#Allegheny Streak

[1863-project]

Something I've noticed I do in my writing a lot is explore the idea of different ways to be a woman, and how so many of them haven't been deemed the "right" way to do it, which seems to have increasingly narrow criteria these days at any rate.

The three main female characters of 21st Century Unlimited follow that pattern too, with none of them really feeling like they can perform that extremely specific notion of womanhood and femininity that society values, but they all go about it differently and have different (complicated) feelings about it. Their experiences with race, sexuality, and neurotype also play a role here, because those elements are absolutely a factor in real life.

Engineer is specifically based on my own experiences as an autistic cishet woman with an autoimmune thyroid disorder. In her mind her interests and fashion sense are gender neutral, but society deems them - and by extension her - masculine simply by not being "feminine" enough. She dresses for comfort for the most part and is almost always in overalls or a coverall, and due to the nature of her work and hobbies she tends to get covered in grease. Her thyroid disorder has given her some weight gain that she's dysmorphic about because she thinks it makes her look misshapen or even pregnant, and that adds a lot to her body issues because she was already bullied growing up for not being able to meet that extremely specific standard of girlhood. She describes it as feeling like she was "bad at being a girl" as a kid. She doesn't wear makeup because of sensory issues and has huge eyebags because she's chronically fatigued and overworks herself on top of that, and refers to herself in the present as a "baggy-eyed train gremlin."

All of Engie's past life experiences - childhood bullying, being ostracized from train stuff as a kid because she was a girl, an emotionally abusive friendship in college - have shaped her relationship with the concept of womanhood in various ways. She consistently feels unattractive - "I'm the sort of woman men don't notice at best and are repulsed by at worst" - and is absolutely stunned when her crewmate Conductor reciprocates her feelings and they become a couple (whilst still acting like the best friends they actually are). It takes her a long time to get used to the idea that she's an acceptable woman, perhaps even an appealing one, because she's spent most of her life up to this point being told at nearly every juncture that she was doing it wrong. A big part of her story is about her coming to terms with all of this and learning to allow herself to just be.

In her mind, she wishes she was more like Fireman and Assistant Conductor in some ways, because they're able to do the things she can't. Fireman is able to just be herself without caring what people around her think and doesn't see the need to perform femininity at all. Assistant Conductor is deeply feminine and dresses the part out of work uniform, and people are drawn to her sense of style. Since she can't do either of these things Engie feels like she's in a sort of no-man's land with regards to womanhood and how she experiences it a lot of the time - she's too self-conscious to not care what anyone thinks, and she's too messy and tired and has too many sensory issues to perform for other people. She's resigned herself to invisibility, of having her gender essentially erased by other people, because she knows she can't be what people want her to be and there's no point in making herself uncomfortable to do it. She's already chronically exhausted, and at any rate she's still in a deeply male environment and she knows that if she does certain things in a feminine way there are still men who will unfairly perceive her as weaker or less competent. She knows she has to work twice or three times as hard for that recognition. In some ways, she contributes to her own erasure, because she has to carry herself the way she does to avoid being ostracized from her own field and to be taken seriously, but she also doesn't have the ability to perform femininity in the first place because it's an increasingly narrow social construct that she doesn't fit into.

Fireman, by contrast, has chosen to exist entirely outside of the construct of femininity, and she revels in it. Taller (5'7") and more muscular than Engineer is, she keeps her hair short and wild, has thick eyebrows that she has no interest in trimming or shaving, works the most physically laborious job on the entire train, and is crass, loud, and uncouth. (As late as her teens, she had long black hair that went down to her mid-back, but as an adult her hair is cropped short and dyed bright orange because no one believed her when she said she was half-Scottish and she got sick of it). She hustles men at billiards in bars and gets into fights. Her immediate family is generally used to this by now, although there is occasional friction between her and her mother, who expected less of a wild child - Fireman's Bengali mother has been known to refer to her daughter as "my child, Kali" before due to her destructive, chaotic nature - "she won't notice how carried away she is unless someone steps in to show her." Her Scottish father shrugs and jokingly attributes it to her Glaswegian heritage via his half of the family.

Fireman makes no attempts to disguise the fact that she's a woman, and indeed she identifies as one and isn't afraid to wear more feminine clothing for formal occasions, namely the tartan sari that she has to represent both parts of her family. Despite this, she is still not infrequently mistaken for a man until people notice her large chest, which she generally finds funny, especially if the person who made the mistake is flustered or embarrassed. She regularly introduces herself to people she doesn't know as "your favorite blazing bisexual butch Bengali" with the confidence of someone who expects to be well-known, even though she's well aware that these people don't know her at all - it's funnier that way. She makes no secret of her bisexuality and is open about the fact that she enjoys men who are weaker than she is, but likes women who "could kill her" (and says "anyone interesting" could catch her eye if they're non-binary). She doesn't see a need to fit herself into a little box and just chooses to live exactly as she is.

Arguably the fact that she's not straight gives her what she feels is more freedom in this regard, because she doesn't feel a need to shape herself for men's approval or acceptance. It is, however, a double-edged sword, because her extended family living elsewhere doesn't know what to think about her, and she often receives offhanded comments from older relatives about "settling down" and acting "more like a woman." She tries not to care about this, and she generally doesn't, but the comments do still hurt, because in her mind she isn't any less of a woman for being who she is, and she knows a lot of it is inherently tied to homophobia and societal mores. She purposely carries herself with a devil-may-care attitude to deflect as much of it as she can, but deep down she does know and she does carry it with her and it makes her dig in her heels even more. There is also the element of her non-whiteness, which means in the mind of many TERFs and others, she can't possibly be a woman, because she's big and strong and has brown skin. Femininity is often held to a standard of white womanhood, which means that even if Fireman was the most feminine member of the crew, she still would have an uphill battle to fight to be seen as a woman on par with the alleged arbiters of femininity.

Which brings up Assistant Conductor. AC is the tallest crew member at 6'0" even, and she has the slender, willowy build of a model. She's deeply feminine and loves fashion, experimenting with makeup in creative and fun ways with techniques she learned from her professional makeup artist mother. She takes her fashion cues from Japanese street fashion and has played with sweet lolita looks at conventions. When she's not wearing her uniform hat, she sticks huge bows in her hair. She loves all things cute, enjoys pink and pastels, and would perhaps be seen as the pinnacle of femininity by society...if she wasn't a Black lesbian.

AC's approach to womanhood is different from both Engineer and Fireman's, but her inherent interest in more "feminine" things doesn't mean she doesn't have to struggle to be considered "acceptable," either. In her case, both her race and her sexuality are factors - as a Black woman no matter what she does, even if she were to try to act "white," she would exist outside of the extremely narrow confines of womanhood that society has defined via cisgender heterosexual white women, because her features and culture inherently exclude her from that little "club." Moreover, the fact that she is a lesbian further removes her and others her, regardless of how feminine she actually is. AC ends up, not unlike Engineer, caught between two worlds, as although she is deeply feminine and clearly enjoys being a woman, she also suffers from femme erasure and is frequently falsely assumed to be heterosexual. She tries to deflect this as much as possible by mentioning that she has a girlfriend who works in the stationmasters' office and they live together, but her feminine nature means that many people dismiss "girlfriend" in this context as meaning simply "female friend" instead of "partner."

In the scheme of things, AC is easily the most stereotypically feminine member of the crew. She isn't doing the hard labor Engineer and Fireman are in the cab, and she's handling the passengers with serenity and grace (although this requires some heavy masking). Her ticket hole punch makes heart shapes. Her lipstick and eyeshadow are always perfectly matched and her mascara never clumps. And yet, none of that is enough, and she's on the outside looking in, too.

