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Puerto Rico: The Forgotten Land
Lourdes Rodriguez heard the scream early on the morning of January 6, before the sun rose and before the frogs began their chorus.
"Lourdes! Lourdes!"
She instantly recognized the voice of her father, Natalio Rodriguez Lebron, 77, a former nurse who cared for the mentally ill, people he believed society had forgotten.
She darted up the stairs.
Her father's health had long been troubled. He had diabetes, lung disease, sleep apnea and congestive heart failure. And in the months since Hurricane Maria battered this coastal town, Lourdes watched his condition worsen. The sleep apnea machine he needed to help him breathe was useless for months because their hilltop neighborhood in Maunabo was entirely without electric power. In December, a business had donated a generator to power the machine at night, but the family struggled to afford the gasoline needed to keep it running.
As Lourdes reached the top of the stairs, she felt an uneasy stillness in the air. The sky was thick and black. No moon was visible. And the electric generator, a machine that sometimes rumbled like a car engine, had fallen eerily silent.
She swung open the living room door to find her father clutching his chest.
The machine was off. Her father appeared unable to breathe.
Her mother, Julia "Miriam" Rodriguez, stayed with Natalio while Lourdes rushed to restart the generator, which had run out of gas, and repower the breathing machine. Her mother felt Natalio's body go limp in her arms and then collapse to the floor, face down.
Frantic, they called 911 and tried to comfort him.
Waiting there on the floor, Julia Rodriguez told me, she felt a wind -- a physical gust -- leave her husband's body and pass into her own. She said it was as if the decades they'd spent together -- the moves from Puerto Rico to the mainland and back; the hours they both worked as nurses; the three children they raised -- hovered in the room, a tangible, living thing, and then became part of her.
Julia Rodriguez knew then that her husband might not survive.
All these months later, it seemed the storm may have won.
It's been nearly six months since Hurricane Maria.
Its howling winds, which topped 150 mph, long have dissipated. The storm that battered Puerto Rico on September 20 before hooking northward into the Atlantic is a memory.
Yet, in this US commonwealth, people are still dying in Maria's wake.
That's especially true of those who lack basic services like electricity.
Rodriguez died on January 6. In addition to his death, CNN identified five people who died in 2018 from causes that friends, family, doctors or funeral home directors consider to be related to Hurricane Maria and its aftermath.
It's not possible to say with 100% certainty that a death this long after a storm was "caused" by Hurricane Maria, experts told me. But that's beside the point. These deaths show dangerous conditions persist in Puerto Rico.
I spent several days in Maunabo, Rodriguez's town on the southeast coast, and other areas without power, to try to understand how communities are faring all these months later.
I had been to Puerto Rico several times since the storm, reporting for CNN on topics from uncounted deaths to water outages and an "exodus" to the US mainland. In December, I drove the entire path the eye of the storm took across the island. On that route, I met a woman whose clock was stopped at 3:27 -- the moment the hurricane swept through. Puerto Rico, it seemed, was an island frozen in time, doomed to relive that day again and again.
Would that still be the case after six months?
Metrics on the response to Hurricane Maria told me that might be the case, at least for some residents. So, too, did academics and others who study how we respond to hurricanes.
Puerto Rico, some of these experts said, appears to be stuck between the "emergency" and "recovery" phases of disaster response. Typically, in the United States, the emergency phase -- in which people lack necessities like food, water, shelter and power -- lasts for days or, at most, a few weeks, said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Then comes recovery, when residents, government agencies and others start to rebuild.
"Here we are months after this storm and we are debating if we should still be sending these emergency -- really emergency, and life sustaining -- supports, or (should we) transition into this recovery process," Peek said. "That is just truly breathtaking."
It's true that progress has been made. Tourists are coming back to San Juan, and parts of the city are humming. Casinos are open in ritzy Condado and the bomba dancers are back in Río Piedras. A month after Maria, roughly 1 million of the 3.3 million American citizens here remained without running water service. Now, nearly everyone has it.
In late December, only about a third of temporary roof requests had been met by the US Army Corps of Engineers, leaving some people sleeping in homes where it rained inside at night. Months later, nearly all those requests for professionally installed tarps have been fulfilled. Formal shelters for hurricane victims are now empty, according to federal officials.
Yet inequities remain, especially when it comes to electricity.
As of March 7, more than 10% of electric customers in Puerto Rico were still without power, according to figures reported to the US Department of Energy by the local utility. Maybe that sounds small -- but it represents nearly 156,000 customers, and likely more than that number of people, since the average Puerto Rican household is about three individuals.
Also consider that figure in the context of other recent storms.
Hurricane Harvey hit the Gulf Coast of Texas on August 25. The next day, an estimated 304,000 customers were without power -- yet all but about 2,600 had electricity restored in 19 days, according to data provided to CNN by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Florida after Hurricane Irma? That storm left an estimated 6.2 million customers in Florida without electricity on September 11, according to the Florida Public Service Commission, which, like the commission in Texas, collects data from electric utilities. In a little more than two weeks, virtually all power was back.
These comparisons are, of course, imprecise. No two storms are the same in terms of intensity, needs or geography. Puerto Rico is an island and, as federal officials have said repeatedly since the storm, you can't just drive in supplies from another state. Communications systems were down and many roads were impassible in the first weeks after the storm. The island's power grid also was in lousy shape, by many accounts, before Hurricane Maria. Comparing that grid to Florida's, which is the gold standard for preparedness, is somewhat unfair, said Seth Guikema, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Michigan, who studies grids and disaster response. After Hurricane Andrew in 1992, he said, some Florida utilities built concrete posts and took other measures to ensure power could be restored faster after storms.
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which oversees disaster recovery, says it is doing everything possible to ensure basic services are restored to Puerto Rico.
Michael Byrne, FEMA's federal coordinating officer for Puerto Rico, told me in an interview that Puerto Rico's unique logistical challenges fully explain the delays. No other US disaster has presented these unique and difficult circumstances, he said, which meant FEMA had to invent a strategy for how to respond to the crisis. The unique situation here also makes comparisons between the response to Maria and responses to other storms problematic, he said.
If storm-related deaths are continuing, he said, his heart goes out to affected families. "The initial reaction is the reaction anyone would have: I'm sorry to hear that. Truly. One of the things that you don't stop being, no matter your job, is a human being." There are programs, he added, to help bring generators and financial assistance to storm victims, especially those who are in vital need of medical services.
In a statement emailed to CNN this week, the US Army Corps of Engineers, which is helping with power restoration, said back-to-back 2017 disasters, the remoteness of the island and the fact that some supplies had to be manufactured for installation in Puerto Rico, slowed down work on the electric system. "Helicopters have been used to airlift poles, materials and people into remote locations to perform repair work," the Corps said.
Yet these explanations matter little to many of those who have been living without electricity for nearly six months, and have gone without running water for much of that time.
They know another truth: The longer the wait, the more a person is at risk.
The family legend goes like this: The first of Natalio Rodriguez's ancestors to arrive in Maunabo was hidden in a barrel aboard a ship from Africa. He may have arrived as a free man, they said. This much is sure: Rodriguez roots travel deep into this fertile soil. The family has been here as long as anyone can remember.
By the time Natalio Rodriguez was born in December 1940, the 11th of 12 children, much had changed in Puerto Rico -- and yet little had, as well. Rodriguez grew up helping his father, Juan Ines Rodriguez Monclova, work the verdant sugar cane fields behind their home on the side of a shark-tooth mountain. This was the work of his ancestors, too. The Spanish enslaved Africans and, before that, indigenous Taino people -- who gave Maunabo its name -- to work in that industry.
Natalio Rodriguez and his neighbors had all those stories coursing through their veins. His original ancestor in Maunabo is said to have married a Spanish woman, which is how relatives explain the fact that some of their cousins and aunts have bright blue or green eyes, while Natalio's and Lourdes' eyes and skin carry the deep hues of espresso and midnight.
When Rodriguez was a boy, slavery had long been abolished, of course; and the Spanish had been kicked out of Puerto Rico by a new colonial power: the United States. The US, which occupied Puerto Rico in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, granted Puerto Ricans citizenship about two decades before Rodriguez's birth. Still, his family members and neighbors couldn't elect their own governor until 1948. Even today, Puerto Ricans, while subject to US laws and given US aid, can't vote for president or elect full, voting members of Congress.
Despite all that, young Rodriguez remained enchanted by American culture.
He loved Western movies and books and grew up galloping the family's horses down from the mountains and into the valley, which was home to the town square, not far from a lighthouse and the radiant turquoise coast. His childhood nickname was "Hormiguero," Spanish for anthill, his longtime friend, Damian Lopez, 70, told me. I laughed and asked about the origin of that name. The kid was something of a living verb, Lopez said -- always moving, never still.
That restlessness would take him places his father never saw.
Some of Rodriguez's older brothers enlisted in the US military (one lost part of his hand in the Korean War, according to Julia Rodriguez) and, as a teenager, Natalio Rodriguez tried to do the same. Unable to join the service because of a heart arrhythmia, according to his wife, he found other ways to follow in their footsteps. After one brother moved to New York -- bringing home exotic northeastern foods like cod, cherries and white grapes to a family that grew avocado, grapefruit and oranges -- Rodriguez decided, after high school, to move there, too. He would become a big man like his dad -- 5-foot-9 and 300 pounds -- and not averse to physical labor. But he began to resent helping in the sugar fields. Maunabo was, and is, desperately poor. (Fifty-six percent live below the poverty line, according to the US Census Bureau). Some of his relatives still plowed up their fields with bulls tied to oxcarts. The brother who moved away seemed so much happier, and so much richer. In the United States, Rodriguez thought, he'd have a better life, too.
So, in his late teens, Rodriguez boarded a plane for New York.
"Right after getting out of the cab, he stepped on a pile of dog s---."
Natalio loved to tell this story, his wife, Julia, said.
"He'd go, like, 'Wow, so this is how you all live here, dodging piles of poop in the streets!?'"
Julia Rodriguez grew up in Maunabo, too, just up the hill from Natalio and his family. The couple raised three children together, primarily on the US mainland.
For him, the 50 states were a place of promise and of hope -- a place of purpose and duty.
Still, strangely, that first New York impression -- the muck on the street -- stuck with him, too.
He never felt fully settled, his wife told me.
He yearned for home.
In 2009, he and Julia finally resettled in Maunabo.
"Look," says Luis Lafuente, Maunabo's vice-mayor.
He points at a perfectly circular hole extending from the roof of city hall.
"That's where the clock used to be."
It was busted by Hurricane Maria.
Time hasn't just stopped in this town, which is at the southeast corner of Puerto Rico, near where Maria delivered its first punches. After the storm, it's almost irrelevant. On this day, March 9, Lafuente tells me exactly 0% of the area's 11,500 residents have been reconnected to the electric grid -- the same as the day Hurricane Maria struck. Between 35% and 50% of residents do have electricity, he said, from three emergency generators installed on December 23 by the US government. But those generators are prone to failure, he said, and don't reach mountain communities. (The Army Corps said the alleged "failures" result from generator switch-overs, not from problems with the equipment. The Puerto Rican power authority -- PREPA -- told CNN 37% of customers in Maunabo had power as of March 13, but did not specify the source of that electricity.)
At dusk, those mountains turn to charcoal silhouettes. Few lights shine. Only the lucky and the wealthy can afford personal generators.
We drive Lafuente's Jeep Renegade around the town where he's spent his life. Parts of it are unrecognizable to him. Playgrounds are twisted. A truck barn turned to scrap metal. Power lines are draped over posts like wet noodles. Some electric posts are so off-kilter, they look like they're doing pushups.
The hospital had to be relocated to another municipal building, which most recently had been home to emergency management workers and police. Those officers and workers, in turn, had to move into a public school that closed before the storm. The hospital still has a sign that says "Emergencia 24 Horas," indicating the emergency room never closes. The reconfigured hospital, however, opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 11 p.m. Many of those who require emergency assistance earlier or later than that have to drive through an unlit mountain tunnel -- it feels like something out of "The Walking Dead" -- to seek medical help.
Maunabo's five schools reopened in late November. But students leave class at 12:30 p.m. because there's no power. A school principal I met told me she drives to other towns to make photocopies so students can take tests. Teachers assign very little homework, she says, because the students are so overwhelmed already.
We stop by the lighthouse, perhaps the most iconic site in Maunabo, to find that its searchlight and glass have been shattered by Maria. The Coast Guard hadn't used it since the 1990s, anyway, according to Wanda Marín Rivera, board president of the town's cultural center. But Lafuente and others had hoped tourism might revive the town, with the lighthouse as a destination, since sugar cane, plantains and crab fishing haven't been providing stable work. (Maunabo became known as a hub for crab fishing. Crab images are stamped into the sidewalks and painted on walls; a crab statue sits in front of the baseball stadium, which was heavily damaged, and a smaller one perches on the mayor's desk).
Despite the state of things, Lafuente says Maunabo will improve. Tourists will come. Industry will pick back up. Already, he says, crabbers are setting traps by flashlight at night.
"The people of Maunabo are very motivated and anxious to grow and make the town even better than it was before," he tells me. "We will rise again. We are rising."
At first, the mountain protected them.
The day Maria hit, Natalio Rodriguez huddled in a small bathroom with his wife, his daughter Lourdes, her two children, and, nearby, Natalio's elderly sister. "We were crammed like tuna in a can," Lourdes Rodriguez recalled. Water poured under the door. Natalio told everyone to stay calm, Lourdes told me. Meanwhile, she said, the house "shook like Jell-O."
Still, they survived. Most of the house did, too. The hillside, which had raised so many of their ancestors and grown so many of their crops, sheltered them from the worst of it.
It was after Maria that the real danger began.
The power was out. Water, too. Food was scarce. For several days, the winding, steep-pitched road to their mountain home was blocked, Lourdes said. It was a week before she was able to wait in hourslong lines for gasoline and get her car to a hill in a neighboring city, Caguas, where she could call their many relatives on the mainland to say they had outlasted the hurricane. Communications systems in Maunabo remained essentially inoperable for months, she told me. Island-wide, according to Puerto Rico government data, only 25% of cell towers were functional by October 20.
It was in these isolated circumstances that Natalio Rodriguez's medical conditions began to worsen. The labored breathing was especially troubling for his wife and daughter. The sleep apnea machine he used at night to get oxygen into his lungs wasn't working without electricity. That meant he and his wife could not rest, much less sleep. He paced the house at night and walked the neighborhood by day. In desperation, the family made cardboard fans for him to use to try to move air around his face. No one thought it would help him breathe, really, but it was something.
"All of a sudden he became a quiet person. He was a talker. Pepito enjoyed long conversations," Julia Rodriguez said, using Natalio's family nickname. "He could spend hours and hours talking. But then (after the storm) he didn't speak much."
The family worried also about the insulin he used for diabetes. It required refrigeration. They had no working refrigerator without power. And ice was difficult to come by.
What they really needed, of course, was electricity.
On November 17, Maunabo plaza and city hall got power from a small generator -- purchased for $35,000 by the municipality, according to the mayor, Jorge Márquez. From their home in the mountains, Lourdes Rodriguez said, the family could see a faint glow. It looked like the town downhill was on another planet.
About a month later, the family received a small power inverter, Lourdes Rodriguez said. It ran for only two or three hours before running out of fuel, she said.
A bigger generator was donated later, but the family had trouble affording the gasoline needed to run it, she told me. The fuel alone cost them $60 per week while her father was alive, Lourdes Rodriguez said. Plus, there were filters, oil and repairs.
When the machine was on, they said, Natalio calmed some.
But they could not keep it going.
Some of them died during the storm.
A mudslide in Utuado, Puerto Rico, killed two "bedridden" sisters. Another person drowned in Toa Baja. But the aftermath of Hurricane Maria appears to have been most deadly.
More than 1,000 "excess deaths" occurred after the storm, in September and October 2017, than during the same timeframe in 2016 and 2015, according to Alexis Santos, a professor at Penn State University who analyzed Puerto Rican government mortality statistics.
That doesn't tell you 1,000 people certainly died directly because of Hurricane Maria. But it does indicate an unusual number of people were dying -- and well into October.
The only difference, Santos said, was the hurricane.
In November, I put together a CNN team to survey the funeral homes in Puerto Rico. We were only able to reach about half, but those directors and other staff members told us they had seen at least 499 deaths they considered to be hurricane related, based primarily on their conversations with family members. We then documented the deaths of several uncounted people who died in the weeks after the hurricane, not only the day the storm hit. They included an older man in Cayey who died in a fire set by a lantern he wouldn't have been using if he'd had electricity; a man in Canóvanas who committed suicide in the storm's aftermath; and a woman in Corozal who lacked access to medical treatment. (Two deaths we highlighted were later added to the Puerto Rico government's list of official hurricane-related deaths).
Still, I didn't expect deaths would continue into 2018.
It's impossible to use statistics to prove that they are, because the Puerto Rican Demographic Registry has not released data for this year. (CNN and Puerto Rico's Centro de Periodismo Investigativo are suing that agency for access to death records). Trends suggest the aggregate loss of life in Puerto Rico is slowing and may have normalized, Santos told me.
Still, I was able to document several deaths that occurred this year and appear related to Maria's frantic aftermath.
Several of the deaths I researched occurred in Maunabo.
Braulio Salinas Santiago, 71, died of an apparent heart attack in the parking lot of Maunabo's makeshift hospital on January 18, according to his wife, Margarita Baerga Diaz. It was about 5 a.m., she said, before the hospital, which operated 24-7 before the hurricane, had opened.
Similarly, Fulgencio Velazquez Chevalier died on February 20 in the car of his wife, Litza Rodriguez Figueroa. The 50-year-old suffered depression and intense anxiety after the storm, according to Rodriguez Figueroa, who is a nurse. She believes that stress, along with a related increased smoking, contributed to her husband's cardiac arrest. When she drove by the closed Maunabo hospital, she told me, Velazquez was still alive.
Carmen Rodriguez Martinez died on January 25 at age 71.
Her doctor, Arturo Torres Borges, wrote two words on the death certificate in a spot reserved for circumstances that may have contributed to the death: "Huracán Maria."
The causes of death included respiratory failure and heart disease.
Rodriguez Martinez required an oxygen machine to breathe, according to her daughter, Iris Janette de Jesus Rodriguez, 54. They still didn't have electricity from the grid when I visited in late February. A generator hadn't been enough, she said.
In Corozal, farther into the mountains, Victor Manuel Belen Santiago wept as he told me that his mother, Zoraida Santiago Torres, 58, had saved his life by helping him kick drug addiction.
Their home was destroyed by the storm, and Belen Santiago rebuilt it by hand, puzzling scraps of the roof and walls together like a reassembled house of cards. But he couldn't restore the power his mother needed to run an oxygen machine. She died on February 13, he said, after getting fluid in her lungs that could not be cleared. Her death certificate lists organ failure and a bacterial infection among the causes of death, along with chronic liver disease.
After the loss, Belen Santiago said he contemplated suicide.
His beloved mother was gone. He had no job -- no prospect for a job after the debt crisis, which struck Puerto Rico before the hurricane. It was unclear if life ever would feel safe again.
"We are the forgotten people," he said. "It's like we don't exist."
The morning of January 5 started like so many others, with a tap-tap-tap of her father's cane on the second-story patio -- Natalio Rodriguez's way of waking his daughter up for the day.
Lourdes Rodriguez rolled her eyes playfully and walked upstairs to see what he wanted this time. She and her two children, ages 13 and 8, had been sleeping on twin beds in a room downstairs since the storm. The roof of a new home they had been building was torn off by Maria.
She would awake to her father's screams the following night, but this day now occupies a different territory in her memory. She considers it one of the best days of her life.
Her father seemed so healthy, so alive.
He wanted to go everywhere that day, see everything. He carried his cane with him while visiting his sister, a nun, in Ponce, a city on the south coast. But he kept it in his elbow crease -- more ornament than crutch. At an ice cream shop, he pretended to be a clueless American tourist -- using affected Spanish, asking to see tourist attractions on the other side of the island. The store's workers laughed when he broke the gag, Lourdes Rodriguez said. He ordered his favorite flavor: passion fruit with pineapple. That night, they ate seafood at a restaurant near the beach.
Now, Lourdes Rodriguez wonders why that day was different.
Maybe it was the upcoming holiday? January 6 is Three Kings Day in Puerto Rico, or Epiphany, when Christians commemorate the arrival of wise men visiting the infant Jesus.
Her father had been talking about it for some time, telling her children to prepare their best clothes (the truth was that most of their clothing had been donated after the storm) so they could go to a pig roast in a neighboring community. In years past, they'd gathered up guitars, pots and sticks and gone caroling up and down the hillside -- a Puerto Rican parranda -- growing the party as they visited one house and then the next, offering food and drinks and collecting stories.
Maybe he was living in anticipation of that day?
Or maybe this day was his way of saying goodbye.
What's taking so long?
That question nagged at me as I reported on Puerto Rico's ongoing electrical outages. And it's a question that clearly haunts many Puerto Ricans.
Experts offered some theories.
"They're Americans but they're not represented in Congress," said Dr. Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University in New York. That means there are few political repercussions for a botched disaster response, he said, and few advocates for funding. "It really gets down to money and poverty and politics."
"It's unconscionable and unreasonable that it has taken so long" to restore power, he said. "You have to ask yourself, 'why is that?' It's money and politics, the common denominator for so many things. ... Can you imagine no (electric) power in Beaumont or Port Arthur or Rockport, Texas, for this amount of time? I don't care what kind of disaster it was. You would never see this."
Byrne, the FEMA official, said this disaster has been adequately funded and the federal government is responding to the crisis in Puerto Rico in the same way it would in the 50 states. "We're not leaving," he said. "We're here until we take care of all of the requirements that are needed."
As of March 15, FEMA had spent $1.1 billion in Puerto Rico; $1.6 billion in Texas; and $993 million in Florida for individual assistance following the fall 2017 hurricanes. "That's the initial, quickest payment to individual citizens for immediate needs, but the real cost is in long-term recovery dollars for infrastructure projects, like buildings, roads and other public facilities," which is not included in those figures, said Chris Currie, director of emergency management issues at the US Government Accountability Office.
Congressional appropriations for disaster response and recovery in recent months are not always itemized by storm, he said, making it difficult to say which hurricanes ultimately will be given the most federal funding. An estimated $23.2 billion has been appropriated specifically for Puerto Rico, according to The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College in New York.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates Maria caused $90 billion in damages; Harvey, $125 billion; and Irma, $50 billion.
Regardless of financing, the relative slowness of the recovery in Puerto Rico is seen by some people here as dehumanizing.
In a way, Maria has revealed the ugly colonial relationship between the island and the United States, said Silvia Álvarez Curbelo, a historian and director of the research center at the University of Puerto Rico's school of communications.
"This raw nerve of colonialism comes creeping in in every conversation" these days, she told me. "It's this feeling of subordination. The people -- common people -- have no way (to respond) except to wait. Wait for this letter. Wait to see if FEMA comes to town. Wait to see if the federal government comes (though) with the money they told us they would give us for recovery."
Such frustrations reached a boiling point in the past.
There were plenty of other factors at play, but Spain's failure to address a humanitarian and economic crisis after an 1867 hurricane in Puerto Rico "provided the context for the first political movement for independence on the island," Stuart Schwartz, a Yale history professor, writes in "Sea of Storms."
The uprising, however, was "crushed immediately," said Álvarez Curbelo, from the University of Puerto Rico. Nothing like that ever would be tried today, she said. While Puerto Ricans have worked hard to create a national cultural identity, and while the idea of independence was popular decades ago, few Puerto Ricans in recent years have supported political independence from the United States, according to Florida International University anthropologist Jorge Duany.
If anything, Álvarez Curbelo expects Puerto Rico to sink further into "political paralysis" and become more US-dependent after Maria.
She doesn't see the United States granting Puerto Rico full rights as the 51st state, a move that likely would require the approval of Congress. Remember, she said, this storm follows a massive debt crisis in which the island's government declared bankruptcy. What does Puerto Rico have to offer the United States now? A fiscal oversight board, appointed by the US President, is steering austerity measures. Meanwhile, Puerto Ricans have been taught, generation after generation, she said, to believe that they cannot survive without the help of a colonial power.
"I'm not a pessimistic person," she told me. "I'm a historian. I tend to be sober. I watch the long trends. But I don't see the light -- in the total sense of the word 'light.' The thing about power is it's a metaphor for the island. The fragility of the energy system -- of the power system -- is the perfect metaphor for our condition: The light comes and goes. There is no sense of future."
The ambulance arrived at 2:18 a.m. on January 6, records show.
It was too late.
Natalio Rodriguez Lebron died at 1:23 a.m.
According to the death certificate, Rodriguez's death was caused by chronic lung disease, hypertension and diabetes. In the notes on that document, a doctor from the Puerto Rico Bureau of Forensic Sciences also mentioned that he was a smoker and obese.
That bureau, in San Juan, is the only laboratory in Puerto Rico authorized to classify deaths as hurricane-related. In the months after Maria, the office has come under criticism, including from CNN, for possibly missing dozens if not hundreds of "indirect" hurricane deaths.
The official death toll has stood at 64 since early December.
In February, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló announced Puerto Rico had enlisted the help of George Washington University to study the mortality that followed Hurricane Maria. That analysis, due out in coming months, will focus on deaths from September through February.
To date, Natalio Rodriguez's death has not been classified as hurricane-related. Puerto Rico's Department of Public Safety, which oversees the forensics bureau, did not respond to repeat requests for comment on his death and others in this story.
Rodriguez's family believes his death was related to Hurricane Maria. His doctor, Pedro Lopez Lopez, shares that view. Rodriguez's health deteriorated in the conditions Maria left behind, he told me. He saw Natalio about two weeks before his death; and he was "stable" then, he said.
The body was not delivered to the forensics office until 2:38 the following afternoon, a time that forensics documents confirm. By afternoon, the body had started to decompose. The family was told it would be impossible to have an open-casket service, as is the norm in Puerto Rico.
The closed casket was the hardest part of the funeral, a longtime friend told me.
"It was terrible," Damian Lopez said. "If you love someone, you'd like to see him for one last time."
There was also the matter of the expense.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency manages a program that can cover some funeral expenses for eligible families after hurricanes. But those deaths typically must be certified as hurricane-related in order to qualify.
The Rodriguez family already put $4,000 toward his funeral, a receipt shows.
They still owe $1,115.
In December, FEMA did grant the family $4,000 for home repairs and $3,000 to replace household items that were damaged in Maria, Lourdes Rodriguez said. Julia Rodriguez told me friends and relatives tried to offer the family money after the storm but that her husband turned away the help. He was a proud person, she said, and generous. He also knew that everyone in the community was suffering.
People will keep dying until power is restored.
That's the stark assessment Arturo Torres Borges shared with my colleagues Leyla Santiago and Khushbu Shah, who tipped me off to the possibility of continued deaths in Maunabo. Torres is the medical doctor who wrote "Huracán Maria" on the death certificate of a local woman.
Natalio Rodriguez's doctor puts it this way: "This is a public health crisis." I met plenty of people at risk in Maunabo.
Some are so sick of the situation they try to laugh it off.
Across the street from Litza Rodriguez Figueroa, whose husband died in February, lives Ana Ramos Davila, a 74-year-old who will insist you drink her bottled water and then ask if you have any cute gringo friends who would drink Coors Light and play dominoes with her.
That's the dream! she said -- gringos, Coors and dominoes.
Post-Maria has included little of that.
"Christ! When is this going to be over?" she said of the storm. "I've spent $100 or more just on bags of ice" to try to keep food cool without power. "No one is helping me, my dear."
"I already told my psychologist if you get a call that I took my life, don't be amazed," she said, serious. "I'm so tired of this -- looking for supplies, finding water, lighting candles. I'm so tired."
A few houses up the street, I met David Torres and Juanita Guzman, who were having their home repainted. Torres showed me a breathing machine he's supposed to use at night but doesn't, he said, because it requires a steady power source and could short circuit without one. He has a small generator -- "I use it to turn on one light and one fan; if I turn on the light, I have to turn off the fan." It doesn't provide steady enough power to run the machine, he said.
"I need my oxygen mask. One of these days my wife is going to wake up and find me dead by her side," he said. "She told me that in the night she hears me having trouble breathing."
"If it's my time to die, I'll die," he said, laughing. "There's nothing I can do."
Experts say post-storm stress and depression can be deadly.
Poverty exacerbates the risks, said Redlener, from Columbia University.
The way people interpret a disaster matters, too. If they believe the disaster is simply weather-related rather than manmade, they're more likely to accept it, said Peek, from the University of Colorado. What she fears is that Puerto Ricans are struggling because of the human response to the hurricane.
"It's like the despair effect," she said. "People who feel forgotten and neglected -- they may suffer negative mental health effects."
Up the hill from the Rodriguez family live Miguel Amaro Leon, 79, and Maria Morales Ortiz, 76. They welcomed me onto their outdoor patio just as the sun was setting. A generator roared behind our conversation as they told me how hard it's been to keep the thing running.
"It's been really difficult because we have to pay for the gas," Amaro Leon said. "We only use the generator three or four hours daily. If not, we would have to spend more money."
Can they keep their insulin cold?
"More or less."
"We try to eat food that doesn't need to be in the refrigerator."
As we talked, the generator ran out of gas.
Frogs chirped in the night.
"Things are getting better little by little," Amaro Leon said. "We just need power."
On my last evening in Maunabo, Lourdes Rodriguez took me to see her father's grave. It's in a cemetery in the valley, not far from the town plaza. Looking across the property, you can see the foggy mountains in the distance where so many of Lourdes' relatives cut sugar cane and plowed the earth, first under the rule of the Spanish and now the United States commonwealth.
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
Her father's family nickname -- "Pepito" -- was written by hand in wet cement.
The family hasn't been able to pay for a headstone.
"I can't fix it," she said, sobbing. "It's hard for me to see it that way."
Álvarez Curbelo, the professor at the University of Puerto Rico, told me earlier that she wished Hurricane Maria's dead could speak. That way they would not be ignored.
I asked Lourdes what she thought her father would say if he could talk with us now.
"He would tell us to keep calm," she said, somber. "That was always his saying: 'Take it one day at a time.' Don't think about the next week or the next month.
"Take it one day at a time."
Source: cnn.com
Date Posted: Friday, March 16th, 2018 , Total Page Views: 1639
What American's Need To Know About The Disaster In Puerto Rico
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Suicides Soar In Puerto Rico Since Hurricane Maria


