not a vote of confidence. What will it take for folks to believe that we are really, truly headed in the right direction?

Ray Perryman
Oh, I think as much as anything, it’ll take getting some jobs out there, because if people really focus on that, their job security, that’s very important to people. Their stock market is going back up some and the retirement funds and their savings and their pensions gaining some ground back would also help, although a gross domestic product is one thing, and that’s how we measure the economy. For most individuals, they measure the economy based on their own personal situation, and they’re going to have to fill pretty good about job prospects, their own job, jobs of their friends and neighbors and their retirement plans and the things that affect their daily lives, before I think you see that number go up a great deal.

John Sparks
It’s interesting you mention the gross domestic product. I saw another survey that was taken among private economists that was released this week. It indicated that about 90% of them believe that the recession will probably end in the third quarter, and they cited data showing that the gross domestic product was contracting at about a 1% rate compared to around 6.4% in the first quarter. Housing and labor market indicators also suggest we may be turning the corner. Do you think that’s truly the case that we are indeed turning that corner?

Ray Perryman
I think we are. I was one of the first to say I thought we’d see growth in the third quarter this year. I was saying that in the fourth quarter of last year, and I think that it’s still likely we are likely to see that. And, some of the other indicators are telling us the kinds of things that tells us in a recovery — productivity is going up which typically happens as production goes up and people keep the work force pretty steady. And, the inventory numbers are dropping a little bit which means that shelves are getting cleaned out. So, there’s a lot of things telling us we’re in the early stages of an economic recovery right now. Again, the difficulty with that is while those are the official numbers, those are what folks like myself focus on.  The average individual doesn’t see the gross domestic product. What they see is their own retirement account, their own job prospects and things of that nature.

John Sparks
I think most of us want to believe that we’ve bottomed out and that we’re slowly starting to turn things around, but I said slowly, and there are marked differences in the speed and strength of a recovery, and in this poll that I cited among the private economists, 17% believe it’ll be a V-shaped rebound. And, yet two-thirds believe there’s more likely to be a W-shaped bounce-back with ups and downs along the way. What do you see, and what are folks telling you?

Ray Perryman
Well, what we’re showing is: I don’t think you’ll see a lot of the W in the sense of the gross domestic product fluctuating from positive to negative territory which is how we usually define the so-called “W” recoveries. I think you’re likely to see the momentum be fairly slow at first, what we call a U-shaped recovery, that is a fairly flat bottom for awhile, but then, once it starts coming back, I’ll think you’ll see a lot of momentum getting into it… I would say this one is going to be sort of a modified U-V. It’s going to be a U-shaped at first, but then we’re going to see a pretty steep comeback a few months down the road.

John Sparks
Now, you mentioned a moment ago, joblessness, and of course, the largest concerns are still concerning jobs, and the joblessness is predicted to peak about 10% this year. What do you see on the horizon for the strength of the American workforce? … What do you think we’re likely to see in the next 12 months?

Ray Perryman
The things you’re likely to see in the next 12 months will be an improvement in the job market, but it’s not likely to happen for a few months. We’re still going to see job losses for the next few months. Hopefully, they will be at a slower pace. We’ve been seeing that. We’re losing 500,000- 600,000 jobs a month earlier in the year. We’re now losing 250,000 jobs in the most recent month. That’s a marked improvement, but it’s a marked improvement in how fast things are going down, and I think it’ll be a few months before you see that turn around. But, in the next year, I think you will start seeing the job market gain momentum. What normally happens is people try to use their existing workforce a lot before they start rehiring as a new recovery starts, simply because they’ve been through a rough time. They don’t want to rehire prematurely.  So, they’ll push their workforce as hard as they can. That’s why you’re seeing the productivity numbers starting to tick-up quite a bit in the recent statistics. Right now, the average work week in this country is somewhere around 33 – 34 hours. During the last recession, it got up ahead of 40 hours before you saw a lot of rehiring.  So, we have a ways to go before you really see the labor market picture pick up, but it will be looking a lot better this time next year.

John Sparks
Energy prices always have a tremendous impact on all aspects of our economy. Oil is on the upswing again.  What kind of impact is that going to have on our economy in the next 12 months?

Ray Perryman
Well, oil prices are up right now, because world demand is beginning to bottom out and come up a little bit, but also simply because of the phenomenon with the dollar.  Because oil is priced in dollars, that can cause movement in oil prices. I think the oil prices will probably be somewhat high coming out of the recession, moving into the recovery phase. But, natural gas prices, a lot of other fuel prices will still be lower, because they’re traded on national rather than global markets. They’re not subject to as much speculation, and there’s some excess supply there. So, I think some aspects of the energy market, you’ll be seeing higher prices, but I think a big chunk of the energy market will probably have sluggish pricing for quite some time.

John Sparks
How do you see the stock market responding to all these factors in the next 12 months?

Ray Perryman
Well, the stock market will be something of a leading indicator, and it’s beginning to sort of see some signs of light and react to those. So, it will be volatile because we’re going to continue to see for a long time, a mixture of numbers. One day, the numbers will point in one direction and the next day, the numbers will point in another direction. It’s going to react to the health care debate. It’s going to react to all kinds of things as the next year unfolds. So, I think you’ll see a lot of volatility, but we should see an upward trend, simply because earnings prospects are going to improve, long-range prospects, I think, people perceive them to be better, and that’s really what the ultimate underlying price of stocks is all about.

John Sparks
Thanks so much, Ray, I appreciate your time.

To learn more about Dr. Ray Perryman, visit The Perryman Group’s website by clicking here!

** The views and opinions expressed in this and other interviews found on this site are expressly those of the speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Marist Poll.

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7/2: Wedding Memories

July 2, 2009 | by

One’s wedding day is said to be the most important day in his/her life.  But, most ceremonies and receptions create special memories for, not only the couple but, just about everyone involved.  And, so, from the personal and poignant to even the comical, a few of us here at The Marist Poll decided to share some of our favorite wedding memories. Enjoy!

©istockphoto.com/manley620

©istockphoto.com/manley620

“My wife Sandy and I were married in the home of some dear friends.  We only had 9 people at our wedding… and 2 of them were the two of us!  We joke that when we go to the old folks’ home or if we get Alzheimer’s, we’ll have a better shot at remembering the names of all who came.  Besides us, there was the couple who owned the house, the pastor and his wife, my dad and my sister, and oh, yes, the photographer.  He was a shooter at the ABC affiliate where I was working at the time.  He just shot stills, but the big thing about this was that the guy was a rather (understatement) laid-back fellow who was originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Unless he was at work, he was always barefooted, so you can imagine how impressed and relieved we were when he showed up for the wedding wearing shoes!