It's important to note that all three of these women are cisgender, as well. Were they trans, they would likely experience even more alienation from this extremely narrow scope of womanhood than they already do, but the fact that this definition that is seeping into so many places excludes many cisgender women - and, of course, intersex women regardless of how they identify - is a problem too. All three of these characters feel the way they do because American womanhood has been turned into an exclusive club by society, and if you don't meet the exact criteria, you don't get to be a full member no matter how you identify yourself or who you feel you are. Gender identities aren't only for the people who can perform them to your exacting standards, and these extremely strict definitions hurt everyone.

[foreverlogical]

Democrats secured victory in two state-level special elections this week, extending an impressive winning streak that Biden campaign officials cited today as they appealed to supporters to stop panicking about polls.

Why it matters: Down-ballot, low-turnout state elections aren't necessarily a harbinger for national contests. But the trend is unmistakeable: In 30 special elections this year, Democrats have outperformed by an average of 11 points, according to a 538 analysis of each seat's base partisanship score.

The analysis doesn't take into account the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, city elections and ballot referendums where Democrats have also dominated — largely by campaigning on abortion rights.

Driving the news: In Pennsylvania on Tuesday, Democrats defended a one-seat majority in the state House for the fifth time this year, outperforming Biden's 2020 margin in an Allegheny County seat by eight points.

In New Hampshire, a Democrat won by 12 points in a district Trump narrowly carried in 2020, putting the party within one seat of ending the GOP's state government trifecta. The Republican who lost, Jim Guzofski, is an election denier who claimed "prophets" told him Trump won in 2020.

What they're saying: "You can keep talking about polls 14 months out, but this is what I've been looking at all year," tweeted Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina of the trend in special elections.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.9 (after 1940)

1940 – George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer. 1940 – Treznea Massacre in Transylvania. 1942 – World War II: A Japanese floatplane drops incendiary bombs on Oregon. 1943 – World War II: The Allies land at Salerno and Taranto, Italy. 1944 – World War II: The Fatherland Front takes power in Bulgaria through a military coup in the capital and armed rebellion in the country. A new pro-Soviet government is established. 1945 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Empire of Japan formally surrenders to China. 1947 – First case of a computer bug being found: A moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University. 1948 – Kim Il Sung declares the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). 1954 – The 6.7 Mw  Chlef earthquake shakes northern Algeria with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). At least 1,243 people were killed and 5,000 were injured. 1956 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. 1965 – The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is established. 1965 – Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion ($10–12 billion in 2005 dollars) in damages, becoming the first hurricane to cause over $1 billion in unadjusted damage. 1966 – The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. 1969 – In Canada, the Official Languages Act comes into force, making French equal to English throughout the Federal government. 1969 – Allegheny Airlines Flight 863 collides in mid-air with a Piper PA-28 Cherokee over Moral Township, Shelby County, Indiana, killing all 83 people on board both aircraft. 1970 – A British airliner is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to Dawson's Field in Jordan. 1971 – The four-day Attica Prison riot begins, eventually resulting in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers retaking the prison. 1972 – In Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park, a Cave Research Foundation exploration and mapping team discovers a link between the Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems, making it the longest known cave passageway in the world. 1976 – Two Aeroflot flights collide in mid-air over Anapa, Soviet Union, killing 70. 1988 – Vietnam Airlines Flight 831 crashes in Khu Khot, Thailand, while on approach to Don Muang International Airport, killing 76. 1990 – Batticaloa massacre: Massacre of 184 Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan Army in Batticaloa District. 1991 – Tajikistan declares independence from the Soviet Union. 1993 – Israeli–Palestinian peace process: The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state. 1994 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-64. 2001 – Ahmad Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance, is assassinated in Afghanistan by two al-Qaeda assassins who claimed to be Arab journalists wanting an interview. 2006 – Space Shuttle Program: Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on STS-115 to resume assembling the International Space Station. It is the first ISS assembly mission after the Columbia disaster back in 2003.[13] 2009 – The Dubai Metro, the first urban train network in the Arabian Peninsula, is ceremonially inaugurated. 2012 – The Indian space agency puts into orbit its heaviest foreign satellite yet, in a streak of 21 consecutive successful PSLV launches. 2012 – A wave of attacks kills more than 100 people and injure 350 others across Iraq. 2015 – Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. 2016 – The government of North Korea conducts its fifth and reportedly biggest nuclear test. World leaders condemn the act, with South Korea calling it "maniacal recklessness".

[drsorrell]

Reading Short Fiction, Fri. 8.2.24

You made it to the end of the first week!

Trust me on this one. Adjust your Schoology Notification settings (screenshots below).

Close Reading RD Comments

In your Fall English class, you will receive extensive overall feedback. This means that your professor will make general comments for the whole class and expect you to follow them in addition to the rubric.

In my experience, this sometimes annoys students who want direct feedback. But your professor is teaching OTHER classes and many other students, so if everyone in your Core Writing class is making a mistake, they will point this out to the class, not to everyone one-on-one.

I'm trying to show you how that works here (and going over what I saw in The Close Reading RDs that have been submitted so far).

GO INTO MORE DETAIL AND TAKE RISKS (THINKING ONES!)

A Close Reading (and your assignments for our course and your next one in the Fall) are all about detail. Keep pushing your points. Take a risk and make a claim that just pops into your head, and see if you can, in fact, back it up.

Remember yesterday in class when I talked about this quote: "Or maybe that wasn’t the time it snowed. Maybe it was the time we slept in the truck and I rolled over on the bunnies and flattened them. It doesn’t matter. What’s important for me to remember now is that early the next morning the snow was melted off the windshield and the daylight woke me up. A mist covered everything and, with the sunshine, was beginning to grow sharp and strange. The bunnies weren’t a problem yet, or they’d already been a problem and were already forgotten, and there was nothing on my mind. I felt the beauty of the morning."

You can use this quote to point out how out of it the narrator is or the effects of the drugs.

You can also use it to point out, as I did, how important sense perception is to the narrator, which has to do with the drugs and simply reacting to situations instead of planning, as you guys pointed out in class.

But you could also go further, as I was starting to yesterday. You could make your argument and say that it is hard to trust anything this kind of narrator says, and maybe nothing in the story "really" happened. You'd also be right because it is fiction. This is what teachers mean when they tell you to take risks. Trust me that it's much more interesting to write something like this than just saying what you think I want you to say. (I don't want you to say anything; I aim for you to practice reading, writing, thinking, and making evidence-driven arguments.)

USE THE AUTHOR'S WORDS

Break down the language of the quote as much as possible, even when doing another category. So, if you say that both "Sidle Creek" and "Emergency" involve miracles that aren't really miracles, then you need to use the words of the stories as well.

Compare the following:

Both "Sidle Creek" and "Emergency" involve miracles that aren't really miracles. <- Great idea!

Both "Sidle Creek," where Esme believes she feels "the Sidle’s love walking deep inside," and "Emergency," where the narrator ("F***head) has a vision of "angels were descending out of a brilliant blue summer, their huge faces streaked with light and full of pity," involve miracles that aren't truly miracles. <- Great idea, backed up by textual evidence!

WATCH YOUR CAPITALIZATION

The first letter of every sentence is capitalized.

The first letter of proper names is capitalized: Esme, Georgie, Allegheny, Sidle Creek.

Story titles are capitalized and in quotes: "Sidle Creek" and "Emergency." (If you're ever in doubt, just look at how I write them on the syllabus and elsewhere.) SENTENCE FRAGMENTS: UNDERSTAND WHAT CONSTITUTES A COMPLETE SENTENCE.