text:
The Cuckoo Clock – Chapter 6
Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 6 of a new online serial novel, The Cuckoo Clock, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Bratislava – 5704/1944
The representatives of the occupying government who arrived at the orphanage turned out not to be soldiers. There were two members of the city council, one Russian policeman, and another person in uniform who introduced himself as "Anatoly Stachov, a member of the Communist Party," but didn't provide much detail about his exact position or rank. In any case, it didn't interest the director much; he just kept scurrying around his guests like a starving mouse, trying to curry their favor, to the point where the older children exchanged small smiles at the sight. They had never seen the director grovel like this to anyone.
Gustav did not smile. He wasn't old enough to understand the comical scene, and besides, the only thing he could think about was which of the guests he could ask questions to without being embarrassed.
He finally decided that the fat man from the city council, the guy who hardly spoke, would have time for him. The man was standing near the wall with a lit cigarette, and Gustav sidled up to him.
The man took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Go play, kid," he said in a gruff voice.
"Did you see my mother?"
"My mother. Theodore said that maybe you saw her on your way here."
The man narrowed his eyes, his eyebrows almost covering them completely. "Me?"
"Why? Do you not know where she is?"
"No, I don't know. She traveled east, Theodore said, and that's a place where people don't come back from."
"So if they don't come back, they don't come back," the man said decisively.
"But you did come back," the child insisted. "So maybe she also did. Did you see her?"
The man looked at him with a lopsided smile. "Go play," he repeated.
"Don't want to," Gustav whispered quietly, so the man shouldn't hear him.
A few minutes later, he heard the director's familiar whistle. Once again, the boys lined up in orderly rows, gazing at the guests. Anoatoly Stachov delivered an endless speech; Gustav did not understand even a quarter of it. As he wrapped it up, and everyone thought he was finally finished, he suddenly said, "Just a small question I was asked to find out— are there any Jewish children here?"
A moment of silence ensued, and then the director replied, "What? Jewish children whose parents wanted to hide them here? No. Not even one."
"I see," the Party member said. He rubbed his hands together. "Fine, so next week, the new supervisor will be coming, and with this I think we have concluded our vis—"
"One minute." The stocky man detached himself from the wall and approached the rows of children, who were already shifting impatiently from one foot to the other. "Comrade Stachov, I think you did not get accurate information. There is one Jewish child here." His eyes scanned the room until he found Gustav. He waved in his direction with the butt of his burning cigarette. "That boy."
"I'm telling you that it's worrying." Elishva cut the avocado in cubes as best she could, given its uneven form.
Everything worries you lately, Eliyahu wanted to say, but instead he asked, "Why? Why is it worrying?"
"Well, why should anyone be inquiring about a shidduch that happened already? I mean, the couple is engaged by now! And to inquire about their names? I'm afraid that something about this shidduch is problematic, and someone wants to check into it before letting us know that."
"Speak quietly," Eliyahu requested, taking the darkened slices of bread out of the toaster. It was 1:15 in the morning, a strange hour to be eating supper. But this was the regular time for their evening meal. They could find no other time for quiet conversation.
"Tell me, Elisheva. What did she say? That the caller told them he was planning to call us?"
"Yes, that's what he told them. I don't know if he was saying the truth or being sarcastic." She put down the plate of salad and glanced at the kitchen door. "I feel like unplugging the phone." She sighed and smiled at the same time, and then raised her hand in a "stop" motion. "You don't have to tell me it's foolish, because I won't do it. I just said I feel like doing it."
They washed their hands and began to eat in silence.
Eliyahu spoke first. "What was the man's name?" he asked.
"Rosenblatt or Rosenblit, or something like that."
"Doesn't help us much."
"Don't tell me you want to go look for him!" she gasped.
"I don't have who to look for," Eliyahu said with a chuckle. "We have no information to even start a search. Besides, it's possible that the man was just a curious someone doing some research on names."
"Names?"
"Yes. You agree that names like Peretz and Genendel are a lot less common than Moshe and Sarah, right?"
"Then why did he ask about the date of the wedding?" She took a deep breath. "Look, you might be right, Eliyahu; it could be that it's nothing. But I have this fear of excessive nosing around into family history."
She didn't reply. Instead, she stood up to boil water for coffee. In the past, when they'd eaten at "normal" hours, coffee was always off the menu, because it prevented her from falling asleep. But by now she knew that once she reached this state of exhaustion, coffee had little effect on her.
She wouldn't tell Eliyahu how her father's unknown identity frightened her. True, it was a given that she was Jewish, because there were no questions about her mother. But that was only one side of her roots.
Eliyahu never understood why she was so perturbed about the second side, the empty, hollow side. The side that they knew nothing about.
Morning arrived too quickly, as always, and the regular tumult and noise banished the story of Sari Goodman from Elisheva's mind. Only as she hurried down the street to work, with four-year-old Bentzy holding her right hand, and Chani and Esty skipping merrily on her left, did she suddenly remember the look in Tzippy's eyes a moment before she'd left the house. Was the girl worried, perhaps?
"Bye, sweetie!" she called to Bentzy, waving to him as he walked up the path to his preschool, which was two buildings away from the daycare center where she worked. Then she bid Chani and Esty goodbye, and they continued on to school, while she entered the daycare building. Even before switching on the light in the small area she was in charge of, she took out her phone.
"I just got to work, Tzippy," she said when her daughter picked up. "Um…I wanted to ask you to remind Devoiry about the appointment she has right after school, okay? Did she leave already?" Out of the corner of her eye she saw the father of the Dvir twins at the entrance, unstrapping them from their double carriage.
"No, she says she has a test today, and they are starting at nine."
"And what about you?"
"I start today at ten."
Tzippy didn't say a word about the story with Sari. Elisheva had to admit to herself that it was very possible that she wasn't worried about it at all. Who said the matter had bothered her?
When they had come home the night before, Tzippy had showed Eliyahu the sheitel she had chosen, and they had both told him about the funny call that the Goodmans had received. Only later that night, during supper, had Elisheva raised her suspicions about the story. But when Tzippy had been with her, she'd just made a big joke out of the whole thing.
Just like she joked about the mold stains in the sink and the bottom cabinets, and the way the crowding in the living room had became a family joke as soon as it had begun. The cheerful din in her home was just that—quite cheerful.
She didn't lie. She wasn't faking the cheer. Elisheva had always been the optimistic type, who liked to live life on the bright side, and to be happy and feel pleasure with everything she'd been blessed with.
But on occasion, a different Elisheva paid her a visit—on the inside, at least. This was an Elisheva that no one else knew, one that knew how to rebel and kick and scream, and to shout that, "Yes, I know that having thirteen children is a blessing, and of course I'm very grateful, but in a small three-room apartment, it's not always simple or easy!" Or that, "The kids' noise is lively and wonderful and happy, but sometimes, yes, I do get a headache from it, and I need some quiet and private space for myself!" Or that, "This ancient fridge might be very nostalgic, but when it starts leaking, or freezes things and ruins them, well, then I want a new fridge, something like the shiny model I saw yesterday in the magazine ad!"
And in the last year or two—was she just getting older?—these sentiments had begun to leak out a bit, although never around the children. And she hoped that wouldn't ever happen; she wanted them to grow up in a calm and happy setting.
"Ima!" Chani welcomed her at lunchtime. "Ima, a Mr. Rosenblit called; he asked that you call him back urgently."
Elisheva stared at the note written in Chani's neat writing. "Rosenblit? Who is that?" She put down her bag, a bit confused. Then the name clicked in her mind, and with a gush of relief she silently thanked Hashem that Tzippy wasn't home right now, and that she hadn't heard the name.
"I don't know. It was someone who spoke very fast, and I hardly understood a word. He asked for my mother or father, and when I said they are not home, he left this number and said you should please call him back."
Last night Elisheva was sure that if she'd get such a call, she would not be able to do a thing, and if anything needed to be done, she would leave it to Eliyahu. But since then, morning had dawned, and last night's fears had morphed several times over into different forms. Now, holding the piece of paper with the phone number, she felt more curious than anything else. Intensely curious, in fact. What did this Rosenblit want?
"I'll call," she said. "Thanks, Chani."
Where could she find a quiet place to make the call? Her bedroom? Two-year-old Nati was lying on her bed, focused on his pacifier as he tried to fall asleep. On the floor, Shloimy and Bentzy were silently coloring together. She didn't want to disturb the idyllic scene. The kitchen was out of the question, and so were the dining room, the girls' closed-off porch, and the little bedroom.
She'd go outside.
So that was how she found herself standing behind the building, huddled between the garbage dumpster and the parking lot, calling the mysterious Mr. Rosenblit.
This entry was posted on Monday, May 20th, 2019 at 9:30 am and is filed under General, Serial.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Democratic congressional candidate Anthony Brindisi's campaign on Friday announced it had raised more than $340,000 between April and June, opening up a large cash-on-hand advantage against Republican Rep. Claudia Tenney.
Tenney, a Republican freshman seeking a second term in the 22nd congressional district, raised $176,977 during the same time period.
Brindisi, a member of the state Assembly, has an overall cash advantage, with nearly $1.2 million in the bank compared to $774,603 for Tenney.
Print article This entry was posted by Nick Reisman on June 15, 2018 at 2:26 pm, and is filed under Democrats, NY-22, Republicans. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.