John and Sandy's Wedding

John and Sandy’s Wedding

“We got married February 23, 1991, the day before the ground war began for Gulf War I.  Honeymooning in New Orleans, we were at Pat O’Brien’s two days later when word came that the war was over before it even had really begun.  Reminiscent of that scene in Casablanca where the Germans and the French sang battling anthems at Rick’s Café, everyone at Pat O’Brien’s got up and began singing ‘America the Beautiful.’  It really was touching.” — John Sparks

“For me, one of the most special moments of a wedding celebration is when the bride is walking up the aisle. I always love watching the grooms’ reaction as he gets his first look at his bride-to-be and patiently awaits her arrival between the sea of wedding guests.

Jason & Julia's Wedding

Jason & Julia’s Wedding

“Well, my brother’s reaction did not disappoint. A ‘man’s man’ and definitely not one   to ever share feelings or emotions, my sister-in-law’s beauty overwhelmed him. Tears poured down his face and as Julia got about halfway up the aisle, Jason’s face turned white and he nearly passed out. Thankfully, Mom had smelling salts on hand which kept him upright!  It wasn’t until after the vows that he was able to collect himself. I guess you never know people’s reactions to that life-changing moment!

“And, I have to give credit to my husband for memorable moments — his surprise photo of me imprinted on the back of his tux shirt was quite the hit when he took off his jacket!” — Sue McCulloch

Mary & Another Wedding Guest

Mary & Another Wedding Guest

“A few years ago, my brother was a groomsman for one of his best friends.  As the couple knelt down before the priest, the words, ‘Help Me,’ appeared in white shoe polish on the bottom of the groom’s shoes.  (Apparently, my brother and the best man were busy prior to the wedding.)  The entire church had to stifle their laughter.  While I typically get choked up at weddings, this was one ceremony that caused a different type of tears — tears of laughter.” — Mary Azzoli

Related Stories:

7/2: The World of Weddings… Money, Gifts, and More

7/2: Tying the Knot: Bridal Showers, Crashers, & Memorable Moments

7/1: Cooking with Grandma Ann

July 1, 2009 | by

Theirs was an average-sized kitchen in Queens, New York.  But, the smells that wafted through my grandparents’ house were anything but ordinary!  Growing up, my family lived on the second floor of a two family house owned by my Grandma Ann and Grandpa Anthony.  The two floors, though, were connected by a door that rarely closed; family time was all the time.

Grandma Ann

Grandma Ann

My memories of my grandparents are countless — curling up with grandpa as he took a nap on the couch, watching The Today Show with grandma before I went off to school, and squeezing in between the two of them in the backseat of our car as we took summer road trips.  Yet, out of all of the mental snapshots I have of my grandmother, the ones that stick out most in my mind are those of her in the kitchen.

Grandma didn’t cut any corners when she cooked.  From her pasta sauce to her zeppoli, everything she touched tasted as though it had been kissed by the gods!  Just about every member of my family lucky enough to have known grandma had a favorite.  My cousin Joe still swears no one makes a meatball like “Auntie Ann,” and even though many have tried to replicate them, no one can.  (We muse it must have been the oils in her hands.) For my cousin Terri, it was her Easter Bread.  But, for me, there is one dish for which I lived — her homemade pizza!

If grandma were alive today, she would probably be among the 71% of Americans the Marist Poll discovered roll out their own dough and make their own pizza pies.  Pizza day was a long day.  Grandma started early in the morning, mixing the dough and letting it rise.  When it wasn’t a school day, I loved being at her elbow.  As my mother says — patience never was one of my virtues.  So, I would pester Grandma, asking how long it would take for the dough to rise.  When the time finally came to roll out the dough, I’d “help” her pound down the dough with my tiny, powerless fists.  (At five or six years old, I thought I did a lot.)  And, with wide eyes, I’d watch as Grandma rolled out the dough and cut it to fit a few cookie sheets.  Then, came the fun part!

Grandma would ladle the sauce atop the dough, but it was often up to my brother and me to sprinkle the mozzarella cheese on top and dash it with a bit of oregano.  I still remember how the crumpled cheese felt in between my little fingers and how happy I was to be like my grandma.

Grandma Ann and Mary

Grandma Ann and Mary

My mouth watered as the pizza went into the oven, and I counted the minutes until the pie would be done.  Then, the moment of truth: Grandma removed the cookie sheets from the oven and placed it on the counter to cool.  Again, my patience would quickly run out, and I would fidget in agony until it was time to slice up the pizza and enjoy grandma’s delectable creation.

Looking back on those all too brief times with my grandmother, I realize ours was a unique relationship — one that I dearly cherish and wouldn’t trade for anything in this world.  Yes, my grandmother was an amazing cook, but I know, now, that our time together in the kitchen was about more than just food.  It allowed us to strengthen our familial bond and create lifelong memories.

What amazes me most, though, is how the simplest, every day gestures we experience as children have the greatest impact on us as adults.  If there is one thing I took with me from my time with, not only my grandmother but, both of my grandparents it’s to never underestimate the effect we have on children during some of life’s most mundane moments.  It’s in those moments when we truly help shape the adults they will become.  Some day, I hope to tackle Grandma’s pizza recipe with my own children.  Perhaps, they will then be able to get to know a bit about their great grandmother in a very special way and to create memories they will take with them throughout their lifetimes.

Grandma Ann’s Pizza Recipe

Related Stories:

7/1: An Experiment of Gastronomical Proportions

7/1: Dining In

7/1: Pizza Pizzazz!

7/1: Featured Recipe: Megg McKMuffin

7/1: Featured Recipe: Megg McKMuffin

| by

A Recipe by Meghan McKeever

mckmuffins_200_300Breakfast is important. But, then again so is sleep. So, how do you ensure that you get a tasty balanced breakfast, while still allowing yourself those precious extra minutes under the covers? The Megg McKMuffin is my solution. A vegetarian delight, it is packed with protein to stave off hunger (about 13g), and prepared in about 3 minutes in the morning. I first heard of the concept at a Weight Watchers meeting, where they suggested using real eggs and adding turkey sausage or Canadian bacon. I modified it to accommodate my dislike of real eggs and my vegetarian diet. I’ve gotten the preparation down to a science and every few weeks I whip up two or three batches and keep them on hand. Crisis averted with a healthy breakfast and ten more minutes of sleep.