Complete sentences with a subject and a verb are essential for maintaining the coherence and clarity of your writing. a complete sentence always has an identifiable subject (the person or thing doing something) and a verb (the action being done). This understanding is crucial for maintaining the coherence and clarity of your writing. Avoid using sentence fragments.

The use of sentence fragments has increased in recent years. Even newspapers do it. However, in clear, academic writing where you are trying to make a specific point, you don't.

For example: "The narrator thinks he is seeing angels. But it's really a drive-in. That doesn't matter, though, because the author has a different point. To show you that the narrator is looking for something new and better."

"To show you that the narrator is looking for something new or better" is a fragment with no subject. This should either be attached to the sentence before (1) or needs a subject to make it a complete sentence (2):

(1) "That doesn't matter, though, because the author makes a different point, to show that the narrator is looking for something new and better."

(2) "That doesn't matter, though, because the author has a different point. He is trying to show you that the narrator is looking for something new and better."

Discussion of the first half of "Wait for Night"

Author: Stephen Graham Jones on why he writes.

Author on the inspiration for the story: "Where this story happens is a place along the creek I pedal past about every day. For a long while last summer there was a crew doing stuff there, so they kind of became part of . . . I don’t know: they became possible, if that makes sense. I started wondering what they might be digging up. And who they were. And then I remembered a big field of blown-down trees I got lost in on the reservation one November, and how all these upturned root pans were enough for me, they were all I needed, or could think of.

And then I wrote this story."

(1) First sentence, last sentence.

(2) Why are there SO MANY real-world references?

Lace-up Red Wing boots

Ditch Witch

Kicker for the Broncos

"As near as I could tell, every waterway for miles in every direction was clogged with trash from the flood three years before." -> 2013 Floods

Diagonal Highway

Root pan: bottom of tree, roots. dirt, rocks, everything that gets uprooted

"My uncle’s unregistered Buick"

Runabout (construction or ATV ?)

Wild West, Roaring Twenties, Great Depression

(3) Characters, Personalities, and Backgrounds: What do we know, and how do we know it?

(4) What is the central theme of the first half of the story? What gets mentioned again and again?

(5) Connections to "Sidle Creek" and/or "Emergency"?

(6) What do you think happens next? ;)

Time to work on CR FDs

Homework: Before class: CR1 FD due AND finish reading “Wait for Night” (2020).

[1863-project]

[cavenewstimes]

How the Steel City became a vanguard of the progressive movement

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh is renowned as a city of bridges, industry and championship sports teams — and now, in a much newer development, as a powerhouse of progressive politics. Progressive candidates are in the middle of an eye-opening winning streak over more moderate Allegheny County Democrats who for decades had a firm grasp on power around Pittsburgh. In May, progressive state Rep. Sara…

[1863-project]

Hate it when I make Conductor cute. Damnit.

[1863-project]

Normal gremlin woman with her normal self-designed streamlined steam locomotive that she goes for speed records in

Nice ride! Draw a character with their favorite mode of transportation.

[spaceexp]

Researchers are using data from weather satellites to detect meteors entering Earth’s atmosphere.

NASA scientists are using lightning detecting instruments on weather satellites to find large meteors, called bolides, entering Earth's atmosphere. This map shows the 3,000+ bolides detected by the GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellites since July 2017.

The new year began with a bang in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Early on New Year’s Day, many local residents heard a loud boom and felt the ground shake, prompting calls to 911. Allegheny County quickly acknowledged the event, noting that it wasn’t an earthquake or thunder and admitting “we have no explanation for the reports.”

The culprit was later confirmed by NASA Meteor Watch: it was a bolide, a very large, bright fireball (a meteor brighter than Venus). The meteor was estimated to be half a ton, a yard wide, and traveling about 45,000 miles per hour. When it exploded in the atmosphere, it released the energy equivalent of a 30-ton TNT blast that was recorded by detectors at an infrasound station near Pittsburgh.

While there are a few space-based bolide detection programs around the world, the majority are ground-based—including the NASA Meteorite Tracking and Recovery Network and the NASA All-Sky Fireball Network. Yet most bolides enter the atmosphere over the 70 percent of Earth that is covered by ocean.

“Bolides are rare and, due to the limited observational areas of ground-based systems, very few bolides are detected from the ground—perhaps only a couple a year,” said Jeffrey C. Smith, a data scientist at the SETI Institute and the principal investigator on a cooperative project with the Asteroid Threat Assessment Project at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “Bolide explosions are also very quick, typically lasting just a fraction of a second, so very fast detectors are needed.”

Recently, scientists figured out that they have such a detector, even though it was not designed to detect space rocks hurtling through the atmosphere. In 2018, astronomer Peter Jenniskens (also of SETI and NASA Ames) and colleagues showed that the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) aboard NOAA’s GOES-16 weather satellite could be used to observe the fleeting flashes of bolides. The GLM samples transient light at a rate of 500 frames per second. It can detect bolides from about 4 inches (1 decimeter) up to about 9 feet (3 meters) wide.

Two years ago, Smith and colleagues began developing and training a machine learning algorithm to have computers automatically detect bolides in GLM data. Their goal was to build a publicly available database of bolide events and their light curves—the trajectories and intensity of the light streaks they left across the sky. Smith and his team described their work in the journal Icarus in November 2021.

The map above shows the distribution of more than 3,000 bolides detected by the GLMs aboard GOES-16 and GOES-17 between July 2017 and January 2022. Blue points are bolides detected by GOES-16; pink points were detected by GOES-17. The lone pink point over the Atlantic Ocean was detected by GOES-17 during its commissioning phase before it was moved into its operational orbit over the West Coast.

Bolides that are observed by both GOES-16 and -17 are recorded in stereo. On the map, the slight offset between the stereo detections is due to the different perspectives from which they were viewed by each satellite. Stereo detection allows researchers to reconstruct the trajectories of the bolides through the atmosphere. These data, along with the light curves, are helpful for modeling how asteroids enter the atmosphere, break up, and impact Earth. Such data also can inform models that assess the risk of larger meteor impacts, while aiding asteroid population studies that improve our understanding of the evolution of the Solar System.

No humans observed the New Year’s Day bolide over Pittsburgh, where skies were overcast, but the GLM detected four bright flashes of light. It was not a particularly bright bolide or even the brightest one recorded that day, Smith said. The others were just over the ocean or in rural areas, where they were less likely to be seen.

“This is one of the great things about using a geostationary satellite—we can detect events in very remote areas that are missed by ground observers,” Smith said. The geostationary orbits of GOES satellites allow them to monitor the Western Hemisphere from 55 degrees north latitude to 55 degrees south. While the coverage is not global, it allows scientists to capture an unprecedented number of meteors in data that is accessible to the public. “Right now, GLM is the only accessible tool available to get hemispherical-wide coverage to search for bolides.”

Currently, the events identified by the computer algorithm are reviewed by humans before being added to the database. After several iterations of the program, the computer is getting pretty good at correctly identifying bolides. “Four out of every five detections we make is legit,” Smith said. “A very small amount of manual vetting is now necessary to weed out the false positives.”

The team’s goal is to improve the detection precision enough so that humans are not required in the process, Smith said. “Then we can automatically post our bolide detections very soon after the events occur, perhaps within a minute.”

NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using NASA Bolides data courtesy of Jeffrey Smith/SETI. Story by Sara E. Pratt.