In 32 years at the helm of the Michigan hockey program, Red Berenson has had a lot of teams — some great ones, some good ones and some not-so-good ones.
He spoke consistently throughout this season as if he knew he had a good team, right up until that team gave everything it had before losing to No. 1 seed North Dakota in the regional final in Cincinnati on Saturday.
But I'm guessing that for all Berenson knows about this year's team, he knows next year's could be even better.
And that's why the 76-year-old Michigan hockey coach should return for one more year — to lead that team. He loves to coach seniors, and he could have nine of them next year.
Berenson has been signing one-year contracts since 2009, and with three straight missed NCAA Tournaments, it hasn't always been easy. This year, his team put it all together, and after that, it's clear he's still the right man for the job. For as difficult as their regional, dubbed the "Region of Death," was this weekend, they almost escaped it.
If Berenson decides to retire this year, Manuel will be scrambling to find a replacement. If he stays for one more, it gives Manuel time to decide on one of the many suitable successors Berenson has cultivated — Michigan Tech coach Mel Pearson (who was Berenson's top assistant for 12 years) and current associate head coach Billy Powers (who has been Berenson's top assistant for the last five years) among them.
And, more importantly, if Berenson stays, he could coach the team he has always wanted to coach.
The beliefs Berenson holds as a coach go back a long time. Once, just before he was set to start his playing career at Michigan in the 1950s, the Montreal Canadiens attempted to lure him away to the NHL. The Canadiens tried every which way to get Berenson to fulfill his professional dream, a Canadian native playing on a Canadian team.
Berenson told that story to one of his players, Louie Caporusso — though he has probably told it more than once — in an airport during a trip home years ago.
After returning their school to the NCAA Tournament at age 76, 99.9 percent of coaches would retire. He should be the 0.1 percent, just as he was almost six decades ago.
He came back to Ann Arbor from the NHL's St. Louis Blues in 1984 because he had a soft spot for Michigan and wanted to return his alma mater to greatness. That he did.
Berenson has also been an enduring fixture in college hockey, a perfect representation of the ideals of the sport. He urges his players to stay in school for four years, earn their degree and play alongside their classmates.
Over the years, that ideal has become harder and harder to fulfill. NHL teams pressure players to turn pro early, depriving Berenson of the seniors he loves to coach. Every summer, Berenson takes his seniors on a canoe trip up north. He speaks highly of all of them and cherishes the teams filled with them.
Next year's team could be one of those teams.
The Wolverines will almost certainly bring back at least seven seniors: forwards Max Shuart, Alex Kile and Evan Allen, defensemen Michael Downing, Nolan De Jong and Kevin Lohan and goaltender Zach Nagelvoort.
Then it gets tricky. The other two who could come back as seniors are forwards Tyler Motte and JT Compher, two cogs in the prolific CCM line and two NHL Draft picks with professional futures.
If those two stay, Berenson should, too. If his seniors stick around, he should stick with them.
Even if freshman forward Kyle Connor leaves, the Wolverines need only find a third member of their first line to keep it rolling. They will again have a senior in the net in Nagelvoort, and they'll have a second-year captain in Compher.
Most importantly, numbers-wise, they'll have nine seniors, which is almost unheard of. North Dakota and Boston College, the two teams that won Saturday to advance to the Frozen Four, have four each. With the extra experience, Michigan will have a better chance of making a deeper run into the NCAA Tournament.
Connor has that ticket. So did Dylan Larkin, who left after one season last year and has now scored 43 points — tied for fourth among NHL rookies — for the Detroit Red Wings.
But it doesn't always work out like that. More common these days are cases like Andrew Copp, a captain on last year's team who forwent his senior season and signed with the NHL's Winnipeg Jets, disappointing Berenson in the process.
Yes, how about it, Red? What do you say — one more year?
Lourim can be reached at jlourim@umich.edu and on Twitter @jakelourim.