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 22 minutes
Makes 6 muffins

Ingredients:

mckmuffins_112 oz. egg substitute (Egg Beaters, although the generics are just as good. I use plain, but you can use any of the varieties)
¼ cup of shredded 2% cheddar cheese
3.5 oz. (¼ of a package) “Gimme Lean” vegetarian ground sausage
2 Tbsp. dried onion
Diced jalapeños to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Whole-grain light English muffin (Thomas’ or some grocery stores have their own brand)

Recommendations:

  • A silicone muffin pan. I experimented with metal pans, Pam, olive oil — anything to make release and cleanup easier — and trust me, unless you want to spend 30 minutes cleaning cooked egg off your metal pan, the silicone muffin pan is the only way to go.
  • Mixing ingredients in a 2-cup measuring cup.
  • You can add any other vegetables to this recipe, but I recommend using only dried vegetables, or cook and squeeze the moisture out of veggies like spinach, mushrooms, and peppers. Any excess moisture will make the tops of the muffins a little watery.

mckmuffins_2Cooking instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. I find the best way to mix these up and eventually pour them, without making too many dirty dishes, is to use a measuring cup as a mixing bowl. Combine Egg Beaters, cheese, onion, jalapeños, other veggies, salt and pepper, in the measuring cup. Using a fork, mash the vegetarian ground sausage on a plate and add to the mixture in forkfuls. Using the fork and a little elbow grease, stir the faux sausage into the egg mixture; it will break up into bits as you mix.

The silicone muffin pan is floppy. (If you try to move the thing full of liquid Megg McKMuffins, you will end up with a very eggy floor.) So before pouring, put the pan on a flat cookie sheet for transport.

Pour the mixture into the muffin pan in equal amounts. As they cook, they fluff up a bit, so fill to just below the rim of the cup.

mckmuffins_3Bake at 350 degrees for 22 minutes.

Allow a few minutes to cool,  Then, run a rubber spatula around the edge of the McKMuffins to release them. Freeze in one layer in a zip-top bag and store flat until frozen.

In the morning:

Defrost one McKMuffin (my microwave does a good job at 50% power for 2:30)
Toast a whole-grain light English muffin.
Enjoy! (with ketchup, or hot sauce, yum!)

mckmuffins_4Related Stories:

7/1: An Experiment of Gastronomical Proportions

7/1: Dining In

7/1: Pizza Pizzazz!

7/1: Cooking with Grandma Ann

6/25: Parenting Advice from the Trenches

June 25, 2009 | by

By John Sparks

Kids…when it comes to parenting, even the littlest angels can be devils.  In her new book, 13 is the New 18, author and Associated Press columnist and editor, Beth Harpaz, shares her experiences raising a trying teenager.  When Harpaz spoke with The Marist Poll’s John Sparks, she offered her insights, advice, and reassurance to parents that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  The transcript to the interview is below.

Beth Harpaz (Photo Credit: Tina Fineberg)

John Sparks
Beth, the Marist Poll conducted a national survey and asked folks which stage they thought was the most difficult to raise a child. Not surprisingly, two-thirds responded that teens from 13 to 19 were the most challenging.  Now, regardless of the region of the country, the income, the education, the race, age, gender, the respondents overwhelmingly agreed.  Now does this surprise you?

Beth Harpaz
Not at all. It doesn’t surprise me at all. I mean, I think when they’re little, in some ways you’re more prepared emotionally for how hard it is physically. You’re up in the middle of the night. You’re changing diapers. You’re dealing with tantrums. They’re starting in school.  But, I think there’s a lot more support for parents at the stage. If you’re a mom or even a dad, you’re going to the playground, and you’re commiserating with the other parents, and you’re trading advice on: oh, I have a colicky baby.  Well, nobody blames you if you have a colicky baby.  They might offer advice, but they’re not going to judge you for it.  But, if you have a teenager who is yelling at you on the street or in a mall or failed a class and has to go to summer school or gets in trouble or talks back to grandma, people do judge you as the parent, and that’s very difficult.  You don’t get that kind of support.  People are very secretive about their problems they have with teenagers.  They’re afraid to tell the other moms, “Oh gosh, I don’t know what to do with this kid.  He’s driving me nuts.”  So, I think part of it is the isolation that we have to deal with these problems by ourselves.

John Sparks
Well, an even greater percentage of the respondents said that it’s harder to raise a child now than in previous generations.  Why do you think this is so?

Beth Harpaz
Well, you know it’s interesting. I mean people who have teenagers now, they’re probably, what, in their late 30s/40s/early 50s, majority of them I would guess, and so, a lot of these folks grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, and I think maybe a lot of us, myself included, I’m 48, born in ’61, so, I was little girl in the ’60s and a teenager and college student in the ’70s, I think we thought that we were the worst teenagers, you know that we were out there doing everything, that we know all about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, so there’s nothing a kid could throw at us that would freak us out.  Well, guess what?  You know, they always manage to find something. I mean now as parents we have a different kind of generation gap with our kids.  They’re so into the technology, and they know so much more about it than we do.  They can outsmart us every time, and they’re constantly coming up with something new — the texting; the IM’ing; the websites, the Facebook, the MySpace; the cells phones; the laptop. I mean you can’t even get a kid’s attention because they’re plugged into so many things. They’ve got things in their ears and their fingers are attached to something else, and they’re looking at the screen, and the phone is beeping and texting and all this stuff.  You can’t even have a conversation with them they’re so plugged into stuff.  So, I think at least for me, I have a 16-year-old and an 11-year-old, and I honestly thought it would be easier because I thought well, I know everything about being a teenager. There’s no generation gap now, and then all of sudden there was one.  So, part of it was the surprise.

John Sparks
Beth, it’s really interesting.  My kids are grown. They’re in the 30’s, and the thing that struck me in reading that book was the difference that technology has created.  When my kids were in their teens, there were no cell phones.  It’s almost like you want to have that connection with them so that you know that they’re okay, and yet the technology that enables you to keep them under surveillance, if you will, is the same technology that enables them to go off in different directions and disconnect with you as a parent.

Beth Harpaz
That’s right, and of course, there’s a lot of fear.  Parents have a lot of fear of what’s out there on the Internet. I mean, I try not to be a fear monger.  I try not to get hysterical about child predators on MySpace.  Oh my God.  But, it’s actually a symbol of an issue that’s been true of raising teenagers since time began, which is an issue of trust and separation, where you don’t know who they’re communicating with on their — in their text messages and on the Internet and by cell phone, and so, it’s a scary thing as a parent because it’s another thing that you don’t have control over. There are real dangers involved, and you don’t want to be hysterical about it. On the other hand, you want to be realistic and proactive.  So, it’s a tricky thing.  The other thing…The book that I wrote is called 13 Is The New 18 and people say to me, “What does that mean?”  When I was 13-years-old, it was a very gradual transition between childhood and being a teenager.  Adolescence was a long period of time where kids were funny looking, and they still played with toys.  When I was 12-years-old, I had braids, and I played with Barbies, and let me tell you that 12-year-old girls do not play with Barbies anymore.  12-year-old girls look like movie stars now. They have beautiful teeth and beautiful hair and beautiful skin, and there’s no more pimples, and there’s no more dandruff, and there’s none of that stuff. Their braces…they start wearing braces when they’re 9-years-old.  By the time they’re 14, they’re ready for their screen debut, so that transition that maybe in past generations gave parents a little bit of time to get used to this idea of a kid grown up, that transition is gone.  Overnight now 13-years-old, they are the way we were when we were 16/17.  The middle schoolers are behaving now like high schoolers used to, so that’s another issue for this generation I think.

