Portland... On the Move

Issue 80 ~ News from your Town Hall ~ Spetember 2000

Megan’s Law; Quarries to Appear on Television; Volunteer Corps; P.R.I.D.E. Auction; Cancer Genes; Exercising; and more...

 

Education Update The Very Real Danger of Sexual Predators What Every Parent Should Know (And Do!) By: Joseph R. Castagnola    Superintendent of Portland Schools Edward L. Kalinowski    First Selectman Although concerns about attacks on our children by strangers have always been very real to parents, recent events such as the abduction of Molly Bish in Western Massachusetts and some well-publicized incidents of sexual predators moving into family communities upon their release from incarceration, leave us all feeling a need for heightened vigilance. As we open school this year, we thought that some reminders about precautions to take and information that is available might assist parents in redoubling their efforts to protect their children. First, as many parents are aware, many states, including Connecticut, have passed notification laws, which provide certain information to neighborhood residents when a convicted sex offender moves into their community. These statutes, named Megan’s Laws after a young New Jersey girl whose death at the hands of a sexual predator fueled the campaign to pass such laws, do provide certain types of notice. Megan’s Law requires persons, who have either been convicted or found not guilty by reason of a mental disease or defect of a "sexually violent offense," to register with the Connecticut Department of Public Safety (DPS). The individual must provide specific information, including his name and address, when he registers.

Other individuals required to register under this law include persons convicted of sexually violent offenses or felonies committed for sexual purposes; or persons found not guilty of such offenses by reason of a mental disease or defect in other states, federal courts, military tribunals or foreign courts. All persons required to register must promptly inform DPS of any changes in their residence. DPS is required by statute to maintain a registry containing the names, addresses and other required information of the persons listed above. The registry is a public record that must be accessible to the public during normal business hours and on the Internet. Local police departments and state police barracks must make the registry information transmitted to it by DPS available to the public during normal business hours as well. Local and/or state police, the Judicial Department, and other state agencies may, in their discretion, provide information from the registry to government agencies, private organizations and/or private individuals if the information "is necessary to protect the public or any individual in any jurisdiction" from a person subject to registration under the new law. While the information that may be provided to community residents under Megan’s Law is certainly a step in the right direction, parents should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the existence of these laws. The information is available, both from the local police department and on the Internet, but cannot assist parents who fail to use it. Parents should not rely on local or state officials to tell them about the individuals registered in the database, but should check it themselves on a regular basis. There is no substitute for teaching your child to be wary, and aware of strangers. While none of us wants our children to live in fear, it is important to teach your child not to get into a car or go into a building with a stranger, and always to inform you when any stranger approaches him or her, whether at the park, on the street, or in the playground. We hope this information and advice will assist Portland parents in having a safe and healthy school year.

 

The first Labor Day observance took place on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City. Members of the Central Labor Union were attending a national conference and took the occasion to march in rallies calling for an 8-hour work day. The first strike for shorter workdays, though, actually occurred 57 years earlier when carpenters in Boston walked out, demanding a 10-hour day. The CLU staged a similar demonstration in 1883, urging unions in other cities to follow its lead and celebrate a "workman’s holiday" on the first Monday of September. In the years following, many states enacts legislation to recognize the day. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland’s action on ordering U.S. troops to break a strike of railroad workers in Pullman, Illinois – which led to rioting and the death of two protesters evoked criticism of his harsh measures. Six days after the strike ended, Cleveland signed legislation to make Labor Day a legal, national holiday to appease labor, many said. Youth Services Information Line: Call: 342-6758 Portland Quarries to Appear on Positively Connecticut!!! Connecticut Public Broadcasting Station is in the process of creating a five minute segment on the brownstone quarries! Diane Smith of Positively Connecticut and radio talk show fame is producing this effort. Filming is expected to begin in early September, with an airing target date of late October. While the exact content of the piece has yet to be determined, we expect that Jack Dillon will be assisting the video crew with a canoe ride in the larger quarry. He will be pointing out many sights of interest, and relate some of the influence the quarries had on Portland’s history. We also expect that Bob McDougall, President of the Portland Historical Society, will serve as a consultant, along with Assistant Town Planner Nancy Mueller. We’ll keep you posted on the progress in our October edition.