text:
Donald Cerrone On Meeting With Dana White Over MMAAA
Donald Cerrone said he met with UFC President Dana White during the weekend of UFC 206, and White was okay with Cerrone's involvement in the MMAAA.
The 33-year-old informally met with White and said that both sides were content after the meeting.
Related Article Fighters Predict: Conor McGregor vs. Dustin Poirier | UFC 257
"It went very good. It wasn't a lunch, he just pulled me aside after the media scrum," Cerrone said. "We talked for about 15-20 mins. He's a happy man, and I'm a happy man."
Cerrone is one of board members of the MMAAA, which includes Georges St-Pierre, Cain Velasquez, T.J. Dillashaw, Tim Kennedy and more. Cerrone said White was disappointed he was not made aware that Cerrone would be joining the association, but isn't outright angry at him.
"We were just talking about what I wanted, like what I discussed with (the media), and what he expected out of me," Cerrone said. "It went very well. (He was) 1000% receptive, definitely. We were always in a good place. It's like when you get in trouble with your dad and they don't ground you, but just tell you how disappointed they are — which is even worse. It's kinda what he did to me. It was kind of like a slap in his face. I should've let him know what I was going to get involved with. It is what it is, but we're on the up and up now."
Cerrone defeated Matt Brown with a head kick knockout at UFC 206 on December 11. It was Cerrone's 4th straight win after Cerrone unsuccessfully challenged for the UFC lightweight title last year.
Credit to BloodyElbow.com for the quotes.


