Codfish Press

Whale-rescue program in trouble

Whale-rescue program in trouble

by Greg O'Brien

This article originally appeared in the Providence Journal on Sunday, August 31, 2008

It is 5:30 P.M. on a stunning late August day here, and the sun is low on the horizon, presaging the end of summer with an inky blue sky and a golden reflection on the water. Not far from MacMillan Wharf, just down from Town Hall in a stately clapboard home on Bradford Street once owned by renowned industrialist and art collector Walter B. Chrysler Jr., Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies Executive Director Rich Delaney sits at his desk, pondering the future of this world-class scientific research and public-education center and its expanding vision. Its vision, he notes, has morphed beyond the center’s foundational study and preservation of endangered right whales and humpback whales. But today, he’s all about whales.

“We’re a nexus between good science and proper management,” declares Delaney, no stranger to either, given his previous tenures as former Massachusetts assistant secretary of environmental affairs and former director of the Massachusetts Coastal Zone program. “It’s science with a deadline!”

The deadline that most concerns Delaney, named last year as head of the coastal-studies center founded 32 years ago, is the pending depletion in December of $450,000 in federal grants for the center’s distinguished Whale Disentanglement Program. This program covers a wide swath of ocean, from the Bay of Fundy, in Canada, to Key West, Fla.

The deadline that most concerns Delaney, named last year as head of the coastal-studies center founded 32 years ago, is the pending depletion in December of $450,000 in federal grants for the center’s distinguished Whale Disentanglement Program. This program covers a wide swath of ocean, from the Bay of Fundy, in Canada, to Key West, Fla.

In partnership with the National Marine Fisheries Service, under the domain of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the center oversees a network of more than 800 scientists and volunteers called the Atlantic Large Whale Disentanglement Network (ALWDN), which responds to whales caught in debris and fishing gear — the mammals’ prime cause of death, along with ship strikes. Since 1984, when the highly publicized effort began, the not-for-profit Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies has freed more than 97 large whales from life-threatening entanglements, as it has such other marine animals as dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea turtles. It is the only organization federally authorized to disentangle large, free-swimming whales.

“Without an infusion of additional monies now being sought, the program is in jeopardy,” says Delaney, noting that most, if not all, of the surviving 350 North Atlantic right whales, up to 56 feet long, will have migrated to Cape Cod Bay by January, and will remain in local waters until May, when migrating humpback whales, up to 50 feet long, arrive and stay through October.

“On their migration up from Florida in the fall, the right whales will run thorough an obstacle course of entangling fishing nets and debris, ” says Delaney, noting that coastal-center teams disentangled eight right whales last year, most from January through April. The right whale was so named in 18th Century days because it was the “right whale” to catch — “slow, right for the picking, plenty of whale oil and they floated after being harpooned,” says Delaney, noting that the species is now closely monitored under the coastal center’s Right Whale Habitat Studies program.

“The principle disentanglement technique,” adds Delaney in a reference to the center’s Web site ( www.coastalstudies.org), “is a modification of an old whaling practice called kegging, involves attaching large floats, or kegs, to the gear entangling the animal. The floats add buoyancy and drag to the animal, making it difficult for it to dive, eventually tiring it out. The desired result is a relatively immobile animal that is safer to cut free.” The kegging system, he adds, is designed for swift release should the rescue attempt fail; in those cases, a transponder or small buoy is attached to track the whale for a more appropriate time to disentangle.

In early July, for example, a Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies team responded to a nine-year-old female humpback whale that was reported severely entangled with one-inch line. After seven hours of fighting strong southwest winds, the rescue team succeeded in removing much of the life-threatening entangled rope, but the whale’s long-term health will not be known for months. The young humpback, known to researchers as Estuary, had been identified earlier as part of the center’s Aerial Photo Identification Program and catalogued in a research consortium with Boston’s New England Aquarium.

Such rescue efforts — often splashed on front pages of newspapers across America or on the evening news — are in as much peril as the whales themselves, if additional funding is not obtained by December.

The pending funding cut in the whale-disentanglement program, representing close to 25 percent of PCCS’s annual operating budget and half of its federal grants, would deeply damage the program. Additional private funding and/or an emergency federal supplement are being urgently sought.

“Hopefully with our congressional delegation’s help, money will be allocated in the ’09 budget, but with a new administration and a new Congress, next year’s budget won’t take affect for least three months, and perhaps six to nine months,” says Delaney, noting that Congressman William Delahunt, of the 10th Congressional District, and Massachusetts Senators John Kerry and Edward Kennedy were working diligently to restore the funding. “At the moment, no money is available for this program in January, and we don’t want to be in the position of having to dismantle it, even temporarily.”