[customerwint]

Mariners shortstop

In many ways, Young’s journey to the Major Leagues started. 20 in this year’s Top 250 Draft prospects from MLB Pipeline. 21 overall pick in the first round out of North Allegheny High School in the Pittsburgh suburbs. Either way, one thing is for certain… JP Crawford is raking right now. That left-handed cut belongs to Cole Young, the shortstop who the club selected with the No. Mariners shortstop Brad Miller has been named the American League Player of the Week. Hopefully, the answer lies in the middle, at his current average of. 160 hitter, but he also isn’t going to hit. 292/.336/.374, but was traded for Floyd Bannister to. If someone is going to rake like this though, I’ll take singles all day.Īgain, this is all a small sample size. Craig Reynolds (2.3) was the Mariners first shortstop and second all-star, making it in the 1978 season. There is a bit of a worry though, as Crawford has just one walk on the season, and has yet to hit anything other than a single, outside of the go-ahead double today. Mariners keep talking about top prospects, but the bottom line is they cant get to the playoffs with this team without starting to add veteran pitchers and. If he can keep it going it the latter half, it’s going to cap off a great finish to the road trip for Crawford. He has since gone 7-17 with a five-game hitting streak, including knocking in the go-ahead runs in the opening victory of a doubleheader against the Orioles as they won 4-2. Crawford will begin serving a four-game suspension tonight for his role in a brawl against the Los Angeles Angels last Sunday. Over the last five games, he has answered that question, laying waste to those doubting him. SEATTLE - Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. Since then, JP Crawford has been one of the best hitters on the Seattle Mariners. For someone with a lackluster hitting history, you had to ride the line of concern or early-season small sample size. The defense was still there, of course, but the bat just hadn’t shown up yet. 160 batting average from going 4-25, with just one walk, one RBI, and three runs. Through the first seven games of the season, he was really struggling. Further than that, we wanted to know if he was going to be more than just a guy in the lineup, but that someone you could rely on as one of the best players on your team. The Mariners started opening day with good vibes for their future, announcing a five-year extension with 2020 American League Gold Glove shortstop J.P. Dissatisfied with the bullpen inadequacies, Mariners Manager Lloyd McClendon optioned starting shortstop Chris Taylor to Triple A Tacoma to bring up. We wondered a lot during the offseason if he was going to be able to provide enough offense for the team to be able to stick around at shortstop. SEATTLE - Seattle Mariners shortstop J.P. There were the first seven games of the season, and over the last five, he has looked like a completely different person for the Mariners. JP Crawford has had two different seasons up to this point. 1/9 Seattle Mariners Shortstop INKED Mug. Now, back to the regularly scheduled article. The Shortstop Mug holds 9oz of your favorite beverage - hot or cold. It is instead Dylan Moore, who he drove in as the go-ahead run. I know that isn’t JP Crawford in the picture. 715 OPS with 89 runs, 37 doubles, nine home runs and 54 RBIs in 2021, serving mainly as the Mariners’ leadoff hitter during the team’s first 90-win season since 2003.By Christopher O'Day 1 year ago Follow Tweetĭisclaimer. Crawford will take over shortstop duties after Dylan Moore was rested on the road. #SeaUsRiseĪfter winning the Gold Glove in 2020, Crawford continued to play stellar defense in 2021 while also making significant strides offensively. Crawford is batting ninth in Friday's game against the Texas Rangers. We have signed to a 5-year contract extension. I’ve said before that I’m here to win, and we’re going to win for a long time. “This place is going to be nuts when we do it. The 2001 Seattle Mariners team roster seen on this page includes every player who appeared in a game during the 2001 season. “Seattle is a special place for me, and I can’t wait to be a part of the team that brings a championship here,” Crawford said in the press release. Its team graphics and ombre design add a. Subpar production from both middle infield positions surely isn’t ideal, but it hasn’t. I feel really comfortable at shortstop because its the position that obviously Ive. The Mariners traded for Crawford in a swap with the Phillies prior to the 2019 season, and he has blossomed both in the field and at the plate, especially in the past two seasons. Cheer on the Seattle Mariners in style with this Shortstop Ombre raglan V-neck tee from G-III Sports by Carl Banks. Combined, Mariner shortstops have produced 1.6 fWAR on the season, a mark that’s 17th in the majors. Heres a look at second-ranked Mariners prospect Noelvi Marte.

[lizardtracks]

August

8/1/22: It’s August. Sirius, the Dog Star, has slid out of conjunction with the sun and escapes below the horizon ahead of the afternoon heat. For those of us with no escape, the Dog Days lay over the land like a vaporous malady. The Druids knew this to be a harvest season; the planet has turned a corner into autumn. I am off to harvest a boyhood memory.

To come along, go to the tiny town of Berlin in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Find a road once called The Old Plank Road. Yes, it was always old. To the highway engineer and the tourist, people who use roads as artlessly as a spinster uses a hammer, it looks like any other stretch of winding macadam two-lane in the Allegheny Mountains. To me, it seems like the footsteps of a small boy running barefoot through the collective memory of the German and Scotch-Irish settlers who lived there.

Pass the Ponfeigh Farm. The standard Herefords and Holsteins will be in the fields. With luck, a gray Percheron will be hanging its wide face over the top of a white board fence like a harvest moon. I ignore the dirt road to the right. It leads to other memories I will gather another time. 

Instead, I follow the Plank Road to an unpainted bus shanty still bearing the imprint of a steel arrowhead. The arrow went through a foggy November morning and a phantom deer on its flight to the shanty. When the wood impeded its flight, the arrow stopped abruptly, quivering in the damp, cold air like a rudely plucked guitar string. A young man still recovering from a skull fracture shot the arrow. He and his motorcycle had learned the three important laws of physics from a deer. From that moment on, with or without cerebral fluid leaking through his skull, he saw deer in places other folks did not.

The small boy later broke off the shaft, sharpened it and shot it from his own handmade bow into his sister’s head. Accidentally. Her hair, until that moment, had been just as tow colored as his. After that moment, it had crimson streaks in it. They matched the crimson welts that soon appeared on the buttocks of the small boy, the regularly appearing stigmata of culpable boys everywhere. The streaks on the buttocks soon disappeared, though the impression they left remained like marks from a pillow on a dreamless night. The crimson streaks in his sister’s hair never went away. The year was 1965. You will sense all this when you see the shanty.

At the shanty, a dirt road leads off to the right. The road is still dirt over half a century after the small boy last scuffed his shoes on it walking home from school in the third grade. The road follows a creek that was once waded by a pair of coverall clad boys, brothers, looking for crawdads. The progeny of the uncaught crawdads still troll the pebbly creek bottom. Driving counter to the creek, I let the dappled sunlight flowing across the windshield —from the birch trees, maple trees, hemlock trees, and blighted chestnut trees—bring on a dream state. I roll down the windows and breath in the wintergreen and the ferns.

The road crosses a culvert above a forlorn looking pond. The pond became forlorn looking by trying to imitate the faces of the cows that once drank from it. I’ll park here. Yes, it’s nothing but a derelict sidehill farm with an overgrown apple orchard. The apple orchard is what I want. You can cut across the orchard if you like. I’ll walk down the drive past the east side of the white clapboard house. As I pass the cistern maybe I’ll glimpse, through the screened window, the small boy’s mother canning peaches. The regulator on the heavy cast iron pressure cooker will be rocking furiously. Peaches are a delicate fruit. You must put them up right away. They go from fresh to ripe to rotten in a fortnight. So the regulator rocks furiously as basket after basket of peaches go into Mason jars for the winter.

Not so our apples. They are a sturdy fruit. You can pluck an apple off the ground and eat it until well after the first frost. Stored in a root cellar, they can add to the festivities and seasonal color of Christmas.