John Sparks
Precisely. I was going to again attribute that to media.  The media’s so pervasive.  For instance, I love baseball.  I watch baseball, but I’m watching the game on television and all of sudden in between innings is an ad on erectile dysfunction.  So, are today’s children deprived of their childhood, and how can a parent combat this or deal with this?  I mean you mentioned about the Barbie dolls and the girls and what girls are doing now at 12 is so different, and I get back to some of the things that they’re exposed to.

Beth Harpaz
Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more, and I hate to sound like an old fogey, but we watch…We’re Yankee fans, and I got an 11-year-old who loves baseball, and it is hard to sit through those commercials with an 11-year-old, let me tell you.  I agree with you, it’s — they are exposed to a lot more sort of sophisticated themes and older themes, and I think it’s especially hard for parents of girls. I have two boys, so I think it’s not quite as hard for us, not that obviously a parent of any teenager being a responsible parent is talking about sexuality and what your values are as a parent and what the rules are from your point of view, whatever those might be.  But, especially the second time around, since I do have an 11-year-old, I am so committed to letting him be a little boy. I think with my older son, I wasn’t quite ready for that transition to go so fast, and I feel so strongly that as parents, we have to save childhood.  We have to somehow find ways to preserve that sense of wonder. It’s really hard because they are bombarded with so many messages that tell them they have to grow up. They have to see R-rated movies. They have to play violent video games. It’s really, really hard, but there are ways.  I’m lucky my little boy loves sports, and I think that sports is a terrific, terrific way to keep kids young because you know why?  Because instead of it being all about me, I’m so fabulous, look at me, they are part of a team and they’re part of something that’s bigger than they are, and I think that’s part of how you help them preserve that sense of childhood wonders so that they don’t get all teenagery and I know everything and it’s all about me.  I think there are other ways to do it, but I think that sports is a good way… If you’re of a mind to belong to a house of worship or any kind of a community organization, I think anything where we can de-emphasize the self and the selfishness and the I, that sort of self-obsession that teenagers have and connect kids to their family, to their neighborhood, to some organization, to something that’s bigger than they are, and that might even be as simple as you go outside on a starry night and try to find Orion’s Belt or the Big Dipper or something like that, just something so that they get out of that obsession, which I think is very much driven by the media and the celebrity culture that we’re in.

Another issue I think for a lot of kids now is this emphasis on brand names. I mean, you don’t get quite as much when you have boys; but even boys, they want those Jordan sneakers, and Jordan sneakers cost a hundred bucks.  When they’re little, you can buy them sneakers at Payless for 10 bucks, and they’re happy. Then all of sudden, they’re 13-years-old, and that’s not going to do. They want $100 sneakers.  So as parents, we have to again communicate our values.  In my case, I said, “Okay, here’s my budget for sneakers. I’m willing to pay $50 a year for sneakers.  If you need more than that, buddy, go get a job.”  You know what, they got jobs.  Teenagers are very resourceful. If you tell them that you’re only willing to pay so much for something, they will find ways. They will mow lawns, walk dogs, save up their allowance, babysit.  So, that’s another thing that we can do as parents is just be clear about what our values are and just draw those lines and say, “If you need to do it another way, then here’s the situation from my point of view.”

John Sparks
Beth, one thing that hit me in the face when I read the book were cultural differences. You grew up in the Northeast. You raise kids in a Brooklyn apartment.  Parents in other parts of the country, they live in houses with yards. They don’t depend on the subways or trains for transportation, and yet raising teens is a challenge despite those differences isn’t it?

Beth Harpaz
Well, I’m very struck by the results of your poll that this is a commonality among parents regardless of where they live, how much money they make, what their ethnicity is. I mean I just — I think that says something about just the basic nature of the relationship between parents and teenagers that it doesn’t matter whether your kids taken the subway or having their first driver’s license experience driving a car.  As I said before, I think a lot of these issues revolve around separation.  And, so in New York City, our kids don’t drive.  They do take the train and the bus independently as teenagers, but I think that there’s probably something that I have in common putting my son on the subway by himself for the first time with the mom or dad who is giving the keys to the car to their kid for the first time.  I mean obviously it’s a little more dangerous if you’re going to get in a car accident than if you get lost on the subway, but I think emotionally that it’s a similar moment of letting them go. One of the other big differences, which ultimately may not be all that different, is in an apartment, there’s not a lot of private spaces, so we don’t have the rec room, the basement, the place where kids can go and be alone doing their things with their friends.  So, my son as a teenager is not home a lot because there’s no space there for him to hang out with his friends, and unfortunately they — a lot of times, they’ll go hang out in the park, which isn’t great because there’s no adult supervision whatsoever, or they’ll go to somebody’s house where parents aren’t home. I mean I’m not naïve. I know these things go on so. But, again, it’s one of those separation issues where they want their space. They want to be private.  They’ll find it one way or the other.  I guess in the suburbs or in the country, it’s a little bit different because maybe parents are able to provide a space and then maybe another layer of supervision.  Sometimes, I do wish I had that suburban basement, believe me.

John Sparks
When I was a kid in Texas, this would’ve been the 1950s, I would be away from home all day. Now my parents would not know where I was.  I was usually at the park playing baseball without parental supervision.  I even took a city bus to downtown Fort Worth, Texas, when I was five-years-old all by myself.

Beth Harpaz
Wow.

John Sparks
And they knew, or at least I felt they knew, that I was safe.  But it’s a different world today, isn’t it?

Beth Harpaz
Yeah.  Well, it’s interesting, I think that we are starting to see the end of the helicopter parent. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that term or if your listeners are, but that is a term for the parent who is very anxious and always hovering over the child and not letting the child be independent.  I’m not really sure what created that term.  I myself was not so much like that.  There’s actually another great new book out called Free-Range Kids, like if you heard the term free-range chicken for chickens that are allowed to run around the barnyard, Free-Range Kids. The author is Lenore Skenazy, and she sort of espouses that philosophy that our kids would be better off we backed off a little bit and let them make some of their own mistakes and gave them a little more freedom. I’m not sure that the world is any more dangerous now than it ever was.  In fact, crime statistics would suggest, in fact, that it’s safer now than when we were growing up in the ’60s and ’70s.  So, personally, as a parent, I think there’s a lot to be gained from independence, and I’ve tried to create situations where my kids could figure out the world on their own whether it was walking to school by themselves starting in the third grade or taking the train and subway when they’re 12-13, budgeting their own money, being responsible for some of their own expenses. I think that’s how you create independent adults, and I think if we don’t do that, we’re going to have a lot of 25-year-olds who are doing way too much dependence on their parents.

John Sparks
Beth, I want to talk a little bit more about the book, 13 Is The New 18.  Now, you wrote primarily about your experiences with your son, Taz, at the age of 13.