Knitty Gritty Savings - Page 3 of 33 - Save cash for your stash!
My latest sales and deals finds!
I'll gladly save today for more yarn on Tuesday!
Welcome to Knitty Gritty Savings, where we help you save cash on your stash!


text:
An Ancient Asteroid Impact May Have Caused a Megatsunami on Mars
The Viking 1 lander arrived on the Martian surface 46 years ago to investigate the planet. It dropped down into what was thought to be an ancient outflow channel. Now, a team of researchers believes they've found evidence of an ancient megatsunami that swept across the planet billions of years ago, less than 600 miles from where Viking landed. Gizmodo reports: In a new paper published today in Scientific Reports, a team identified a 68-mile-wide impact crater in Mars' northern lowlands that they suspect is leftover from an asteroid strike in the planet's ancient past. "The simulation clearly shows that the megatsunami was enormous, with an initial height of approximately 250 meters, and highly turbulent," said Alexis Rodriguez, a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute and lead author of the paper, in an email to Gizmodo. "Furthermore, our modeling shows some radically different behavior of the megatsunami to what we are accustomed to imagining."
Rodriguez's team studied maps of the Martian surface and found the large crater, now named Pohl. Based on Pohl's position on previously dated rocks, the team believes the crater is about 3.4 billion years old — an extraordinarily long time ago, shortly after the first signs of life we know of appeared on Earth. According to the research team's models, the asteroid impact could have been so intense that material from the seafloor may have dislodged and been carried in the water's debris flows. Based on the size of the crater, the team believes the impacting asteroid could have been 1.86 miles wide or 6 miles wide, depending on the amount of ground resistance the asteroid encountered. The impact could have released between 500,000 megatons and 13 million megatons of TNT energy (for comparison, the Tsar Bomba nuclear test was about 57 megatons of TNT energy.) "A clear next step is to propose a landing site to investigate these deposits in detail to understand the ocean's evolution and potential habitability," Rodriguez said. "First, we would need a detailed geologic mapping of the area to reconstruct the stratigraphy. Then, we need to connect the surface modification history to specific processes through numerical modeling and analog studies, including identifying possible mud volcanoes and glacier landforms."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Scientists Have Created the World's Smallest Organism That Moves With Genetic Engineering
Government Scientists 'Approaching What is Required for Fusion' in Breakthrough Energy Research