But this memory is not about Christmas. Not in August. Not with the keening of cicadas coming from every tree. I am here for a particular apple. A Sheepnose apple. This orchard has only one tree of that apple. The tree is near where the Model A truck sat. Most of the year it sat, its wheels chocked; its tires dry rotting; its engine drained of water. But once a year, just because, the small boy’s father refilled the radiator from the cistern, cranked the engine over and un-chocked the wheels. The family would clamber aboard the backfiring machine. Away they went, riding up and down the dirt road raising glorious rooster tails of dust. But mostly the truck made a platform for gathering Sheepnose apples.

The truck has long since become elemental, rusted into the ground. I will pick my apple today from on my tiptoes. And with a snap and swish of a branch now it is in my hand. The long conical shape, like a sheep’s nose, is covered in a thin garnet-colored skin flecked with gold. Sometimes they ripen to a deep purple. When I bite into it, it tastes like… Like what? Here the memory fades. I know that it is neither tart nor sweet. And that a bite taken neither snaps away in a juicy spray, nor slowly separates like drier apples. But I cannot recall the exact flavor, or sensation. Since then I have eaten hundreds of Red Delicious, maybe as many Granny Smiths, and dozens of Braeburns, Galas, Fujis, McIntosh’s, and Honeycrisps. But since then, I have never crossed paths with another Sheepnose. Fifty intervening summers have faded the memory, like a Polaroid left in a window sill.

With a sigh, I drop the prize apple on the ground for the field mice and ground hogs. Or the black bear I was sure lived in the abandoned coal mine in the most shadowy nape of the woods. I will harvest only part of a memory today. It was a good one. Though it’s hard to say how much was real and how much was simply snatched from the ether. That’s the problem with memory.

The sun is just touching the crest of the hill at Valhalla, a long gone sugarhouse. Maybe there is still enough daylight to head down the Old Plank Road, the pavement still warm, to someplace more recent and a little closer to home.


[1863-project]

Let's be real, this is Conductor's signature ability at this point.

(Yes, I'm deeply aware that's the title of a Yu-Gi-Oh card)

How good is your OC at perceiving time? Can they approximate how much time has passed, or do they blink and it’s suddenly a week later?

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Addiction Treatment Providers in Pa. Face Little State Scrutiny Despite Harm to Clients

This investigation is a joint project of KHN, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues, and Spotlight PA, an independent, collaborative newsroom dedicated to producing investigative journalism for all of Pennsylvania.

This story also ran on Spotlight PA. It can be republished for free.

When Ian Kalinowski was at work, his mom usually texted him. So when he saw her number show up as an incoming call around lunchtime one Tuesday, he figured it had to be important.

Now, more than seven years later, he remembers her screams, the shock and the questions she asked over and over again.

“Why are they saying this to me? Why are they lying to me?” Ian recalled his mom asking. “They’re telling me Adam’s dead. Why would they do this to me?”

Adam was Ian’s older brother. Growing up, it seemed they spent every second together. Football, hockey and tag filled long days outside their Pittsburgh home. When Ian moved away for college, he and Adam turned to online poker to stay in touch. Adam served as best man at Ian’s wedding, and Ian admired his brother’s artistic streak. Adam could turn any piece of paper into an origami swan. His mom’s home is still full of swans.

Adam’s struggle with opioid and alcohol addiction was painful for Ian to watch. The problems began, it seemed to Ian, after Adam dropped out of college and used drugs to deal with his depression. Adam sought treatment, and he relied on methadone for many years, but his problems continued. When he was 32, he typically drank dozens of beers each day. On Feb. 3, 2014, he entered a treatment center run by Addiction Specialists Inc., according to a lawsuit later filed by his family against the facility. The center, in a Fayette County strip mall, was about an hour’s drive south of Pittsburgh.

Less than 24 hours after Adam made it to the facility, he was dead, according to expert reports from doctors in the family’s wrongful death lawsuit. Ian couldn’t understand what went wrong, and neither could his mom, still in denial on the other end of the phone call.

What his family didn’t know was that Addiction Specialists, often known as ASI, had a history of violating state rules. In a later federal investigation into the facility’s billing and drug distribution practices, a grand jury concluded that a litany of problems occurred at the business many months before and after Adam’s arrival.

In the wrongful death suit, a lawyer for the Kalinowski family alleged Adam wasn’t evaluated by a physician when he arrived at ASI, didn’t receive the medication or treatment he needed, became increasingly uneasy and anxious throughout the night and killed himself. An Allegheny County judge in December 2019 said the business, two of its owners — Rosalind and Sean Sugarmann — and an ASI physician were negligent in caring for Adam. The judge ordered them to pay over $1.6 million in damages, although Ian doubts they ever will.

ASI eventually shut down, two years after Adam died.

In recent interviews with KHN-Spotlight PA, the Sugarmanns denied responsibility for Adam’s death and maintained that ASI was a good facility. Rosalind said it helped a lot of people in a rural area with a high drug-overdose rate.

Addiction treatment facilities in Pennsylvania, like ASI, are licensed and regulated by the state to ensure they follow certain rules and keep vulnerable people struggling with addiction safe. Oversight used to fall to the Department of Health. But in 2012, the state created the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, a $125 million agency set up to give substance use the attention lawmakers felt it deserved.

At the time of Adam’s death in 2014, the department had taken few disciplinary actions against ASI. It had issued citations and required the company to submit plans to correct them. But the Sugarmanns told KHN-Spotlight PA that, at the time, they didn’t fear the state would shut them down.

Perhaps for good reason.

A KHN-Spotlight PA investigation found that the department has allowed providers to continue operating despite repeated violations of state regulations and harm to clients. More than 80 interviews and a review of thousands of pages of state government and court records revealed that the department lacks resources and regulatory power, uses an inherently flawed oversight system that does little to ensure high-quality or effective care, and rarely takes strong disciplinary action against facilities when so many Pennsylvanians need services.

The department has no standard criteria for when it should force facilities to serve fewer patients and, as of early April, had revoked just one treatment provider’s license in nearly a decade. It doesn’t, as a regular practice, compare facilities to see if any stand out for an unusual number of violations or the most client deaths. And since state inspections focus heavily on records, they can be tricked with fraudulent paperwork, former employees in the treatment field said.

This leaves Pennsylvanians — who suffer one of the highest drug overdose death rates in the nation — in the dark about which treatment facilities have troubling track records.

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Some advocates point out that overregulating or closing facilities could leave people suffering from addiction without options for care. But in the current system, state and judicial records show, some patients have received inadequate treatment or even died; certain facilities have fraudulently billed insurance companies; and owners rake in federal and state tax dollars, as well as private money from victims of the opioid crisis.

“Many of these rehab facilities are not properly run or supervised, and many are in it for the money,” said Peter Friday, an attorney who represented Adam’s family in their lawsuit. “These places have been unbridled.”

Who Polices the Providers?

Even though the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs provides the licenses that allow addiction treatment facilities to operate, Jennifer Smith, secretary of the department, said it has limited responsibility for them. Law enforcement agencies are often better positioned to take action against troubled providers, she said, and insurance companies that pay for services also offer oversight.

“It’s not our job to really police the providers,” Smith said in an interview. “Our function is to really try to enable them to meet the [state’s] requirements, and by doing so, enabling them to provide quality services.”

Yet, as the regulating body of these treatment facilities, the department collects some of the most critical information necessary to properly police them, including reports of client deaths and physical and sexual assaults.

Smith said most providers are trying to do good work. She said annual inspections ensure facilities meet safety standards, like having enough staff members and a building that’s up to code. But inspections are not meant to evaluate quality of care, she said.

The KHN-Spotlight PA investigation found the department makes little of what it knows about troubling facilities accessible to the public. Its website shows if a facility currently has a provisional license — a designation indicating the provider failed to meet several state requirements and will be inspected more frequently until it resolves those concerns — but not whether it ever received such a sanction in the past, for what issues, nor how they were resolved.