Beth Harpaz
Uh-huh.

John Sparks
Now I’m just curious what do you think the book would’ve been like if Taz had written a book about you.

Beth Harpaz
Well, that’s a good question. I bet it would’ve been a different book if he’d written when he was 13 than when he was 16.  I’m happy to say that although I had a very rocky period when he was 13, as a 16-year-old, he is a really nice young man, and we have a very good relationship now.  When he was 13, it was very, very difficult.  We were constantly battling. There just were constant tensions.  It was a constant push and pull where he was very combative and very — the psychologist used the word oppositional.  He was very oppositional. If I said red, he said blue.  If I had a rule, he had to break it. He was just constantly getting in trouble at school.  It was just everybody who was an adult didn’t know anything, and everyone who was a kid was — had a lot of wisdom and that was who he was going to listen to, not his parents.  I already see that he’s already sort of a little bit nostalgic.  He has a little brother, who’s 11, so he can act the big brother and say, “Well you know, it’s good that when we were little, mom did this.”  Well, at the time when I said, “No, you can’t have ice cream for dinner or whatever it was, you didn’t like it.  But, now that you’re 16, you think it was a good idea, well okay.” It’s funny because he’s a very resourceful kid. He has a lot of jobs.  He works at an after-school center and as a camp counselor, and he babysits a lot, and he’s very, very good at that, and it’s interesting because he’s tough. He doesn’t let little kids push him around. When he says, “This is the rule,” that is the rule.  It’s interesting because when he was on the receiving end of rules, he didn’t like them very much.  He thought we were very mean.  Of course, the other thing is even in the last five years, technology has changed a lot.  So his little brother, for example, uses a laptop and has a cell phone because I want to be able to hear from him after school, make sure he’s okay, and of course my older son didn’t have those things when he was 11.  So, he’s constantly saying, “It’s not fair.  He’s only 11, and he gets to have a cell phone and be on a laptop, and you didn’t let me do that when I was 11.”  Well, it was all so new when he was 11 that most 11-year-olds weren’t doing it. So, it’s interesting that even from his point of view, there’s been this sort of increase in technology.  But, from his point of view, we were just really mean when he was younger, and we didn’t let him have those things, but they were very expensive when all this technology was new, and nobody really knew a lot about it.  It wasn’t like every kid had a cell phone when he was in fourth grade.  None of them did, but now most of them do, at least in New York City because they are kind of independent after school, so moms and dads want to hear from their kids, make sure they’re okay in the afternoon.  Where are you?  What are you doing, et cetera?

John Sparks
Beth, you also have a partner in parenting that — with Elon.

Beth Harpaz
That’s right, my husband Elon.

John Sparks
There are many kids today that don’t have the benefit of two parents,, and I’m just curious what the book would’ve been like if Elon had written it.

Beth Harpaz
Well, I guess a couple things. One is there are more single parents than ever. The statistics show us that.  Obviously a single parent can do an incredibly brilliant job of raising kids.  Just look at our President.  I mean just because you are raising a kid on your own, it doesn’t mean that your kid is going to be handicapped in some way.  I think it’s important to try to find other people both to help you and to give a kid various kinds of role models.  I mean don’t forget, President Obama had a grandpa and a grandma, and other people in his life who cared about him.  So, try to make sure if you’re a single parent that your child is involved in activities, sports, where there’s maybe a coach or maybe drama, a play at school or something like that where they can have a relationship with other adults, take a little bit of pressure off you, but also give them some alternate role models. I think that’s really important. But my husband is a wonderful guy. He’s absolutely brilliant.  He went to Yale.  He was number two in his law school class. He has a mind like a steel trap.  He could beat anybody at Scrabble. He’s really good at things like that and so he’s just…And, he was a really nerdy kid, never kissed a girl, never smoked a joint, never went to a concert. He was really straight as an arrow Boy Scout kind of a kid.  In fact, he was in the Boy Scouts.  We have the medals to prove it.  So, for him to have a kid who’s a teenager who’s a more typical teenager who breaks rules and sometimes gets in trouble and pushes all the buttons, he was completely freaked out by this kid, and I felt that I was often running interference between Elon’s ideal of a brilliant child who’s going to get straight A’s and be perfect and this and that and the other and Taz who was just kind of the teenager who drives you insane.  So…Also, my husband’s father was an immigrant actually, so I think also in immigrant families, there’s a lot of pressure on kids to really be perfect, to be the perfect American child, and this is why we came to this country.  I think there’s…And, I think often kids rise to that challenge. It’s a pressure for them, but often you find in immigrant families that children do try to be more helpful, and that there is that sense that they’re not entitled to something, this is a privilege to be here and you better do it right.  So, that’s definitely been a challenge in our child rearing, but it’s also in some ways, it makes it easier because I can always say to the kids, “Please don’t let daddy down.  You cannot get a ‘C’ in that class, because daddy will just be devastated.”

John Sparks
I’m curious, did Taz ever try to triangulate and play you off of Elon?

Beth Harpaz
There are some kids who will do that, not so much.  I think as parents, we can probably put an end to that.  I think with us, with my husband and I, we often will decide what is important to us and then let the other person make the decision if it doesn’t matter to — if it doesn’t matter.  If something just doesn’t matter to me but I think it’s going to matter to Elon, then I’ll just often defer to him, and I’ll just say, “You know what.  I just really don’t have an opinion on that. It’s up to daddy to make the decision.”  I’m not being a coward about it, but I know that he might care more about something like, oh I don’t know, something having to do with school perhaps or… we’re in the college application process now, so there’s a lot of coordination in that regard.  My husband also is very into sports, so my younger son’s a jock, and sometimes we have sports conflicts.  Okay, he’s got a big test tomorrow, and he’s got a basketball tournament tonight.  What are we going to do here?  I sometimes let him make the call on that because in a marriage, you have to figure out what’s the way that will cause the least conflict among all the parties, that’s the way I see it.

John Sparks
In your book, you talk about how kids at the age of 13, Taz is embarrassed to be seen with his parents.

Beth Harpaz
Oh yeah.

John Sparks
Has Taz ever read your book?

Beth Harpaz
Taz has not read my book.  Interesting question.  I asked him… I’ve asked him about this a couple times. I checked with him all along in the process. When I had the idea for the book, I got his permission.  At various moments, I gave him an opportunity to read the proposal, the manuscript, the finished product before I sent it in, and he said that he trusted me not to embarrass him too much, which is a good thing.  I also used… The first thing I did when I got my check for the book was I went out and bought him and his brother  a Wii, so that made me a cool mom.  Yes, bribery, it works.  You can buy a child’s love.  I’m not saying it’s the right the thing to do.  I’m just saying it works.  I also…I gave him Taz as a nickname. It’s not his real name, so I created just one little bit of a layer of privacy for him.  I figure, hey, if a college counselor happens to have that book on his desk, and Taz’s application is there in the pile, they might not necessarily make that connection right away because the name Taz is not going to be in the application material.  So, he’s certainly been supportive. I had a big reading in our neighborhood at the local bookstore, and he came with a couple of friends, which I thought was really nice.  So, he’s cool with it, and that’s what matters.  Obviously, it’s not good to embarrass your child in public, so you want to… If you’re going to,do something like this, we’ve got a lot of mommy bloggers out there, and if you’re going to do something like this, you want to make sure your kids aren’t going to hold it against you.