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Q: Write to child process on standard input, then exit parent process while child process is still running I'm writing a C# console application, where I have a process that spawns a child process and passes it a large string on the child process's standard input using Process.StandardInput.WriteLine(mes).  The problem I'm having is that it seems that the Process.StandardInput.WriteLine(mes) on the parent process doesn't return until the child process terminates, at which point the parent process continues and completes.
I need a way to send the message to the child process in standard input and then terminate the parent process and let the child process continue running.
I think the program is easy to follow.  The parent process calls SendOutput() which calls the Process.StandardInput.Writeline(mes).  After which I would hope it would continue on to the Exit() call.  The child process just reads the string in with Console.ReadLine().
Parent Process Code
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo();
    startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;
    startInfo.RedirectStandardInput = true;
    startInfo.FileName = @"C:\Program Files\jobprinty\jobprintyDlite2020.exe";

    Process process = new Process();
    process.StartInfo = startInfo;
    process.Start();

    string message = GetConsoleInput();

    sendOutput(process, message);

    System.Environment.Exit(0);

}

public static void sendOutput(Process p ,string mes)
{
    p.StandardInput.WriteLine(mes);
}

Child Process Code
public static String GetConsoleInput()
{
    String line = null;
    String completeline = null;

    //reads from standard input into string, "complete line"
    do
    {
        line = Console.ReadLine();
        if (line != null) Console.WriteLine("--" + line);

        //line = line + Environment.NewLine;
        if (line != null) line = line.Trim();

        completeline = completeline + line + Environment.NewLine;

    } while (line != null);

    //delete extra white space from input, complete line
    completeline = completeline.Trim();
    return completeline;

}
public static void Main(string[] args)
{

    //------recieve args from console
     completeline = GetConsoleInput();

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Develop models for understanding how the world works
Colloquia and Seminars
Department of Physics Facebook page
The Physics Department engages students in cutting edge research to advance the frontiers of our understanding of the universe and to innovate practical solutions to societal challenges.
Faculty and students in the department carry out research in a broad range of fields—from a new understanding of quantum mechanics to the search for fundamental particles to robotics and medical imaging.
Fundamentally, physicists develop models for understanding how the world works. The training is a basis for a broad range of careers that rely on analytical problem solving. These fields are as diverse as cosmology, engineering, software development, and financial analysis.
Undergraduate Programs in Physics
Undergraduate Physics Curriculum
Joseph Henry Physics Competition
Student Successes
Graduate Studies in Physics
Physics Graduate Student Curriculum
Graduate Student Successes
List of Old Comprehensive Exams
Past Dissertations
A major focus of the physics department is Information and Computational Physics. This area of physics develops both the foundations of information theory and the computational techniques for extracting useful information from noisy or complex data. Five faculty members, Profs. Caticha, Earle, Knuth, Goyal, and Petrucelli, contribute to this area, which has rapidly lifted Albany to a level of international prominence in the field. Applications are widely varied, including the development of new understanding of the structure of quantum mechanics, the development of autonomous robotics for exploring space, and a new understanding of electronic spectra and of neurological function.
This area of development is closely tied to another rising star of the department, biophysics, which includes Profs. Earle, Khmaladze, Knuth, MacDonald, and Sharikova. In recent years the department has been expanding in particle physics, where our research ranges from experimental work on the ATLAS experiment at CERN (Profs. Ernst, and Jain) and on the LUX/LZ Dark Matter searches (Profs. Levy and Szydagis) to theoretical studies of string theory (Profs. Lunin and Robbins). ATLAS and LUX/LZ are among the world's most high-profile scientific experiments. The department has also maintained strength in two areas related to materials physics, x-ray and electron analysis (Profs. Fotso, Kuan, Lanford, and MacDonald).
Physics Newsletter
UAlbany physics professor Cecilia Levy weighs in on current prospects in physics
Prof. Levy shares her thoughts on where the job market for recent physics graduates is heading, as well as how young graduates entering the industry can be adequately prepared. Read the article here.
Physics Student Josh Martin Teaches Math to Millions on TikTok
Online learning may be the new normal for now and the foreseeable future. But for UAlbany junior Josh Martin, online learning is a personal passion. Martin, a physics major from Cobleskill, has been providing his own brand of online tutoring on YouTube since his freshman year. His videos have mostly consisted of mathematics topics, a core component of the physics curriculum. His channel has more than 60 thousand subscribers, a clear indication that his approach has proven beneficial for a large group of learners.
2nd Combined Symposium April 5-6, 2019
The event is scheduled in Albany, NY for Friday April 5 at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in the NFS Auditorium, and Saturday April 6 in the D'Ambra Auditorium at UAlbany. There will be a poster session during the reception at the 5:30-7:30 PM on Friday April 5 in the Atrium of the SUNY Poly ZEN building. The poster for this event can be downloaded here and if you would like to share your research findings, register by Friday March 8th here.
The World's First Quantum Computer with Herbert Fotso
Herbert Fotso is an assistant professor of physics in UAlbany's College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on theoretical and computational condensed matter physics. In this episode, Herbert gives insight on the global arms race in quantum computing, and where the U.S. stands in the competition to create the world's next quantum computer. The podcast and more can be found here.
Physics 216
On Site: Tuesday - Thursday, 10am-2pm
By Phone: Monday - Friday, 8am-5pm