The department does not post the reports it collects about deaths and assaults, which represent some of the most concerning events at treatment facilities.

When KHN-Spotlight PA filed a public records request for those reports, the department shared only incidents that it decided did not warrant investigation. It said it could not provide the total number of such events at specific facilities since it doesn’t have aggregate data prior to September 2019, when it launched a new electronic reporting system. Even the available data from that new system provides an incomplete picture, as less than a quarter of treatment facilities had enrolled in the voluntary system as of March 2021.

Smith said people should pick facilities the same way they do primary care doctors, based on publicly available information, personal recommendations and discussions with insurers.

One of the main public resources the department offers is a website with reports from its facility inspections. Inspectors write these reports after a site visit, listing any violations of state regulations they found. But these reports provide a limited window into the daily reality for clients, as there’s no indication of which violations are more severe than others, and many regulations focus on building conditions and completion of records. One regulation, for example, mandates the temperature at which refrigerated food must be maintained.

In response to each violation inspectors find, the facility submits a plan to address it. If the facility fails to provide a plan or follow through on it, the department has two primary options: force the facility to reduce the number of clients it serves or issue a provisional license. If the department wants to permanently revoke a facility’s license, it must go through an administrative court process to get approval.

In nearly a decade before December 2020, the state issued provisional licenses to fewer than 80 facilities — less than 10% of providers— and forced only three to reduce their capacity, according to data from the department. In ASI’s case, regulators said multiple times that the company failed to document that it provided required counseling and other services. A department spokesperson said it didn’t force ASI to operate under provisional licenses before 2015 because the business submitted plans of correction the department found acceptable. Even if a facility has many violations, the department considers how cooperative it is in working to fix them, Smith said.

After a recent reorganization, the department formed a quality improvement unit with three employees, Smith said. The unit may work directly with treatment facilities but is meant to address broader prevention efforts and other addiction-related programs as well. The department is also working with a national company to provide an online platform where clients can leave reviews of facilities, starting in spring 2022.

But many employees and clients in the treatment field are skeptical of any long-term improvement. For years, they’ve seen troubled facilities make fixes, only to have the same deficiencies arise in later inspections.

The department’s own records show the cycle can persist for years.

Years of Citations, Little Action

At SOAR Corp methadone clinic in Philadelphia, inspectors from the state Department of Health first issued citations for unqualified employees in 2009, before the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs was created and took over inspections in 2012. Inspectors at the time also found one counselor who was responsible for 40 clients — above the state-mandated maximum of 35.

SOAR Corp responded by saying it had demoted an unqualified counselor, had hired another counselor to lower caseloads and would ensure future hires met the state’s requirements.

But state records show that within a year of those 2009 citations, the facility was cited three more times for similar issues: hiring an unqualified project director, overloading counselor caseloads and lacking enough medical personnel. Year after year, state inspectors found the same problems. Yet the state approved SOAR to open additional locations in Lansdowne, Levittown and Warminster in 2010, 2016 and 2018, respectively.

In interviews with KHN-Spotlight PA, a dozen former employees and nearly a dozen current and former clients across multiple SOAR sites complained about poor hiring practices and chronic understaffing as just two symptoms of their much larger concerns. They believed the company relentlessly pursued profits by getting as many clients in the door as possible, with little care for the quality of treatment.

The Philadelphia location has received three provisional licenses from the state, in 2012, 2019 and 2020, putting it among the 10 most frequent recipients of this sanction over nearly the past decade.

The former counselors felt that expectations to maximize “billable hours” led to their burnout. And they saw high turnover among staffers. The former and current clients said they sometimes went weeks without therapy or were switched from one overwhelmed counselor to another every few months.

Nicole Tihansky was a client at SOAR’s Levittown location for about a year until last fall. She said she waited more than a month before getting her first counseling session, and then was assigned about five counselors, one after the other.

“It makes you just want to get in and out of the session quickly, because you know you’ll get another counselor in a month,” she said.

Understaffing is a problem across the treatment industry, according to employees in the field. But former SOAR employees who have worked for multiple companies said SOAR stood out in their experiences for its high staff turnover and inadequate therapy.

“It’s not about therapy or addressing the needs of clients,” said Esther Kirshenbaum, a counselor who worked at the Philadelphia location from 2017 to 2019. “The attitude is to just get clients in here and make sure we get paid.”

In a statement, SOAR CEO Richard Mangano said the company “makes every effort to comply with local, State, and Federal regulations.”

KHN-Spotlight PA shared with SOAR a detailed list of more than a dozen allegations from their reporting, including violations of state regulations and putting profits over patient care. Mangano did not address them specifically.

“Soar Corp categorically denies any allegation or suggestion of wrongdoing. … Soar Corp has and will continue to work with DDAP to improve the important services it provides,” Mangano wrote, referring to the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.

In its responses to state citations in recent years, SOAR explained that clients didn’t show up to scheduled counseling sessions, and that services like drug tests and physician evaluations had been provided but simply not documented properly.

The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs has never forced SOAR to decrease its capacity, nor have state officials initiated the administrative court process to permanently revoke its license.

Former clients and employees said state licensing inspections were announced ahead of time, causing a rush by SOAR employees in the days before a site visit to complete treatment plans, counseling notes and other required paperwork.

Nicholas Cucchiaro was a SOAR counselor from 2017 to 2018. He shared with KHN-Spotlight PA what he reported to the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs and the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General after he was fired. He told the agencies that a senior administrator at SOAR instructed him to make up counseling notes for clients who had gone weeks without an assigned therapist.

“These are notes from therapy sessions that never happened,” he said, adding he knew it was wrong but feared losing his job if he didn’t comply.

About a dozen other former employees and clients described to KHN-Spotlight PA their own experiences of similar practices, ranging from thrusting months’ worth of forms upon clients in the days before an inspection to backdating their paperwork.

The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs and the attorney general’s office both agreed to look into the allegations, Cucchiaro said, but he didn’t hear of any consequences for SOAR.

The attorney general’s office told KHN-Spotlight PA that it reviewed “a small number” of complaints regarding SOAR and referred the matter to the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs.

Smith, the department head, said that as a general matter it’s difficult to prevent facilities from falsifying paperwork, because state regulations require advance notice of licensing inspections. But if the department receives a complaint, it can conduct unannounced inspections, she said, and other facilities have been cited for fraudulent paperwork.

Unannounced site visits were made in response to the complaints at SOAR, according to a department spokesperson, and citations were issued for violations that did not include fraudulent paperwork. SOAR’s Philadelphia location received provisional licenses in 2019 and 2020, but as of mid-April all the company’s sites were operating on full licenses after remedying the cited issues.

A Growing Industry

One significant limitation on the department’s oversight is its inability to impose financial penalties on treatment facilities.

In contrast, the state’s environmental protection and health departments can fine polluters and nursing homes for violations.

A 2017 report from the state auditor general’s office urged lawmakers to allow the department to charge licensing fees and assess financial penalties, pointing to other states that do so. Smith told KHN-Spotlight PA that fining facilities would help weed out repeat violators.

A bill introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature to allow the department to generate licensing fees went nowhere two years ago. A similar measure was recently referred to the state Senate Health and Human Services Committee.

“I hope that it’s considered quickly as ensuring drug treatment facilities are given appropriate oversight is of utmost importance,” the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Judy Schwank (D-Berks), said in a statement. 

Meanwhile, with millions of dollars on the line, the treatment industry is growing in Pennsylvania. Over the past four years, the state has seen a net gain of about 40 facilities, the department said, bringing the total to more than 800 treatment providers. State budget documents suggest the industry’s client capacity has grown by about 5,000 over a similar period.