John Sparks
So, Taz is a nickname that you call him by or is this one that you came up with for the book?

Beth Harpaz
I came up with it for the book.

John Sparks
Okay.

Beth Harpaz
But, it does have a little bit of resonance. The Tasmanian Devil is a very popular Looney Tunes’ character, and for kids nowadays, I guess maybe 10-years-ago, Taz was really a big sort of icon. Everybody had a Taz hat or a Taz shirt or a Taz sticker or something like that; and the character Taz, the cartoon character himself, he’s kind of like a teenager.  He’s kind of this like sloppy lazy crazy kind of a guy, so it was a good fitting name.  I also… I could sort of see that as a graffiti tag– Taz.  I could see those letters spray painted on some building somewhere in my mind’s eyes. It seemed like kind of a cool combination of letters.

John Sparks
Now, why did you write the book? Was it to entertain?  Was it to give parents’ tips on parenting based on your successes, your perceived failures?

Beth Harpaz
The main reason I wrote the book I think was because I was just so shocked at how secretive everybody was once my friends and the people that I had been raising my son with, our community of parents, once their kids got to be adolescents… Like I said before, when they’re little and they have colic or you’re toilet training them or we’ve got kindergarten anxiety or something like that, everybody’s happy to talk about it, honestly, and offer tips and support and oh, I went through the same thing, and here’s what worked for me, or that sort of thing.  Nobody was embarrassed. But, all of sudden when they get to middle school, nobody wants to admit that their kid isn’t perfect. Nobody wants to have a conversation about well I’m worried. I think they might be smoking cigarettes after school.  What do you think?  Oh, my kid would never do that.  That’s not really helpful, and I actually don’t really believe it’s true. I mean we know from surveys that the federal government does, the CDC does a biannual survey of teenage behavior that most teens do experiment with cigarettes. They experiment with alcohol. They experiment with marijuana.  I mean, I’m not the only one who’s walked this path, but parents are afraid to talk about these things.  And I thought well, if I wrote a book about it, and I was honest, and I tried to be as honest as I could, maybe somewhere some mother who’s up in the middle of the night tearing her hair out will read this book and say, “Okay, I’m not the only one.  I’m not going crazy. It’s not my fault. This is part of the normal sequence of events in raising a teenager,” and that was honestly what I hoped to do.  I’ve gotten… believe me, I’ve gotten lots and lots of e-mails and letters from people saying things like:  have you been spying on my house because I’m going exact — I’m going through exactly what you went through with Taz, and it’s so good to know that I’m not the only one, and that they go through this and then they come out on the other end.  Hopefully, fingers crossed, they come out and they’re human beings again.

John Sparks
Beth, you’re quite versatile with the subjects that you tackle.  You’ve been a political writer. You wrote about covering Hillary during the Senate campaign.  I believe you also wrote another book about your mother’s three sisters, the book on raising Taz, you’re a travel editor, you write a parenting column, anything else on the horizon that’s in the works?

Beth Harpaz
I think my next book is going to be called 25 Is The New 11. I’m just having some problems with people who should be grown up and they just are acting like they — like they’re not.  So just hold your breath on that one. If you’ve got any thoughts, let me know.

John Sparks
I used to think that each stage has its trials and it has its treasures and that when I look back, I like to remember the treasures and hope I’ve grown from the trials.

Beth Harpaz
Very good advice.

John Sparks
At any rate, anything else you’d like to add?  You told me of course that Taz is 16, you’re in a new stage there…that Sport, and I assume that’s another nickname, is, I believe, 11.

Beth Harpaz
Yep, that’s my little jock.

John Sparks
So…

Beth Harpaz
Yeah, I think ultimately my message is: Hang on, moms and dads. If you’re raising teenagers, hang on. Like I said before, figure out what your values are, communicate those values, draw your line, try not to get drawn into the screaming battles and hopefully you’ll come out on the other end.  When they’re 15-16-17, hopefully you’ll come out with a kid who’s a human being who loves and respects you and whom you can be proud of.

John Sparks
Well, I know you’re proud of your kids and you should be proud of your book.

Beth Harpaz
Thank you.

John Sparks
I think you’ve done a service and in a humorous way, and good luck to you in all your future endeavors.

Beth Harpaz
Thank you so much. It was great talking to you.

** The views and opinions expressed in this and other interviews found on this site are expressly those of the speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Marist Poll.

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6/18: Health Care in the United States: An In-Depth Look

June 18, 2009 | by

By John Sparks

Dr. Irwin Redlener, Co-Founder and President of the Children’s Health Fund, discusses the Marist Poll’s findings on health insurance in the United States and shares his thoughts on President Barack Obama’s health care plan and the future of health care in the country.  Dr. Redlener, also the Director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, addresses, as well, how ready we are to handle the H1N1 virus, other pandemics, and acts of terrorism.  The transcript of his interview with The Marist Poll’s John Sparks is below.

Dr. Irwin Redlener

John Sparks
Dr. Redlener, The Marist Poll conducted a survey, and we learned that 21% of households in America have at least someone who is not covered by health insurance.  Now that percentage increases when those households surveyed earned less than $50,000 a year or they’re not college educated or they’re young families or if they fit into a category of ethnic minorities. For instance, 37% of Latino households had someone who’s not covered by health insurance, 31% if it’s an African American household. Do these numbers surprise you?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
The numbers really reinforce what we’ve been increasingly concerned about over the last almost two and a half decades now. The fact of the matter is that an extraordinary number of Americans are not getting access to healthcare in part because of the fact that so many do not have health insurance, and the costs are now absolutely prohibitive.  So, these numbers are striking, and in a certain sense, they’re what we might expect in these very difficult economic times where access to health insurance has always been problematic anyway.

John Sparks
Now, you worked with Hillary Clinton on that National Healthcare Program that never came to fruition.
A lot of folks, including some in the Obama administration, are working on a new national healthcare program. Will we see something put in place this time, and what do you suppose it will be like?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
I am very optimistic that with President Obama’s leadership that we will in fact see a successful effort this time to really re-create our healthcare system, to reform those parts that need fixing, and to reinforce those parts that we’re very good at.  At the end of the day, I think we’ll see very much of an American style reform in place that won’t be perfect from anyone’s point of view but will bring with it many, many improvements that will benefit American families and really help the economy in terms of slowing down the runaway costs associated with healthcare.