text:
Rev. Kristin Stoneking
"Saints Town"
Saints Town
Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18
Epworth United Methodist Church, Berkeley, CA
Today is All Saints Day. Today we take time to remember those of our communion we have lost in the last year, but also to remember that we hold onto a handrail of faith that stretches back millennia and stretches forward into eternity.
Three years ago this week, I was in the Holy Land, Israel/Palestine, as part of an interfaith peace delegation. It was my first time there. I had dreamed of visiting the land where Jesus was born, ministered, was crucified and rose, where the mothers and fathers of our faith lived and walked. Our delegation took off from Washington, DC, flew through London and arrived in Tel Aviv, then headed by bus to Jerusalem. I was not unprepared for the fact that what we call the Holy Land is now essentially a war zone, as the state of Israel and indigenous Palestinians battle for control of this very special place. But as we rolled toward the Old City and our hotel in East Jerusalem, a part of the city which is largely Palestinian and Muslim, I was struck by the way violence crackled in the air around the armed 19 year olds of the Israeli Defense Forces on nearly every corner we passed. Jerusalem, jeru-salam, means, literally, city of peace, but the scene felt to me far from peaceful. If you've been to the holy land, I wonder if you, too, were struck by this dissonance.
Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, East Jerusalem has been occupied by Israel, as has the West Bank and other parts of Palestine. The international community considers this an illegal occupation under international law. Israel disputes this interpretation. After Israel itself, the US is the largest funder of the Israeli military. As US citizens, our delegation, which included Jews and Christians, was in Israel to express our opposition to this funding, organize with other activists, and further our hope for peace.
Our group was led by Tali Ruskin, a Jewish activist, a rabbi's daughter from Baltimore who was clear that to work for the rights of the Palestinian people was a way to reclaim the core of her Judaism and carry out the Jewish obligation of Tikkun Olam, to heal the world. She was the most articulate in explaining how working for Palestinian rights and anti-semitism are not the same thing.
And our group was led by Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie. Rachel was a 23 year-old from Olympia, Washington, a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement, who was killed standing in front of an Israeli bulldozer, attempting to block it from flattening a Palestinian home. Instead, the bulldozer proceeded, ignoring Rachel in her bright orange vest. Rachel Corrie has become a Palestinian martyr and it was not uncommon for us on our trip to encounter her face graffitied on a wall or her name referenced in street poetry. Her parents, Craig and Cindy, formerly an insurance man and a community volunteer, took up Rachel's cause upon her death, suing the Israeli government and advocating for Palestinian rights. Now, Craig and Cindy have become heroes to the Palestinian people in their own right.
On All Saints Day we were in the city of Hebron. In Christian tradition, All Saints' Day is a time during which Christians lift up those who have struggled in faith, to do good and be the body of Christ on earth, and in death have joined the church triumphant. In Palestine, this takes on special meaning even though most Palestinians are Muslim. There, those who have died resisting the occupation live on in those who continue to struggle for justice and freedom.
Hebron City is also known as "Ghost Town." Fifteen years ago, there was a massacre in the city's mosque by American born Baruch Goldstein which killed 29 and injured 125 more. It resulted in Hebron City being put on lockdown by the Israeli military to protect the 800 Israeli settlers who lived there even though the victims of the massacre were Palestinian. To walk in the Old City of Hebron is to feel the presence of souls who used to fill the paths seeing friends and family, buying special gifts or daily food, living life. But the streets are empty now, and it is clear why Hebron City is known as "Ghost Town."
In the cruelness of this lockdown, the center of life for the community that was grieving was cut off, and the healing that can come from being together and participating in regular activities of daily living was prevented. Military checkpoints proliferated and lockdowns have persisted, negatively affecting the lives of roughly 500 Jews and significantly and adversely impacting the nearly 200,000 Palestinians who still live in Hebron. Violence has begotten more violence.
The main street in Hebron City is known as Shuhada Street. The once bustling Shuhada Street is now deserted. As we started up Shuhada Street, the graffiti that faced us read, "This is Palestine. Fight Ghost Town. Open Shuhada Street" in red English script. A few kids asking for money, selling bracelets and embroideries approached our group, and many gave small donations or bought items. A few shopkeepers saw our group and opened their shops, and we talked with them about their lives and provided a small amount of business. It was cold and misty, the mood eerie.
Our scripture today from the book of Daniel is set in the time of the Babylonian exile of the Jews around the sixth century before the common era. The stories in the book follow Daniel, a young Jew trying to maintain his faith and religious identity in the face of a world dominating power. It was a time of geopolitical turmoil, not unlike our times today, and the dream which is in our scripture today which you heard Marty read reflects this. Hear these words again, "I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me. I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter: "As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever--forever and ever."
The four great beasts and the four great kings in the dream symbolized the four great empires of the time who struggled against each other: the Neo-Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians and the Greeks. Isn't amazing how more than 2500 years later we still are struggling with other nations, causing untold suffering as powers seek to dominate? Isn't amazing how more than 2500 years later we still live in a context where we struggle to be faithful, to act in ways that bring about justice for all of our siblings? It can feel exhausting sometimes, overwhelming.
But the scripture from Daniel ends with these words: "the holy ones of the most high will possess the kingdom and live forever and ever." What might seem like an endless struggle is actually life and leads to life eternal. To struggle to be faithful, to work for the peace and security of others is life. In fact it is not just what makes life on this earth meaningful but it is the pathway to the life everlasting. God, the ancient one, the most high, has been present since the beginning of time, is with us now, and ever will be.
Daniel, a young Jew who lived 2500 years ago, who struggled to maintain his religious tradition in the face of a dominating power lives on in us, who, miraculously, know his story. We receive the baton of faith from him seeking to stay faithful ourselves in a world that tries to pull us into violence, domination or sometimes just complaining, lack of gratitude or distraction.
On that All Saints Day in Hebron City, at the end of the street, we came upon a café called the Rachel Corrie Café. It's outside wall and storefront adorned with images of the 23 year old from Olympia, Washington, but it's front shut with a metal roll up door. We stood there quietly, reverently, looking at the images, the weight of the day heavy. But someone recognized Cindy and Craig Corrie, Rachel's parents, and ran to get the shopkeeper. Within minutes, the shop was opened for us and our whole group was given coffee. The coldness and heaviness of the day melted in the shelter and warm rich Arabic coffee. Where there had been a chill and a closed shop front, there was suddenly warmth and life again.
On Shuhada Street, the veil between past, present and future became thin. Interestingly, "Shuhada" is the Arabic word for "martyr." Those we have lost were with us, and those from the future showed up for a minute with life and hope born out of persistence and sacrifice and solidarity. What was Ghost Town became Saints Town as we communed with those who from their labors rested and brought to us the assurance that ultimately, somehow in some way, peace would reign on earth.
As we celebrate All Saints today, we recall the life effort of all the faithful. Some were martyrs and some were just people who showed up at the home of a friend in need, came regularly to worship, and bore witness to a God who will never abandon us. They are mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, sons, daughters, friends, faithful. And they are with us today and always. How could this not be true when we, Christians living in California bear witness to the life of a young Jew living in Palestine 2500 years ago? Praise God for the saints of old and the saints of today. May we be faithful to their memories, receiving the baton they pass to us, seeking peace, and demanding justice. Let us gather around the table and know we are in communion with all the saints, past, present and future. Amen.


MOD Magazine is the new generation of fashion & creative culture. Since exploding through the digital landscape in 2012, we've become a top destination for the trend-seeking sartorialist. Our dedication to discovering fresh faces keeps us future-focused and constantly ahead of the curve. By showcasing the most trailblazing talent of the emerging fashion community, we're bridging the gap in today's market, proudly serving as a platform for tomorrow's industry leaders. With stunning visual aesthetic & cutting-edge content, we seek to inspire, inform & entertain.


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Tag: Tukwila Village Food Hall
Tukwila Village Food Hall Will Open in 2020 With State and Community Support
August 22, 2019 by Denise Miller in Announcements
Construction is underway at our Food Innovation Network's new commercial kitchen and community hub! Tukwila Village Food Hall will be home to FIN's Food Business Incubator, which has already helped launch 12 businesses headed by low-income South King County residents, primarily immigrants and refugees.
Food businesses have traditionally been a way for many striving immigrants and low-income families to make a living. However, skyrocketing real estate and rental rates are making it difficult for these entrepreneurs to access commercial kitchen and restaurant spaces in South King County. Tukwila Village Food Hall will provide the space and support to help entrepreneurs launch and scale to successful local businesses. The Food Hall will also provide a community hub—a space where people can gather to learn about and celebrate the community's rich food traditions.
The 2,900-square-foot facility will include a commercial kitchen with four cook stations, five food retail stalls (including one stall designated for pop-ups and cooking demos), and a community dining area. The space will accommodate 20 food businesses, including eight that will rent stalls in the public Food Hall. Other businesses will use the kitchen for off-site sales, such as catering and farmers markets.
The Food Hall will be in Tukwila Village, a mixed development project with 400 new affordable and market-rate apartments. Construction began in late 2018, and the Food Hall will be ready for operations next spring.
Our new facility will be located on Tukwila International Boulevard just north of Tukwila Library. The building is adjacent to the plaza where FIN already operates the Tukwila Village Farmers Market.
State and community support
Building out the facility and installing kitchen equipment will cost $850,000. Thanks to our local funding partners and the State of Washington, we've already raised more than half of this amount!
Communities of Opportunity and the Port of Seattle have provided support in the pilot testing, pre-construction needs, and program expansion.
The State of Washington has appropriated $400,000 in its capital budget to support the project; the budget request was sponsored by Sen. Bob Hasegawa, and supported by dozens of local businesses, nonprofit organizations, and community leaders.
We continue to seek sponsors, and have launched a capital campaign to help raise the remaining funds. You can help open Tukwila Village Food Hall by contributing online and joining our crowdfunding campaign!
Food Business Incubator participants use income their businesses generate to support their families' health and wellbeing.
Subscribe to FIN's email updates to receive news about Tukwila Village Food Hall and FIN programs and events.
Visit FIN's website to read more about Tukwila Village Food Hall and the Food Business Incubator, and watch our video featuring Incubator participants:
Tags: economic development, Food Innovation Network, Tukwila Village Food Hall


Infuse an old world feel into your home with this traditional cocktail table. Hardwood solids and oak veneers feature a heavily distressed finish to add a rustic appeal. Heavy, Spanish influenced turned legs support planked tops and attach a base shelf. Square peg accents complete the classic design and will keep you interested for years to come.
The Sedona Traditional Cocktail Table by Liberty Furniture at Miskelly Furniture in the Jackson, Pearl, Madison, Ridgeland, Flowood Mississippi area. Product availability may vary. Contact us for the most current availability on this product.
The Sedona collection is a great option if you are looking for Traditional furniture in the Jackson, Pearl, Madison, Ridgeland, Flowood Mississippi area.


In Via Giulia, the noblest street of the old Umbrian borough of Spello, is located the Antica Dimora Julia, a refined, well-finished holiday apartment representing an ideal solution for those willing to visit Umbria region and its thousand faces.
The dwelling, elegant and simple on the same time, creates a typical and traditional environment, with its internal stone walls, exposed wooden-beams, arches and vaults, showing its Roman origins in the internal cellar. This old dwelling is the perfect mix among comfort and intimacy, the ideal place for a relaxing holiday, starting point for discovering the best sites of Umbria, this wonderful territory also known as "the green heart of Italy".
The apartment is located in a strategic position being few steps away from the main square of Spello, town famous for its Infiorata (flowers street composition) while Assisi and the Franciscan sites are just 10 kms away by car. Stefano ed Elena, the young owners of this dwelling, will be happy to help you to experience Umbrian culture, tradition, nature, religiosity, taste and any other kind of possible amusement so that your stay will be pleasant and unforgettable.