The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs employed 82 people, including two dozen who conduct facility inspections, as of April. That's about half the number of dog wardens employed by the state to inspect kennels.

Smith said there is “adequate staff to perform our current licensing responsibilities.”

In December 2018 — the same year the department said it received complaints from former SOAR employees and clients — it approved the company to open a location in Warminster. Inspection surveys at the facility since have found it violated state rules by providing a certain medication without state approval and failing to provide the required hours of therapy to some patients.

A former SOAR supervisor who is still working in the treatment industry and asked not to be named doubts the state will ever take stronger action against the company.

“The state knows the demand for treatment and the demand for medication-assisted treatment,” the former supervisor said. “If you took SOAR’s license in Northeast Philadelphia and didn’t give them a provisional, you could be displacing 500 clients.”

The Need for Treatment

The urgency of the opioid crisis puts regulators in a tough position: If they shut down a facility, where will all the patients get treatment?

James McKay, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school who researches the efficacy of addiction treatments, said facilities that are committing insurance fraud or actively harming patients should be penalized. But the question becomes more complicated when judging how well a facility is serving its clients.

In Philadelphia, where there are many treatment programs, it might make sense to close one that has ineffective interventions, untrained counselors and many clients dropping out, McKay said.

“But if you’re out in the middle of the state and there’s only one treatment program in any reasonable distance, as long as they're not treating you badly, you’re at least going to get some support and meet others in recovery,” he said. “So much of this depends on what the other alternatives are.”

In western Pennsylvania, an inpatient detox and rehab facility called Clear Day Treatment of Westmoreland has received multiple provisional licenses since it opened in 2018. State inspectors have noted at least six incidents that involved drugs on the premises and have cited the facility at least twice for understaffing, writing that the lack of sufficient staff fails to ensure “efficient and safe operation.”

Despite these concerns, the facility is the only one in the county that provides detox services while allowing patients to stay on any of three medications for opioid use disorder. Many patients in the area need that service, said Colleen Hughes, executive director of the Westmoreland Drug and Alcohol Commission. (The commission is one of more than 40 agencies across the state that the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs contracts with to coordinate substance use services locally.)

The commission determined in 2017 that a lack of residential rehabs in the county was one factor delaying people’s treatment. Clear Day responded to a request for proposals to meet that need from companies that manage Medicaid-paid behavioral health for the state in that region. Clear Day has been awarded nearly $750,000 in state Medicaid funds left over from previous years to help with startup costs, according to Southwest Behavioral Health Management, one of the companies that put out the request.

Stephen Devlin, executive director of Clear Day, said in a statement that Southwest Behavioral Health Management closely monitored those funds, which helped the facility provide “much needed” addiction treatment services.

“State auditors have been diligent in ensuring that Clear Day addressed all deficiencies that have been identified during audits,” Devlin wrote, “and, further, that Clear Day provides strong and effective treatment to the individuals in our care.”

Hughes said her office has addressed the issues of understaffing and drugs on the premises with Clear Day through meetings and training sessions.

Smith, head of the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs, said: “None of us want to see providers closing. We want them to be successful. We want them to be able to deliver the services for their benefit and for ours.”

Waiting for Consequences

In Fayette County, ASI came under fire from state and federal authorities in 2015.

The FBI raided the facility that October. The following January, a federal grand jury indicted one of the owners, Rosalind Sugarmann, and an ASI doctor on multiple counts of illegally distributing a medication to treat opioid addiction.

Nearly three months later, a counselor employed by ASI overdosed while staying at the facility, an attorney for the state later said in an administrative court filing against ASI. Ultimately, a bankruptcy case forced the business to close.

In late 2016, Sugarmann pleaded guilty to illegal drug distribution and health care fraud. But that hasn’t kept her and her family out of the recovery business. Less than a year after she was released from prison, Sugarmann — who has talked publicly about her own substance use decades ago — announced she was opening a recovery home.

“I’m not going to stop working with addicts ever. That’s my calling in life,” Sugarmann said in an interview with KHN-Spotlight PA. “Somebody helped me, and I help somebody else.”

But two families said Sugarmann failed their loved ones.

There’s Adam Kalinowski, who died at ASI in 2014, and there’s 37-year-old James Pschirer, who died of an overdose in a recovery home Sugarmann’s family operates. These homes offer peer support and often have curfews and rules designed to help people stay away from drugs after they’ve been discharged from inpatient treatment.

In Kalinowski’s case, Sugarmann said ASI reported his death to everyone it was required to. There’s no indication from department records that the state cited ASI in connection with his suicide.

(The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs wouldn’t comment on Kalinowski’s case specifically but said it worked with the FBI to investigate problems at ASI.)

Neither Sugarmann nor her husband, Sean, mounted a defense against the Kalinowski family’s lawsuit in court. In a recent interview with KHN-Spotlight PA, Sean Sugarmann placed the blame for Kalinowski’s death elsewhere, saying that the facility was staffed correctly and that, given his eventual suicide, Kalinowski never should have been sent to ASI.

Kalinowski’s family also sued UPMC Mercy, the Pittsburgh hospital where he was treated before going to ASI, and affiliated entities, but resolved the claims against them through a private settlement, according to a family attorney. UPMC denied responsibility for Kalinowski’s death. In a pretrial court filing, an expert witness for UPMC directed blame at ASI, saying Kalinowski was well enough to be safely discharged to a residential treatment facility. That he wasn’t evaluated by a doctor, nurse or professional counselor when he arrived at ASI was a concern, the expert wrote, and “perhaps this tragedy could have been avoided” if ASI had provided a higher level of care.

More recently, Rosalind Sugarmann has faced criticism for her involvement with recovery homes.

In February 2019, while still under federal supervision, Sugarmann announced on a blog that she was “back in commission!!” and would open a men’s recovery home called The Second Act outside Pittsburgh.

A 2017 law gave the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs new power to regulate recovery homes in addition to treatment facilities. The state missed a June 2020 deadline to implement the voluntary licensing process but plans to roll out the program this year.

James Pschirer turned to The Second Act for a place to stay in the fall of 2019. His mom, Andrea Zack, helped him with rent, writing out a $250 check to Sugarmann, according to a photocopy of the check the family provided.

Then, on Nov. 1, 2019, James died inside the home from a fentanyl and cocaine overdose, a photo of the death certificate provided by his family showed.

Andrea and James’ sister, Amanda Pschirer, went to The Second Act to collect his clothes and personal items. Andrea kept the coins in his pockets, knowing he had touched them.

It wasn’t until after James’ death that his family found out about Sugarmann’s criminal conviction, they said.

Amanda knows her brother chose to use drugs, but she thinks he could still be alive if he had stayed in another home with better oversight. And she’s angry that nothing stopped Sugarmann from being involved with one.

“I am worried that someone else will die under her care,” Amanda said.

In interviews, Rosalind and Sean Sugarmann downplayed their involvement with The Second Act. “My kids are involved in the recovery homes,” Rosalind told KHN-Spotlight PA. “I’m not an owner there.” The business is registered in their children’s names, and Rosalind said she’s lived in Los Angeles since early 2020.

Still, Sean Sugarmann acknowledged helping his adult children manage the business, and said in March he was living in the men’s home at that time. One of his daughters referred questions about The Second Act to Sean. Rosalind promotes the business on social media accounts, encouraging people to move in. She told KHN-Spotlight PA, “I’m not gonna deny that I’m a consultant.”

Sean said an overdose death “could have happened anywhere, and I think it happens everywhere.”