John Sparks
You mentioned a program called Doctors for America, which has been active lately in calling for national healthcare.  Can you tell me what efforts they’ve undertaken for this effort?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
There are a number of physician organizations who are really focused on trying to make sure that the American people understand what is involved with trying to fix the nation’s healthcare system, and this is something we did not see back in the early ’90s when the Clintons were attempting to reform healthcare more than 15 years ago.  What we saw then was general resistance by medical groups in terms of trying to fix the system, but what we’re seeing now is that tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of physicians around the country are joining the call to reform the healthcare system because doctors know as well as anyone else, maybe even more acutely, that what we have now is simply not working.  The role of these organizations, Doctors for America, and some of the other organizations like the National Physicians Alliance are out in public now speaking with the media and speaking directly to the public to try to allay some of the anxiety that people have about health reform.  People are perhaps worried that they’re going to lose their ability to choose a physician if we had health reform, or that we’d have a government run system. These are part of the myths that are associated with people that are resisting or are opposing healthcare reform, and these myths have to be dispelled. People have to understand that we’re looking to develop systems that will keep everyone’s ability to choose their physician and their hospital and at the same time do something about the runaway costs.

John Sparks
And speaking of runaway costs, any idea what a program of national healthcare will end up costing, and how we’ll pay for it?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
Right now the healthcare system in the United States costs about $2.3 trillion a year.  It’s around 14.5% of a gross domestic product.  If we don’t do something to curtail these costs, we’re going to see healthcare, if it goes along its current trajectories, reach a level of maybe 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product which would be utterly unsustainable in terms of the economic forces that would ensue.  The investment in the system right now to fix it so that the costs slow down and that we’re able to ring savings out of the, all elements of the system, will still entail putting somebody into the actual measures that will be part of the reform bill so that we have to invest in state-of-the-art electronic health record systems.  We have to invest in developing programs to prevent disease, not just treat it and so forth.  Those costs could be anywhere from 500 billion to a trillion dollars over a ten-year period, and the President and his economic team, congressional leaders, are coming up with ways to identify those costs which we’re going to have to then debate in Congress and in the public and see what will work.

John Sparks
Are you optimistic that this time we’ll end up with something?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
I am actually optimistic that we will end up with some very significant changes in the system that will significantly expand access to healthcare for people and will reduce costs.  In fact, I believe we will get a package that the president will sign within this calendar year, so I would say I’m in the very optimistic category when it comes to prognosticating about where we’re going.

John Sparks
I’d like to change subjects on you for just a moment.  You’re also involved with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, and I want to ask you about Swine Flu. Can we realistically produce enough vaccine to combat H1N1?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
There’s been a great deal of talk obviously and concern about this what’s now being called the novel or new H1N1 virus or what people were originally calling the Swine Flu Virus that originated in Mexico a couple of months ago and is now been spreading rapidly around the world to a point where it spread so much that it’s called an actual pandemic by the World Health Organization, and there’s a lot of things that are being done and could be done to slow the spread, but right now it’s a very mild illness in terms of the potential fatalities that come from it.  That said, we obviously will be needing a vaccine, and the vaccine is being developed as we speak.  What our concern is on a large scale is that if we had to vaccinate many people in a hurry, if let’s say the virus comes back in a more severe form in the Fall and Winter of this year, we’ll really wanting to be vaccinating people. But at the maximum capacity, we could not even produce a billion doses of vaccine, which seems like a huge number, but there’s 6.8 billion people in the world.  So, if we all get is 900 million doses, there’s going to be a substantial gap between those that will be able to get the vaccine and those that won’t, and that’s a big concern.  Secondly, if we put all of our vaccine manufacturing plants on the task of producing a maximum of H1N1 vaccine, that will have the potential of impairing our ability to produce the usual annual influenza vaccine that we still need every year, and don’t forget that seasonal influenza which comes around every year kills about 36,000 Americans every year as well as 250,000 people worldwide.  So, we might be caught between this public health rock and hard place where we need to both work on the seasonal flu but the new pandemic as well.

John Sparks
You mentioned that there’s no way we will be able to produce enough doses.  How will we determine who will get the vaccine, and how many at risk, who will not get the vaccine? Is it the “haves” versus the
“have-not’s?”

Dr. Irwin Redlener
Well one of the most difficult ethical questions we’re going to have is how to distribute a limited amount of vaccine to a very large population around the world who needs it, and I don’t think we have the answers yet, frankly, to that question.   What we… Our guess…  What we are most concerned about is that the nations with limited economic resources, the developing nations, for example, will have far less opportunity to buy or produce the vaccine so that we’ll have a situation where the so called “haves” of the world, the developed nations, may have more than their fair share of the vaccine, and the “have-not” or the poor countries be really suffering because they simply can’t get their hands on enough material to vaccinate all of their citizens. That will have significant political and economic repercussions however.

John Sparks
You know when I think about disaster preparedness, certainly the H1N1 falls under that category.  But I was in New York City for 9/11 and in that,of course, we came to the realization of the potential for other acts of terrorism that could certainly tax our American hospitals.  Just how well equipped are our hospitals today to respond to a pandemic or an act of terrorism?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
This is a fascinating question that we have been wrestling.  My center is the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at what’s called the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, so we actually have been focusing a lot of our energy on trying to analyze the state of readiness of the nation’s hospitals to respond to a pandemic or nuclear terrorism or even another Katrina-like Hurricane.  And, what we and others have consistently found is that while we’re making advances on the public health side, in other words, the ability to track things like pandemics and to follow disease patterns to produce vaccine, we’re getting better at that.  But, what’s now improved very much is the capacity of the nation’s hospitals and healthcare systems to respond or to surge up, to increase capacity if a major event happened.  That problem has been something that we’ve been working on hard, but if we don’t fix it, we may come to regret the fact that we haven’t invested enough in improving hospital readiness prior to the next big event, which inevitably will happen.

John Sparks
Is it a matter of needing more hospitals and more people entering the healthcare profession, or is it simply a matter of trying to ramp up those facilities that we do have?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
The health professional workforce issue is a big challenge, and we do have to ramp that up, and we have to get more people into primary care and that sort of thing. Right now, we have lots of doctors, but poorly distributed, because some communities have lots of doctors, others have none, so there’s some other areas in the background.  But, what we need is the capacity that if something big were to happen in Chicago or LA or the whole country next month, that the system can’t expand enough to take care for the numbers of victims and people needing medical care that we might imagine.  Now, there’s not that many scenarios where large numbers of people would get sick or injured in a short period of time, but you could think of a big earthquake on the West Coast, another Katrina-type situation in the Southeast, nuclear terrorism, and I mean actually a nuclear bomb, not just a dirty weapon in New York or Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles, and when you start thinking about these large, what I call mega events is or mega disasters, we remain concerned that the system doesn’t have enough depth to really be able to respond in a large scale way when we need it.