Concedes Delahunt’s chief of staff, Mark Forest, “We’re facing a crisis for the disentanglement program. Congress has significantly cut funding while demands have grown.” Forest, however, is hopeful that the funds ultimately will be restored. Delahunt, he said, has won initial approval for a $500,000 disentanglement-fund earmark in the House Appropriations Committee’s draft of the fiscal ’09 budget. But earmarks — appropriation requests outside the line-item federal budget — can be politically contentious, particularly in an election year when the divisive topic of such earmarks is sure to be debated again. Meanwhile, Delahunt is also speaking with top NOAA officials about “reprogramming” funds for whale-disentanglement efforts while the federal budget is being vetted, Forest said

Acknowledging the uncertainty of politics and a new presidency, Forest noted, “The coastal center’s disentanglement program is highly regarded, and we are confident that in the long term we will resolve the problem. Unfortunately, the budget will not get resolved until some time next year. Meanwhile, we need to throw out a lifeline to keep this program alive.” Let’s hope they get it.

Greg O’Brien is editor and president of Stony Brook Group, a publishing and political/communications strategy company based in Brewster, and the author/editor of several books about Cape Cod and the Islands.  Read Greg's blog, Codfish Press here on CapeCodToday.com.

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George K. Regan: A Man Of The City With A Heart For The Cape

Editor's Note: George K, Regan, who broke his teeth on Boston politics as chief aide and spokesman for former Mayor Kevin White, is notably a man about town with a heart for the Cape. Head of one of New England’s most prestigious public relations and crisis communications firms with a presence on Cape Cod, Regan spends much of his off time in the region and its environs. He was profiled in a recent issue of the Boston Irish Reporter, showing a kinder, gentler side to the hard-driving, street-smart field commander that he is.)

PR Pro looks like an Irish Boy Scout

By Greg O'Brien, Boston Irish Reporter

George K. Regan, who looks more like a Boy Scout leader than he does one of the most successful, hard-charging public relations and crisis communications connoisseurs in the country, is the essence of Irish in so many ways: bright, passionate, reflective, an artist in his trade with superior political and media instincts. But looks are deceiving.

While some critics even suggest that a caricature of Regan might bear resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman, the fictional mascot of Mad Magazine, Regan’s “what me worry” persona is more imagined than real. “He’s a real character,” Bob Sheridan, SBLI president, CEO, a friend and client of Regan’s, and a “no-nonsense” guy himself, writes in an e-mail. “People either love him or hate him.

”I’ve been stabbed in the back so many times, I’m like a porcupine.”   -Regan

I fall in the former category.”

No doubt, Regan’s public relations maneuverings over the years have gotten people’s dander up and have been the subject of columns and industry babble, his triumphs at the Boston-based Regan Communications Group and his notable contributions to charitable organizations are celebrated.

"I’ve been stabbed in the back so many times, I’m like a porcupine,” Regan concedes in a wide-ranging interview with the Boston Irish Reporter. Does it bother you? “Of course it does,” he says, “but it’s part of the business and part of life. You have friends, you got enemies and you have people waiting for you to fall or fail. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether people like you or not, so long as they respect what you do. That needs to be the focus of our efforts.” Regan is sustained by the sage advice of his late father, George, who labored in the Charlestown shipyards. “You grow up fast,” his dad once told him. “But you come down faster.” It was counsel reinforced later in life by then Boston Mayor Kevin White, a surrogate father type to Regan, who instilled an unrelenting work ethic, problem solving and zeal for politics during his tenure as White’s Director of Communications and most trusted advisor.

The namesake or his company—New England’s largest privately-held public relations firm and the ninth largest privately-owned public relations firm in the country with branch offices and associations in Florida, New York Connecticut and Cape Cod and a killer client base the likes of the New England Patriots, Boston Celtics, Dunkin’ Donuts, Bank of America, New Balance, Boston Herald, Boston Magazine, Mohegan Sun and Suffolk University, to note a few of the more than 200 clients—isn’t coming down any time soon, and you can be certain of that. So why is Regan subdued on this bright day in early December with all the promise of Christmas, surrounded in his office at 106 Union Wharf, overlooking a world class city that his mentor built, with testimonies of his accomplishments—photos with the business and political elite, citations, news clips and other memorabilia? “It’s the eighth anniversary of my father’s death,” he explains. “I was up thinking about it all last night. He was my best friend, and a man of great virtue.” Particularly reflective this morning, Regan adds in candor and humility, “My father was everything that I am not: patient, sensitive and compassionate. He believed in me, and I have never forgotten that. He taught me that there are things more deeper and critical in life” than the day-to-day striving for secular achievement.