Last fall, Amanda Pschirer reached out to state officials with concerns about recovery homes. But she said she didn’t receive a response for four months. The department said a computer glitch with an online form, discovered in January, caused the delay in responding to her submission and about 260 others.

Ian Kalinowski, whose brother died at ASI seven years ago, has followed Rosalind’s posts online and saw that she’s still involved in the recovery business. He’s outraged.

He and his family are still grieving Adam’s loss. Ian wishes his young children had gotten to meet their uncle. He doubts the ASI defendants will ever provide the $1.6 million-plus that the judge said they owe.

Ian recognizes that ASI’s leaders faced some consequences for problems at the business.

“But there have still been no repercussions for what happened to my brother,” he said of the Sugarmanns.

He’s not optimistic there ever will be.

Methodology: How We Investigated Pennsylvania’s Addiction Treatment Industry and Found Weak Oversight of Providers

Pennsylvania is at the epicenter of the nation’s opioid crisis, ranking among the top five states for overdose death rates and top 10 for number of adults suffering from substance use disorder in recent years, according to national data. And the addiction treatment industry there is growing.

Federal grants, state initiatives and Medicaid pump millions of taxpayer dollars into the field annually. The state has seen a net gain of about 40 licensed treatment facilities over the past four years, bringing the total to more than 800.

But an investigation by Spotlight PA and KHN found the Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs — which licenses these facilities — provides weak oversight and lacks the resources and regulatory power to police them, allowing providers to continue operating despite repeated violations and harm to clients. The department has no standard criteria to determine when it should force facilities to serve fewer patients and, in nearly a decade, has revoked just one provider’s license.

Spotlight PA, an independent, collaborative newsroom reporting on the Pennsylvania state government and statewide issues, began investigating the oversight of addiction treatment facilities shortly after its launch in late 2019. The newsroom later partnered with KHN, a national organization that produces in-depth journalism about health issues.

Our team began by scraping thousands of facility inspection reports from the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs’ website. We then analyzed them to find the most egregious citations: ones that mentioned a failure to report patient deaths and assault, that noted medication errors or that revealed unsafe staffing ratios.

We also requested from the department historical data about which facilities had received provisional licenses — designations indicating that facilities have failed to meet several state requirements and will be inspected more frequently until they resolve those concerns. The department didn’t have an automated system to gather this data but agreed to compile it manually. It provided the information with the following caveat: “Due to incorrect data entered into the licensing database, the attached report may not include all provisional licenses since 2012. It is as close to accurate as we can determine base[d] on the available data.”

Additionally, the team filed an open records request for reports of unusual incidents. These are certain serious events that the department requires facilities to report, including client deaths and incidents of physical and sexual abuse, among others. The department provided reports of only those incidents that it decided did not warrant investigation. It said it could not provide the total number of such events because it doesn’t have facility-specific aggregate data prior to September 2019, when it launched a new electronic reporting system. Even available data from that new system provides an incomplete picture, as less than a quarter of treatment facilities had enrolled in the voluntary system as of March 2021.

Reporters also reviewed the department’s administrative court history to see cases in which the state had initiated legal action against a facility.

To further inform our reporting, Spotlight PA launched a public callout for readers to send in tips and concerns about facilities.

Using a combination of these sources — facility inspection surveys, provisional license history, administrative court cases, limited reports of unusual incidents and tips from the public — we compiled a list of 34 facilities that appeared to have the most troubling track records.

From the short list of facilities, Spotlight PA and KHN reporters then reached out to current and former employees and clients at various locations. The interviews helped establish whether people’s firsthand experiences matched the concerns that arose in the data.

Our reporters also reviewed the licensing applications that these facilities had submitted to the state, as well as lawsuits filed by clients and employees against the facilities. We interviewed former employees of the Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs to understand the oversight system and challenges within the agency.

The final story was based on interviews with more than 80 people and a review of thousands of pages of state government and court records.

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Addiction Treatment Providers in Pa. Face Little State Scrutiny Despite Harm to Clients published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.9 (after 1900)

1914 – World War I: The creation of the Canadian Automobile Machine Gun Brigade, the first fully mechanized unit in the British Army. 1922 – The Greco-Turkish War effectively ends with Turkish victory over the Greeks in Smyrna. 1923 – Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, founds the Republican People's Party. 1924 – Hanapepe massacre occurs on Kauai, Hawaii. 1936 – The crews of Portuguese Navy frigate NRP Afonso de Albuquerque and destroyer Dão mutinied against the Salazar dictatorship's support of General Franco's coup and declared their solidarity with the Spanish Republic. 1939 – World War II: The Battle of Hel begins, the longest-defended pocket of Polish Army resistance during the German invasion of Poland. 1939 – Burmese national hero U Ottama dies in prison after a hunger strike to protest Britain's colonial government. 1940 – George Stibitz pioneers the first remote operation of a computer. 1940 – Treznea Massacre in Transylvania. 1942 – World War II: A Japanese floatplane drops incendiary bombs on Oregon. 1943 – World War II: The Allies land at Salerno and Taranto, Italy. 1944 – World War II: The Fatherland Front takes power in Bulgaria through a military coup in the capital and armed rebellion in the country. A new pro-Soviet government is established. 1945 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Empire of Japan formally surrenders to China. 1947 – First case of a computer bug being found: A moth lodges in a relay of a Harvard Mark II computer at Harvard University. 1948 – Kim Il Sung declares the establishment of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). 1954 – The 6.7 Mw  Chlef earthquake shakes northern Algeria with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). At least 1,243 people were killed and 5,000 were injured. 1956 – Elvis Presley appears on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time. 1965 – The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development is established. 1965 – Hurricane Betsy makes its second landfall near New Orleans, leaving 76 dead and $1.42 billion ($10–12 billion in 2005 dollars) in damages, becoming the first hurricane to cause over $1 billion in unadjusted damage. 1966 – The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act is signed into law by U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. 1969 – In Canada, the Official Languages Act comes into force, making French equal to English throughout the Federal government. 1969 – Allegheny Airlines Flight 863 collides in mid-air with a Piper PA-28 Cherokee over Moral Township, Shelby County, Indiana, killing all 83 people on board both aircraft. 1970 – A British airliner is hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and flown to Dawson's Field in Jordan. 1971 – The four-day Attica Prison riot begins, eventually resulting in 39 dead, most killed by state troopers retaking the prison. 1972 – In Kentucky's Mammoth Cave National Park, a Cave Research Foundation exploration and mapping team discovers a link between the Mammoth and Flint Ridge cave systems, making it the longest known cave passageway in the world. 1988 – Vietnam Airlines Flight 831 crashes in Khu Khot, Thailand, while on approach to Don Muang International Airport, killing 76. 1990 – Batticaloa massacre: Massacre of 184 Tamil civilians by the Sri Lankan Army in Batticaloa District. 1991 – Tajikistan declares independence from the Soviet Union. 1993 – Israeli–Palestinian peace process: The Palestine Liberation Organization officially recognizes Israel as a legitimate state. 1994 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-64. 2009 – The Dubai Metro, the first urban train network in the Arabian Peninsula, is ceremonially inaugurated. 2012 – The Indian space agency puts into orbit its heaviest foreign satellite yet, in a streak of 21 consecutive successful PSLV launches. 2015 – Elizabeth II becomes the longest reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. 2016 – The government of North Korea conducts its fifth and reportedly biggest nuclear test. World leaders condemn the act, with South Korea calling it "maniacal recklessness".

[1863-project]

Which OC begins their jokes but never says the punchlines?

[1863-project]

I love messing around with Engie's facial expressions because sometimes I end up with absolute gems like this:

If you think you can outdrive her she'll just give you this look, wordlessly open the throttle on her locomotive, and be gone before the smoke clears