John Sparks
You know if all this isn’t enough to be concerned about, there is a recession and its effect on healthcare in this country, you referenced it earlier.  We read about losses in the stock market.  We read about huge corporations like General Motors who are not good health, but what is the cost of human health as a fallout from the recession?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
This has been very interesting for us to observe — the reporting of the recession as it became more and more severe starting with late 2007 and of course, continuing on through this moment.  Most of the descriptions about the economic downturn were written in financial terms, so we’re talking about a banking crisis, subprime mortgages, uncontrolled derivative markets, and so forth.  What we heard very little about though, was the human cost and the human toll and in particular with children.  So, the Children’s Health Fund a couple of months ago came up with a new initiative called Kids Can’t Wait, and the point of Kids Can’t Wait is to really underscore how badly affected low income families and children are and have been because of this economic downturn. We think on the one hand, this is bad for the banks, it’s bad for our pensions and so forth, but it’s desperately dangerous for people at the lower end where there’s not a lot of disposable income and what income there is needed to go to the doctor or buy groceries or pay the rent or whatever and those people and therefore those children, are being greatly affected, and we really need to put them back on center stage so we can make sure that they aren’t hurt anymore than they already are.

John Sparks
Any idea of a number how many children have lost healthcare?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
Since 2007, we think about a million children have lost healthcare, which parallels the loss that they’re — that families are taking and parallels the loss that is incurred by unemployment, loss of a job.  So, as we track that over this period of time, I believe there’s at least a million kids who are, as a result of these larger economic forces and as a result of the breadwinners of the family losing their jobs or having their jobs greatly reduced, that we’re seeing a very serious downside for children as well.

John Sparks
In talking about some of these challenges with our healthcare, there are moral issues.  We’ve talked about cost control issues, and yet, we need a robust healthcare system. Do you think we’ll be able to meet all those challenges, and what are the implications if we’re not able to?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
Well, we’re facing, as you allude to, a vast array of seemingly overwhelming problems from dealing with the recession, the healthcare crisis to the environment, energy, and a very long agenda on our international challenges as well.  The point about all this is that we can’t do, even though as much as we might want to, we just simply cannot take things on sequentially, because the world doesn’t work like that, and we have to be in a sense as a nation multitasking because all of this is important to the nation’s future, in some cases the world’s future and the world’s future well being.  So, taking care  of our children’s needs, worrying about global warming and figure on how to become energy independent are all part of a complex set of agendas that have to be taken on almost — unfortunately, almost at the same time.

John Sparks
It’s not an easy world we live in.  Dr. Redlener, I want to thank you for your time.  But before you go is there anything that you’d like to comment on?

Dr. Irwin Redlener
I think it’s difficult for people in a day and age like this to understand how serious the problems are we’re facing and in many ways without overusing this term, a lot of these challenges are pretty — are unprecedented in a real way, the amount of debt that the country is building up, the degree to which the healthcare expenses and costs are getting more and more out-of-control, the intensity of our international challenges, it all is big time.  But all that said, the reason I bring this up is to make a point that I think there’s also reason to be optimistic.  I think we can get control in the healthcare system. I think we could do a better job than we’re doing on virtually all the areas that we’re talking about, and I think we’re fortunate that we have an administration that is smart, is well led, it’s organized, and while it’s tackling a lot, I personally am optimistic that we’re going to find some way out of this briar patch sometime in the next few years.

** The views and opinions expressed in this and other interviews found on this site are expressly those of the speakers or authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Marist Poll.

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So, You Want to Start a Website

June 12, 2009 | by

If you were to ask me a year ago if I ever thought I’d be overseeing a website like The Marist Poll’s, honestly, I would have laughed in your face.  You see, my feet were firmly planted in traditional broadcast news (whatever that means anymore), and although I would often talk about changing careers, I knew where my heart was.  I had no real plans to make a move.  Perhaps, I should have listened to John Lennon’s prophetic words, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

mary_headshot_200_250

Mary Azzoli

Please, don’t misunderstand me!  I love Pebbles and Pundits.  It allows me to flex my editorial muscle, and that was the challenge.  My background is more editorial than technical.  But, we, at The Marist Poll had a message to get out, and it was my job to figure out how to do so.

Now, if you’re one of the 82% of Americans who The Marist Poll discovered does not have a personal website, my guess is it’s not due to a lack of ideas or messages.  My money is on a fear to broach the digital divide.  But, fear not.  If I could spearhead a project like Pebbles and Pundits, you certainly can launch a website of your very own!

Don’t believe me?  Well, here’s some advice that I hope will help.  First, don’t go it alone.  You’re intimidated, and that’s ok.  Admit your limitations and get past them.  The best way to do that — research.  We chose WordPress as our publishing platform.  WordPress is free and user-friendly.  It also has a ton of widgets to help you add to your site as well as a community of users!   I’m also not too proud to admit that I turned to WordPress for Dummies for advice.  Now, this isn’t a commercial for WordPress.  There are many other platforms out there and tons of books on the market to assist you in building a website.  In fact, I typed the search string, “Creating a website,” into BarnesandNoble.com and discovered 712 books on the topic.  When I did the same search on Amazon.com, I found 2,163 books.  If you don’t want to invest the money in buying a book, there are online resources you can check out.  Your local public library is also a good place to start.  And, while you are researching, don’t forget.  You will need a hosting platform.  Explore all of your options.  There are inexpensive ones out there.

Plus, keep an eye on the latest tech news.  There are websites that often review companies’ services (many of which are free).  Those sites can be extremely useful in your project.  I, personally, like TechCrunch.  It offers an RSS feed that helps keep you up to date even if you forget to go to the website!

Friends and family can also prove to be valuable sources of untapped knowledge.  Maybe, your best friend’s uncle is a computer guru.  Ask if you can shoot him an email with your questions or pick his brain over a cup of coffee.  It couldn’t hurt.  Surrounding yourself with good, intelligent people is a great strategy.  Not only can they help you get your website up and running, but they’ll also be there when you need to troubleshoot problems which will inevitably arise.  And, ask, for comments and feedback on your site.  It’s the most honest way to find out what needs fixing.  Nothing is ever perfect, and there is a learning curve.  Look at obstacles as learning experiences which will ultimately make your website even better!

Most importantly, though, have fun with the process especially if your website is a personal project and not one for your company or organization.  In either case, remember to be realistic in your goals.  Rome wasn’t built in a day, and my gut tells me that if you’re a novice, neither will your website.  Maybe, you want to market your content to a certain audience but the comments your visitors are leaving show that’s not who you’re attracting.  That’s ok.  The greatest thing about having your own site is that you can change it whenever you want.

The internet, to a certain extent, has made formal publishers obsolete.  It allows every person, young and old, to be his or her own publisher.  The resources to assist you are available.  So, don’t let your fear prevent you from communicating your message to the digital world.

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6/12: Running Wild with Websites