Clearly, it wasn’t a natural segue from Regan’s working class roots in the Wollaston section to Quincy to the privileged board rooms of Boston and New York. Nonetheless, Regan’s father, born in South Boston, and his mother, Ann (Kowalski), who was raised in the South End and still lives in Quincy, made sure that their son and his two sisters (Marianne and Patti, now deceased, who helped jumpstart Regan Communications in 1984) were primed for the real world. A third-generation Irish American, Regan’s paternal grandfather was born in Cork, then immigrated to Boston—“a man,” Regan says, “who worked hard with his hands’ and fortified through his father fundamental Irish Catholic principles.

“The bond between my dad and me was tight,” he notes, offering that he frequently took his father as his guest to key sporting events and through connections with Suffolk University President David Sargent had the university’s gymnasium named after his dad. “(Patriots owner) Bob Kraft and (Boston Herald) owner Pat Purcell spoke at the dedication,” says Regan, acknowledging that it’s nice to have friends in high places when it comes to honoring family.

Regan’s feminine side is equally dominant. “I’m more like my Mom,” he says of his mother, who worked part-time in the airline business, recruiting stewardesses. “She was the disciplinarian of the family and much more aggressive.” A forceful young Regan was a good kid, as neighborhood kids go, no lingering embarrassments. He attended Wollaston Elementary School and North Quincy High School where he played soccer and baseball. “I wasn’t a bad catcher,” he proclaims. Asked if could hit, the spinmeister adds, “I want to say ‘yes,’ but I think my coach would say ‘no.’” He insists, though, that he could hit a good fastball—an assertion borne out by a rough-and-tumble career in the media, politics and business. After high school, Regan attended Sufffolk, majoring in journalism, and upon graduation earned a masters degree in communication from Boston University.

During and just after his university years, he had a brief career at The Boston Globe, working for a day as a runner for the ad department, then as a copy boy in the editorial department and as a correspondent who earned his first front page byline at the age of 18. His ad work at the Globe was unremarkable by his own account. “I was dropped off at the Downtown Crossing to pick up ads at the various agencies and banks. In those days, there were no faxes or cellphones. I didn’t realize I had to get the ads back to the paper for deadline. When I returned at 8 pm, I was hastily informed there was a search party out for me, and was diplomatically told that I probably belonged over in the editorial department. They showed me the door.”

Following a stint in the newsroom, Regan tried his hand briefly again in the ad world, then responded in his early 20s through a well-connected friend to an opening for a deputy press secretary position in the Kevin White Administration. “My interview with Kevin was the worst of my life,” recalls Regan. “It was awful. I was paranoid. I was awestruck. Here was this guy of national stature, the mayor of a prominent big city, and I whiffed at the interview.” White, he says, didn’t suffer fools gladly. “You had to be passionate, hard working and smart. He couldn’t stand stupidity.”

But Regan is no fool, as White could see, and soon he was traveling the country as an advance man for the mayor’s foot-in-the-water political outreach, then became the city’s spokesman on the bruising issue of busing. In an ironic case of mistaken identity, Regan says his father took heat from his South Boston buddies, who assumed “that the George Regan quoted in the paper defending busing was him.” Regan’s White years have been well documented in the press as his admiration for the mayor, now struggling with Alzheimer’s. “The night before Kevin left office, I had dinner with him and his wife Katherine at Pier 4,” says Regan. “I was honored to be with him at his moment, after an inspiring 16-year-term, the longest consecutive term of any major in America.” He recalls that White was “very reflective” that night. “He felt there were things he could have done better, and gave himself a B plus for performance. He’s like the Bill Belichick of politics. Whatever you accomplish, it’s never good enough.”

Regan remains in awe of White and recently had dinner with him and Katherine at Toscano on Charles Street. just before Thanksgiving. “I still learn from him,” he says in the deepest respect. “It has helped me tremendously in my business.” In starting up a new venture, the exit from city hall and the limelight of a celebrity mayor can be jarring, as Regan found the day after White left office. No one had prepared him for the abrupt landing. “We had an inauspicious start,” he says with understatement. “I hadn’t realized that ATT and New England Telephone had actually broken up at this point. So when I went to my new office at 75 Fulton Street, all I had were wires hanging out of the walls. We didn’t have phones for about a week.”

The staff at first included Regan’s sister Patti, his redeeming Aunt Mary (now deceased) who emptied her personal bank account to make payroll when checks were late or revenues were lax, Earl “The Pearl” Marchand, a former Boston Herald American reporter who wrote like a dream and had worked in Regan’s city hall press office, Dennis Sullivan, another city hall recruit, and Regan’s secretary. “The early days were very discouraging,” says Regan, noting that many of his old Boston connections were missing in action. “I thought I had all these friends.” But taking a cue from advisors and falling back on the Tip O’Neill axiom that “all politics are local,” and recognizing that this then applies to marketing and media strategies, Regan was off and running with a mission: “The right message delivered in the right way,” as his firm’s website declares.