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Q: flutter - Canvas drawImage returns blank I am trying to create an image using Canvas and Picture Recorder.
I am able to output an image with two circles correctly using..
c.drawCircle(offset, 20.0, paint);
c.drawCircle(offset2, 20.0, paint);

But using following code returns a blank image
c.drawImage(imagetoDraw, offset3, paint);

This is how I am importing imagetoDraw asset
  getImageFromAsset(){
    rootBundle.load("images/1.jpg").then( (bd) {
      Uint8List lst = new Uint8List.view(bd.buffer);
      ui.instantiateImageCodec(lst).then( (codec) {
        codec.getNextFrame().then(
                (frameInfo) {
              imagetoDraw = frameInfo.image;
              print ("bkImage instantiated: $imagetoDraw");
            }
      );
    });
  });
  }

What am I missing?
complete code:
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
//import 'package:path_provider/path_provider.dart';
import 'dart:ui' as ui;
import 'dart:typed_data';
import 'dart:async';
//import 'dart:io';
import 'package:flutter/services.dart';

void main() => runApp(new MyApp());

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  // This widget is the root of your application.
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return new MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter Demo',
      theme: new ThemeData(
        primarySwatch: Colors.blue,
      ),
      home: new MyHomePage(title: 'Flutter Demo Home Page'),
    );
  }
}

class MyHomePage extends StatefulWidget {
  MyHomePage({Key key, this.title}) : super(key: key);
  final String title;

  @override
  _MyHomePageState createState() => new _MyHomePageState();
}

class _MyHomePageState extends State<MyHomePage> {
  Image _image;
  ui.Image imagetoDraw;

  @override
  void initState() {
    super.initState();
    _image = new Image.network(
      'https://www.google.com/images/branding/googlelogo/2x/googlelogo_color_120x44dp.png',
    );

    getImageFromAsset();
  }

  getImageFromAsset(){
    rootBundle.load("images/1.jpg").then( (bd) {
      Uint8List lst = new Uint8List.view(bd.buffer);
      ui.instantiateImageCodec(lst).then( (codec) {
        codec.getNextFrame().then(
                (frameInfo) {
              imagetoDraw = frameInfo.image;
              print ("bkImage instantiated: $imagetoDraw");
            }
      );
    });
  });
  }

  _generateImage() {
    _generate().then((val) => setState(() {
          _image = val;
        }));
  }

  Future<Image> _generate() async {
    ui.PictureRecorder recorder = new ui.PictureRecorder();
    Canvas c = new Canvas(recorder);
    var rect = new Rect.fromLTWH(0.0, 0.0, 100.0, 100.0);
    c.clipRect(rect);

    final paint = new Paint();
    paint.strokeWidth = 2.0;
    paint.color = const Color(0xFF333333);
    paint.style = PaintingStyle.fill;

    final offset = new Offset(10.0, 10.0);
    final offset2 = new Offset(90.0, 90.0);

    final offset3 = new Offset(30.0, 30.0);

    c.drawCircle(offset, 20.0, paint);
    c.drawCircle(offset2, 20.0, paint);

    c.drawImage(imagetoDraw, offset3, paint);

    var picture = recorder.endRecording();

    final pngBytes = await picture
        .toImage(100, 100)
        .toByteData(format: ui.ImageByteFormat.png);

    var image = Image.memory(pngBytes.buffer.asUint8List());
    return image;
  }

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return new Scaffold(
      appBar: new AppBar(
        title: new Text(widget.title),
      ),
      body: new Center(
        child: new Column(
          mainAxisAlignment: MainAxisAlignment.center,
          children: <Widget>[
            _image,
          ],
        ),
      ),
      floatingActionButton: new FloatingActionButton(
        onPressed: _generateImage,
        tooltip: 'Generate',
        child: new Icon(Icons.add),
      ),
    );
  }
}

A: This seems to be a GPU-related issue, as mentioned in the comments flutter run --enable-software-rendering can be a workaround. I've tried your locally and it works well without issues.


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BATTLE OF THE PARTIES
Battle of the Art World Parties: The Whitney Biennial vs. The Frick's Young Fellows Ball
Was the zealous crowd at the Whitney Biennial's long-awaited opening even younger than that at the Frick Collection's Young Fellows Ball?
by Stephanie Eckardt
Mike Coppola/Getty Images
This week, the very one that saw Donald Trump call for a total elimination of the National Endowment of the Arts and the National Endowment of the Humanities, the art world carried on as usual—that is to say, it opened buzzy exhibitions, and dutifully organized splashy parties to celebrate them. The Whitney Museum literally plowed ahead with its festivities when the snowstorm Stella forced the institution to shift its long-awaited opening of the 2017 Whitney Biennial from Tuesday to Wednesday night, meaning a few civilians got to sneak into the VIP opening with the likes of Zoë Kravitz and Julianne Moore. Thanks in part to its 30-something curators, the occasion somehow seemed to attract an even younger showing than that at the Frick Collection's Young Fellows Ball the next night, which was once again hosted by the designer Carolina Herrera, this time with a collection of J. M. W. Turner paintings. See how the two parties measured up, here.
The Whitney: The Whitney Museum, which has now truly settled into its new Renzo Piano-designed home along the Hudson River with its first-ever downtown biennial.
The Frick: The Frick Collection all the way up on East 70th Street, home to plenty of marble, ionic columns, and a courtyard complete with a fountain.
After Dark at the Frick Collection with Carolina Herrera
Inside the 2017 Frick Collection Young Fellows Ball at New York's Frick Collection, in partnership with Carolina Herrera.
Host committee:
The Whitney: Curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks and Whitney Museum director Adam Weinberg.
The Frick: Carolina Herrera, along with chairmen like W's Rickie De Sole and Nicky Hilton Rothschild, who swam with the art crowd this week after turning up at the Art Production Fund's (much wetter) gala.
Installation by Ajay Kurian at the VIP Opening of the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
Guest list:
The Whitney: VIPs like Julianne Moore, Zoë Kravitz, Tavi Gevinson, Zosia Mamet, and St. Vincent (aka Annie Clark); artists like Raúl de Nieves, Ajay Kurian, Jordan Wolfson, and Chloe Wise; and all the patrons, press, and other art-world names who made it after Tuesday's cancellation.
The Frick: Six-hundred-plus high-society patrons of the arts, including the designer Wes Gordon.
The Whitney: Plainclothes mixed with the full-on looks from celebs, like St. Vincent's head-to-toe Opening Ceremony ruffles.
The Frick: Gowns upon gowns, either by or mimicking Carolina Herrera, and all doing their best to follow the dress code of "luminescent black tie."
Petra Collins and Tavi Gevinson at the VIP Opening of the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images
Refreshments:
The Whitney: Bowls of candied nuts for visitors to snack on while waiting at the packed open bars, which stretched from the downstairs lobby all the way up to the eighth floor, where visitors could also take in the Basquiats and Harings in the museum's concurrent '80s painting show—after depositing their drinks, of course.
The Frick: Champagne, champagne, champagne, which also had to be kept a certain distance from the art, making for opulent hallways full of endless abandoned, half-empty flutes.
Eye candy:
The Whitney: Forget '80s painting: the real star, after three years, 200-plus studio visits, one heartbreaking election, and an unquantifiable amount of hype regarding the show's two young curators, was the 2017 Whitney Biennial. That meant everything from ultraviolent VR by Jordan Wolfson to floor-to-ceiling paintings by Dana Schutz to powerful scenes of black domestic life by both Deana Lawson and Henry Taylor.
The Frick: The always-stunning permanent collection, plus a new special exhibition of 19th-century paintings by J. M. W. Turner that spotlight his affinity for ports.
Julianne Moore at the VIP Opening of the 2017 Whitney Biennial.
See Kendall Jenner, Performance Artist, Channel Icons Like Marina Abramovic and Yoko Ono:


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The Head of Education for Children with Special Learning Difficulties, Mr Bernard Boaheng, has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to establish special in-service training programmes for teachers in areas of learning disabilities.
Speaking at a workshop of teachers in Accra, Mr Boaheng said until teachers were properly trained and equipped with the necessary tools to identify children with special learning disabilities, it would be difficult for them to understand and detect children with such needs.
The workshop, organised by a non-governmental organisation, Special Learning Difficulties Demystified (SpLendid), brought together both public and private school teachers in Accra and Tema.
Participants were introduced to the "hidden word" of special learning difficulties.
There are disabilities that usually cannot be seen outward. A typical special learning difficulty is dyslexia, a reading disorder. A person with this disorder may be very intelligent and doing well in other subjects, but has consistent problems in reading, writing and spelling," he said.
Mr Boaheng mentioned Dyscalculia, difficulty in Mathematics; attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, difficulty in attention and concentration; Irlen Syndrome and visual perception disorder as some of the common special learning difficulties with children.
According to him, It was estimated that in any population about 10 per cent of people had one or more special learning difficulties.
Mr Boaheng also called for changes in the education curriculum in order to make it "friendly to children with special learning difficulties".
"Some children prefer to hold or see something to assist them understand. With such people, there should be a lot of teaching and learning materials to support them," he said.


The American Red Cross of the Pacific Coast is opening an evacuation center at noon on Wednesday, located at the Earl Warren Showgrounds, 3400 Calle Real, Santa Barbara, CA 93105. Anyone evacuated or otherwise affected by the incoming storm is welcome to find relief and comfort at this location. If needed, the Red Cross is prepared to transition to a full sheltering operation.
Additional volunteers and locations are on alert and ready to respond throughout the region, should severe weather continue to move through the area. The Red Cross is working closely with government and community partners to provide relief and comfort for anyone affected by evacuations. Residents are encouraged to follow evacuation orders from local law enforcement and stay informed on the latest updates by visiting readysbc.org.
Watch the patterns of storm water drainage on slopes near your home.
Before re-entering your home, look outside for loose powerlines, damaged gas lines, foundation cracks, or other damage.
Find these and more flood or landslide safety tips online at redcross.org, or download the Red Cross Emergency App, free for smartphones and tablets.
You can help people affected by disasters like landslides, wildfires, and countless others by making a gift to American Red Cross Disaster Relief. Your gift enables the Red Cross to prepare for, respond to, and help people recover from disasters big and small. Visit redcross.org, call 1-800-RED-CROSS, or text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation.


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