A baseball player at heart, like his father, and confident in the Field of Dreams claim that “if you build it, they will come, “ Regan and his new firm were soon stretching singles into triples and building an extraordinary list of clients looking for services that range from messaging, to marketing and collateral pieces, to crisis communications, to cutting-edge websites and new or rich media. “We call ourselves a full service, non-traditional public relations company. We have some clients who couldn’t care less if their name was ever in a newspaper. They are more interested in what is the best message for their product.” Regan is quick to credit a young, talented staff for the firm’s growth—a recruiting technique he learned from White. “I’m not a good manager,” he admits. “I’m a visionary.”

Regan’s admirers would add that he has an excellent skill set for problem solving and clearly understands the bridge between the media and politics. And that’s gold in the PR business. Days later in a follow-up interview, Regan, who was engaged twice but still is single, is asked if he has any regrets about life. “There are a lot of things I wish I did differently. I’m trying to get more balance in my life. I think that I—and we as a company—sometimes have been a little too harsh, that we might have overdone it, probably been a little to tough.”

Is this a kinder, gentler George? Yes, if his on-going contributions to charities are any indication, including The Arc of Greater Boston, The American Liver Foundation, Carroll Center for the Blind, Beth Israel Hospital and the Franciscan Children’s Hospital. His father, indeed, would be pleased. “We all have thrown sharp elbows in life, and many of us are trying to make up for past sins,” he says as he darts from meeting to meeting. “I’m a very lucky man. I’ve been blessed in life, and I don’t ever want to take that for granted.”

Greg O’Brien is editor and president of Stony Brook Group, a publishing and political/strategy company based in Brewster. The author/editor of several books, he is a regular contributor to regional newspapers and magazines, a political columnist for Boston Metro newspaper and a contributor to New York Metro and Philadelphia Metro. He covered Mayor Kevin White and George Regan during his years writing for the Boston Herald American and Boston Magazine.

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Last Words From A Son: Virginia B. O’Brien Defined Motherhood

Virginia Brown O’Brien defined motherhood, and in an age today when worldly accomplishment is all too often the mark of achievement, her selfless devotion to her late husband, Francis Xavier O’Brien, and her ten children are testimony to a higher standard.

She died last Wednesday at Epoch Senior Health Care of Brewster. She was 84, and had lived in retirement in North Eastham for many years after raising her family in Westchester County, New York.

A woman of considerable artistic talent and achievement as a schoolteacher, she forever put her family first—whether it was a sacrifice of her time, her resources or her considerable emotion. She was dutiful beyond all measure, and in an era when we honor the Greatest Generation, as we should, Virginia O’Brien stands out among the Greatest Generation of women of her day—mothers who helped shape and define their spouses and children in diverse ways, both in what they were in life and are today in our memories.

Surviving O’Brien family members—her children and a score of grandchildren—will live in her shadow, a wide swath of grace that comforts extended family households from Cape Cod to California. 

Born in New York City in 1923, Mrs. O’Brien was the daughter of the late George and Loretta Brown, and was the sister of the late Donald Brown and Gertrude Brown. She grew up in Manhattan on the West Side where she played hopscotch on the sidewalks and attended a private French convent school. She was graduated from the College of New Rochelle in New Rochelle, N.Y., and worked briefly at Bankers Trust in New York City.

Raising her family in Rye, N.Y., she was an active parishioner at Resurrection Church in Rye and was active in church and civic activities. For almost 20 years, she taught second grade at the parochial Most Holy Trinity in Mamaroneck. N.Y. and St. Gregory the Great in nearby Harrison.

In retirement on Cape Cod, she was a member of St. Joan of Arc parish in Orleans and volunteered at the church’s thrift shop.

Mrs. O’Brien is survived by eight children: Maureen Maresca of Mt. Kisco, NY; Greg O’Brien of Brewster, MA; Lauren Anderson of Bradford, MA; Justine O’Brien-Holmes of Loveland, OH; Paul O’Brien of Pleasanton, CA; Bernadette Thompson of South Burlington, VT; Tim O’Brien of Guilford, CT; and Andy O’Brien of Rye, NY; and 21 grandchildren. Two of her sons, Gerard and Martin O’Brien predeceased her at an early age.

A wake will be held 6 pm to 8 pm Wednesday at the Nickerson Funeral Home in Orleans. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated 11 am Thursday at Our Lady of the Cape on Stony Brook Road in Brewster. 

In lieu of flowers, pleases send donations in memory of Mrs. O’Brien to the VNA at www.vnacapecod.org and click donations, or mail a contribution to Lower Cape Outreach Council, P.O. 665, Orleans, Ma. 02653.

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Wither Males: Are We Headed The Way Of The Dinosaur?

By Greg O’Brien, Codfish Press

In some circles, the question of men universally asked is: If a man speaks in a forest with no woman to hear him, is he still wrong? Today, the query has a new twist: If a man is not needed to reproduce, will he be missed in the bedroom?

Thanks to the British, of all people, the answer may be a resounding: no!

British scientists at the University of Newcastle announced recently the creation of sperm cells from a female human embryo. “British scientists who had already coaxed male bone marrow cells to develop into primitive sperm cells have now repeated the feat with female embryonic stem cells,” science editor Roger Highfield writes in the Telegraph. “It raises the possibility of lesbian couples one day having children who share both their genes as sperm created from the bone marrow of one woman could be used to fertilize an egg from her partner.”

Consider also the potential opportunities for all women who at times have no use for us men, and we’re suddenly flirting with “Homo erectus extinctus,” as The Sunday Times ponders. “Senior scientists believe that woman may evolve as humanity’s sole representatives—and social and political trends are lending weight to their theories,” the paper suggests.

“A world without men,” contemplates About.com. “The story is a familiar one…No men are needed, even in the creation of children. While once relegated to the world of fiction, the possibility of an all-female society may soon become a reality.”

Yikes, say it ain’t so! It’s enough to keep males up at night watching reruns of “Father Knows Best.”

The biology books tell us that men and women differ over sex chromosomes—men and women both have an “X” chromosome, but only males have the “Y,” carrying the required codes, scientists have long suspected, to create sperm. Perhaps us men have been spending too much time wandering aimless about life without asking for directions that we’ve taken our collective eye off the “Y.”  Are we now on the verge of irrelevancy?

“The Y chromosome has scant function other than the production of sperm, and in many men it is not performing well,” The Times reports. “Male infertility is already surprisingly common.”

Back to the gym, boys! Parthenogenesis (virgin birth), an asexual form of reproduction in certain plant and animal life, is also on the rise, and occurs now in water fleas, aphids, some bees and scorpion species, parasite wasps, certain fish, birds and sharks. Expect the list to grow.

Moral and family issues aside, before men toss in the towel on self-worth, consider the following: Who’s going to take out the trash, who’s going to rent the shoot-‘em-up movies, who’s going to buy the beer, who's going to overreact? and who’s going to be wrong all the time?

Relax. There is still a place for us! For now.

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Peace on Earth!

By Greg O’Brien, Codfish Press

Years ago, Simon & Garfunkel brought a smug nation up short with the lyrics to their classic song, “7 O’clock News,” a soul-searching version of  “Silent Night” punctuated with the grim news of the day at a time of year when everyone was preaching: Peace on Earth! As Simon & Garfunkel sang of holy nights where all is calm, a news anchor read the evening edition: “President Johnson originally proposed an outright ban covering discrimination by everyone for every type of housing, but it had no chance from the start, and everyone in Congress knew it … In Chicago, Richard Speck, accused murderer of nine student nurses, was brought before a grand jury today for indictment. The nurses were found stabbed and strangled in their apartments.”

Every year during this season, we blithely proclaim “Peace on Earth,” but is it within reach? Is anyone really listening? Does anyone know what it means or care? News reports today are filled with coverage of wars and rumors of wars, atrocities, sickening acts of terrorism, discrimination, murders, rapes and other violence. And more is on the way in ’08.

Webster’s Random House Dictionary defines peace as, “freedom from war, the absence of hostilities, a state of harmony between people or groups, freedom from dissension.”

We all sign up for that, right? Sounds good, but the devil — in the way of evil, apathy or self-righteousness — is in the details. “We have a big problem,” Jack Trout writes in Forbes. “The Christmas season’s ‘Peace on Earth, good will to man’ is not playing well this year. Ironically, the problem that this religious holiday is up against is, of all things, religion.” Quoting Philip Jenkins, one of this nation’s top religious scholars, writing in The Economist, Trout notes Jenkins asserts that when historians pick this century apart, they will likely cite religion worldwide as “the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs, guiding attitudes to political liberty, concepts of nationhood, conflicts and wars.”

Oh, the things we have done over the millenniums in the name of God!

Writing in the Naples Sun Times on the subject of tranquility, Michael Hickey correctly notes that peace “carries a positive connotation because few of us would admit to opposing wars, but people differ radically about what peace entails and how best to achieve it.”

The late Pope John XXIII, no stranger to the subject of peace, wrote in his celebrated 1963 encyclical “Pacem in Terris” that “Peace on Earth — which man throughout the ages has so longed for and sought after — can never be established, never guaranteed, except by the diligent observance of the divinely established order.”

So, next time someone casually espouses in a Christmas card or holiday greeting, “Peace on Earth,” you might tell them that it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. For now, it is the hope of peace that sustains us. And hope, as declared in Romans 5:5, never disappoints!

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Wireless Politesse: Give People A Chance To Miss You!

By Greg O’Brien, Codfish Press

My younger brother, a venture capitalist type, was talking at me the other day, a serious conversation about a doctor’s prognosis for my 83-year-old mother, entering the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and my 86-year-old father, who has multiple illnesses with a life expectancy measured in months. Having completed his thoughts on the subject, he asked for my assessment, then seconds later whipped out his new Blackberry to return a corporate e-mail and text message a client.

“WHAAAT?” he asked in denial, “I’m listening to ya!”

Eavesdropping, perhaps, but not listening.

My techno-driven, attention deficit brother is not alone in his wireless transgressions. Millions of individuals routinely interrupt conversations, driving, dinners, meetings, presentations and the like, with wireless etiquette that is, as one observer of the scene calls it, “hugely disgraceful.”

Coast-to-coast, it’s “frustrating and inappropriate,” the president of a Seattle area bank carps in a business journal report.

Many call it an addiction, or a misguided belief that users are more essential than family, friends or colleagues. Expect these collective indiscretions to get worse, much worse, as more state-of-the-art wireless devices come on line. Industry analysts predict that 1 billion mobile phones and related devices will be sold worldwide in the year 2009.

“The decibel (and distraction) level is rising,” writes Joanna Krotz on the subject. “So are the transgression and intrusions — and car accidents.” Notes Robbie Blinkoff, principal anthropologist at Context-Based Research Group in Krotz’s piece, “People are defining new rules and new behavior … Technological change leads to social change.” 

And you can see it coming: “That telltale defocusing of the eyes, that sentence left hanging, that thought sent fleeing,” as Road and Travel magazine laments.

So, how do we deal with such high-tech social change? It is not enough to put your device on vibrate.

Dan Briody, writing in InfoWorld years ago, affirmed “Ten Commandments” of wireless etiquette that still apply today. Among them: “Thou shalt not subject defenseless others to cellphone conversations; thou shalt not set thy ringer to play La Cucaracha every time thy phone rings; thou shalt not wear two wireless devices on thy belt; thou shalt not wear thy earpiece when thou art not on the phone; and thou shalt not try to impress” with thy wireless devices.

Or more simply put, as comedian Jerry Seinfield once said, “Give people a chance to miss you!”           

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Fact Or Fiction: Cape Cod And Plymouth—Where It All Began?

By Greg O’Brien, Codfish Press

Feast on this: with apologies to Cape Cod and Plymouth, maybe George Bush knows more about history than we think. In a celebrated Thanksgiving visit with all the public-relations stuffing, Bush stopped off days ago at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City, Va., where English settlers held a Thanksgiving service almost two years before the universally accepted first Thanksgiving feast in Plymouth. Earlier in the day day, he made a brief appearance at an area food bank, where he loaded a few crates of oranges, potatoes and macaroni and cheese onto a rolling car, then good naturedly pressed a pastor standing next to him in the assembly line, “C’mon, man, let’s go!”

No stranger to White House encounters, Berkeley Plantation has hosted visits from the nation’s first 10 presidents. John F. Kennedy even acknowledged the site in a 1963 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation that read, in part: “Over three centuries ago, our forefathers in Virginia and in Massachusetts, far from home in a lonely wilderness, set aside a time of Thanksgiving.” On Dec. 4, 1619, to correct the record, Capt. John Woodlief and 38 crewmen observed a “day of Thanksgiving” upon their arrival in Virginia.

A Berkeley Plantation Charter proclaims in old English: “Wee ordaine that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantacon in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as the day of thanksgiving to Almighty God.”

So, what was all this Thanksgiving hype about Plymouth, Plymouth Plantation and parts of the Cape; is it historical fact, or fiction? Or is this recent Plymouth snub a Republican conspiracy designed to take aim at what the GOP perceives as two of the Democrats’ biggest turkeys—Ted Kennedy and John Kerry?

Hey, intrepid Christopher Columbus still gets a holiday!

By any measure, Bush’s excursion to Berkeley Plantation has taken a big slice out of Plymouth’s claim to fame, and has chamber-of-commerce types wringing their hands about an identity crisis on a day reserved for national reflection. However, upon further review, the institutional memory of the first Thanksgiving celebration in Plymouth is loaded with myths, detailed on History.Com. Here’s a sampling direct from the website:

Myth: “The first Thanksgiving was in 1621 and the pilgrims celebrated it every year thereafter.

Fact: “The first feast wasn't repeated, so it wasn't the beginning of a tradition. In fact, the colonists didn't even call the day Thanksgiving. To them, a thanksgiving was a religious holiday in which they would go to church and thank God for a specific event, such as the winning of a battle. On such a religious day, the types of recreational activities that the pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians participated in during the 1621 harvest feast--dancing, singing secular songs, playing games--wouldn't have been allowed. The feast was a secular celebration, so it never would have been considered a thanksgiving in the pilgrims minds.

Myth: “The original Thanksgiving feast took place on the fourth Thursday of November.

Fact: “The original feast in 1621 occurred sometime between September 21 and November 11. Unlike our modern holiday, it was three days long. The event was based on English harvest festivals, which traditionally occurred around the 29th of September. After that first harvest was completed by the Plymouth colonists, Gov. William Bradford proclaimed a day of thanksgiving and prayer, shared by all the colonists and neighboring Indians. In 1623 a day of fasting and prayer during a period of drought was changed to one of thanksgiving because the rain came during the prayers. Gradually the custom prevailed in New England of annually celebrating thanksgiving after the harvest.

“During the American Revolution a yearly day of national thanksgiving was suggested by the Continental Congress. In 1817 New York State adopted Thanksgiving Day as an annual custom, and by the middle of the 19th century many other states had done the same. In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln appointed a day of thanksgiving as the last Thursday in November, which he may have correlated it with the November 21, 1621, anchoring of the Mayflower at Cape Cod. Since then, each president has issued a Thanksgiving Day proclamation. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the date for Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday of November in 1939 (approved by Congress in 1941).

Myth: “The pilgrims wore only black and white clothing. They had buckles on their hats, garments, and shoes.

Fact: “Buckles did not come into fashion until later in the seventeenth  century and black and white were commonly worn only on Sunday and formal occasions. Women typically dressed in red, earthy green, brown, blue, violet, and gray, while men wore clothing in white, beige, black, earthy green, and brown.

Myth: “The pilgrims brought furniture with them on the Mayflower.

Fact: “The only furniture that the pilgrims brought on the Mayflower was chests and boxes. They constructed wooden furniture once they settled in Plymouth.

Myth: “The Mayflower was headed for Virginia, but due to a navigational mistake it ended up on Cape Cod.

Fact: “The Pilgrims were, in fact, planning to settle in Virginia, but not the modern-day state of Virginia. They were part of the Virginia Company, which had the rights to most of the eastern seaboard of the U.S. The pilgrims had intended to go to the Hudson River region in New York State, which would have been considered ‘Northern Virginia,’ but landed on Cape Cod instead. Treacherous seas prevented them from venturing further south.”

In spite of all the fact or fiction on Thanksgiving lore, Cape Cod and Plymouth are secure in their place in history. When it comes to the Pilgrims, at least, here’s where it all began.

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Warning To Cape Parents: Take MRSA, A Deadly Staph Infection, Seriously!

We know firsthand in our household about the horrors of MRSA

By Greg O’Brien, Codfish Press

Sandwich parents were notified this week that an Oak Ridge School student had been inflicted with a serious staph infection that has killed four students nationwide, the Cape Cod Times reported. “The infection, known as Methicillin-resistent Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is a form of staph infection that cannot be treated with common antibiotics. Extreme cases can lead to serious complications, such as wounds that don’t heal, bloodstream infections, organ damage, and even death,” the paper noted, citing recent student deaths in New York, Virginia, New Hampshire and Mississippi.

While there is some question as to whether the Sandwich staph diagnosis is that of the "superbug," we know firsthand in our household about the horrors of MRSA. Two years ago, our son, Brendan, then a junior in college, was diagnosed with the killer infection, and doctors were not sure they could save his life.

Here are excepts from a column I wrote on this at the time:

“I received a call at 2 am from an emergency room several hundred miles away in North Carolina, from a doctor who wanted to speak with me. My 22-year-old son, Brendan, a senior at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, had been rushed to the hospital by ambulance with a life-threatening case of staph infection. He had contracted the disease several weeks ago while surfing in a coastal area where effluent had leaked into the sea. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders, they say.

“Brendan, a graduate of Nauset High School and a member of its state championship golf team in 1999, had been taking antibiotics, but the staph, a resistant strain called MRSA, accelerated when he cut his right knee during an intramural football game, a lesion that quickly ballooned to the size of a grapefruit, then spread up his thigh. After consulting with disease control specialists, a hospital surgeon called in the dead of night to say he had to operate on Brendan to remove part of his leg, the infected tissue. There were no guarantees, he said. I would know my son’s fate at 4 am.

“Brendan, I was told, could die.

“I was allowed to speak briefly with him, and wondered if it was to be the last time. I then spent the night in prayer and reflecting on all the lost opportunities between father and son, the times I had taken for granted.

“Brendan safely made it through the operation; doctors successfully removed the infected tissue. He’s on heavy duty antibiotics and morphine now, as doctors wait to see if the staph returns (if it mutates there is no cure). My blessing that night was realizing the gift I had before I lost it.”

Brendan still has bouts with this infection that never leaves the body. Months ago he was on antibiotics again after his immune system had worn down. It will happen again, doctors say.

Google “MRSA, staph infection” for a candid clinical assessment of what Time Magazine has called one of the new killers of the 21st Century.

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Shipping Up To Boston: Youth And The Red Sox

By Greg O’Brien, Codfish Press

Boston youth, take note, with apologies to the psalmists: the city is yours, “and all it contains.” 

Once a place dominated by sedate old Yankees (excuse the pun), holding court in mahogany boardrooms as dark as a late afternoon in January, youth now owns this town, and we’re better for it. For the young bring more energy, tons of it, a clearer vision for the future—their future—and the resolve to walk in their dreams. This isn’t your grandfather’s Boston, and a cosmos from the world of “first Bostonian” William Blaxton, who lived alone in 1625 in an area that is now Boston Common and Beacon Hill. The “Athens of America” has morphed into a city of far greater promise. Shout it out for Boston. The torch, as JFK would say, has been passed to a new generation, and the ruling class must now mentor. “Down by the river; down by the banks of the River Charles.” Oh, we love that Dirty Water. Boston, no longer the essence of old-school, you’re their home. 

No where was this more apparent in this city of champions than in yesterday’s feting of Red Sox, with the swagger of yet another pageant in February with an “under-achieving” football club named the Patriots. As cigar-chomping closer Jonathan Papelbon, dressed in a kilt, jigged to the Dropkick Murphy’s “Shipping Up To Boston” theme for the movie, “The Departed,” with his broom guitar, youth and the young at heart stood shoulder-to-shoulder in a wave of red and blue that crested on City Hall Plaza—packed with a crowd that looked at one point as if it exceeded the population of the State of Rhode Island and framed in the distance by the new Boston emerging downtown and springing up from the vacuous parking lots of South Boston, not far from where young Boston rebels more than two centuries tossed tea into the harbor, signaling a change of heart and direction. Whew!

Symbolizing the new Boston, it was youth—Papelbon and company—that delivered Boston its second World Series championship in four years and the auguring of more to come with the announced departure of A-Rod from nemesis New York.

“It took Jacoby Ellsbury all of 47 major-league games to win a World Series and Dustin Pedroia 184 games, so forgive the two if they’re wondering what all the fuss is about,” notes sportswriter Jeff Blair, noting they “barely broke a sweat” in doing so. “Babe Who?”

Forget the Babe. Forget Pedro. Forget Clemens. Not that we couldn’t get here without the high-priced bats of elders Manny and Ortiz. Manny being Manny, however, will always be a kid, but Ortiz, a larger-than-life mentor and father figure has carried this club and this city, and is an example for other veterans of Boston’s business, financial, medical, educational sectors to follow.

Gotta love that Dirty Water if you’re young and in Boston. The city is yours. Revel in it!

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You Can Call Him, "Al"

“A man walks down the street

“He says why am I soft in the middle now

“Why am I soft in the middle

“The rest of my life is so hard”—Paul Simon, You Can Call Me Al

By Greg O'Brien, Codfish Press

Al Gore, no doubt, is soft in the middle, his political life has been hard, and like the man walking down the street in Simon’s pop song, he has sought a “shot a redemption.”

“Don’t want to end up a cartoon. In a cartoon graveyard,” the lyrics note.

Gore is no cartoon today, and you can still call him “Al” on the lip of his 2007 Nobel Peace Prize that he shares with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change, a United Nations amalgam of scientists.

Look who’s smiling now!

On a national stage of elected leaders, presidential contenders of all stripes, and also rans, Gore is in a global weight class of his own. There are no hanging chads on the guy who couldn’t deliver the Sunshine State.

“The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all humanity,” he said in winning the prize. “It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global conscientiousness to a higher level.”

Perhaps the most enlightening facet of Gore’s statement is that he truly believes it—unlike his nemesis, George Bush, whose polite White House response sounded like he had just returned from a bad blind date. “Of course we’re happy for Vice President Gore and the I.P.C.C. for receiving this recognition,” White House spokesman Tony Fratto was quoted in the New York Times as saying. Hold the Rose Garden balloons—not that there’s not ample hot air rising from the Bush Administration on the global warming crisis.

The dictionary defines crisis as, “A situation or period in which things are very uncertain, difficult, or painful, especially a time when action must be taken to avoid complete disaster or breakdown.”

What’s there not to get, Mr. President? Stop playing face book with the American people on this issue.

To quote Clark Griswold in Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation after pre-holiday celebrations went south, “We’re on the threshold of hell!”

The air is warming and the polar ice caps are melting quicker than your favorability ratings, and the consequences of this will create a tidal wave of grief across the planet. The earth needs a champion.

So you can call him “Al,” and to paraphrase Simon, if you will be “our bodyguard,” we will be “your long lost pal.”

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