Safety First! Workplace Eye Injuries Can be Prevented More than a thousand Americans suffer eye injuries each day, many of them while on the job. At least 90% of these injuries could be prevented, reports Prevent Blindness America, by workers wearing appropriate eye protection. Three out of five workers who experienced temporary or permanent vision loss were wearing no eye protection, according to results of a recent survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 40% of workers who did wear protection wore the wrong kind. Workers should wear safety eye-wear whenever there is a chance that machines or operations may present the hazard of flying objects, chemicals or harmful radiation. Safety lenses are available in industrial-thickness glass, plastic and polycarbonate materials. Each type offers certain advantages and disadvantages. Glass lenses provide good scratch resistance and can withstand chemical exposure. They can also accommodate a broad range of prescription. On the downside, glass is heavy and can be uncomfortable. Plastic and polycarbonate lenses weigh less, protect against welding splatter and are not likely to fog. But unless specially coated, they are not as scratch resistant as glass. They also cannot accommodate as wide a range of prescriptions. Polycarbonate lenses are the strongest and best at resisting impact. To learn more about protecting your eyes at work, contact PBA at 500 Remington Road, Schaumburg IL 61073, (800) 331-2020 0r check out their website at: www.prevent-blindness.org.

 

By: Doris Sherrow This year’s Portland Historical Society calendar will feature photographs from the prolific historical research of Jessie Alsop for the Colonial Dames Old Houses of Connecticut project. In the early 20th century, the Colonial Dames began to inventory the oldest houses in the various towns. Local history buffs did this research (people like me living half a century ago). The form they had to fill out was lengthy and complex. They had to shoot a clear photograph of the house for the front page, and describe, in detail, its exterior. They had to describe each room, noting fireplaces, paneling, chair railing, wainscoting, courting benches, triple-run staircases, and a host of colonial-period architectural details. If there was a local historic name for the house, they jotted it down in the blanks for "Known as..." Then they embarked on the tangled puzzle of the historical title search, transcribing the essence of each deed onto the form. Sometimes you can hopscotch from buyer to seller to buyer to seller to original builder in a single afternoon. Sometimes not: the c.1690 William Cornwell house, which stood on Glastonbury Turnpike until a decade ago, took me one full 37 ½ hour week to nail down in 1980! (But what a week that was---!) Jessie Alsop was born on Staten Island in 1875, although she was a descendant of the well-to-do Middletown Alsops. Somewhere on her family tree was poet Richard Alsop, who had been one of the early 1800s literary group known as the "Hartford Wits." Jessie’s father’s business took the family to the midwest where she grew up, but in adulthood she came to Middletown to live with her aunt, Lucy Alsop. She worked as a clerk at the Middletown National Bank for many years, retiring in 1934. All in all, she wrote several pamphlets and books on local history, numerous columns for the Middletown Press, and completed the forms for nine Colonial Dames monographs. These are filed at the Connecticut State Library; Portland Public Library has photocopies of them. Miss Alsop’s photographs were taken around 1948 and often show how these buildings have changed in the intervening half-century. My house, for example, the Job Bates house, didn’t have its east side picture window at that time, just an ordinary double-hung 2-over-2 window.

Portland Public Library also has a file of pictures and partial research for perhaps 40 other old houses for which the Colonial Dames forms were not completed or submitted to the State Library. Consequently this file contained original photographs! This year’s Historical Society calendar, which we hope to have ready for the Portland Agricultural Fair in early October, will show fifteen of these old photographs. One actually dates from 1912, and another, perhaps the 1890s. Many of these houses have since been researched by the Greater Middletown Preservation Trust in their 1979-80 project, and we can supply you with the builder’s name. Of the fifteen, ten are still standing, though perhaps changed. Three are gone. And two--we have no idea where or what they are or were! We are offering these old photographs in the hope that someone will recognize them and tell us! One house stands on a slight rise behind a white picket fence--or at least it did in 1948! It has dark wood shingle siding, original 12/12 and 8/12 windows picked out in white trim, and a center chimney. At first, I thought it was the Elisha Shepard house at 32 Indian Hill Avenue. After I had gazed at this picture for, all totaled, several hours, it hit me that the Elisha Shepard house has a 5-bay façade and this has 4 bays. (A "bay" in this sense is an opening, door or window, on the front.) So it’s not the Elisha Shepard house! The other "mystery house" is a classic 5-bay, 2-story center chimney colonial with a Victorian bay window added to the left side. This photograph was not taken by Jessie Alsop--she was probably still out west, or maybe even just a tot in Staten Island when this picture was snapped! Near the house are a boy of 8 or 10, a bearded man, possibly his father, and, near the open front door, a woman in a long dress with her hair pinned up--likely the mother. In the foreground sit a white-haired, white-bearded old man (the grandfather?) with his cane clutched in one hand and his broad-brimmed hat doffed in the other, and a sweet-faced little girl with chin-length hair and a dog at her knee. At first I thought this was the house referred to in a typed sheet next to the picture--that house was reputed to be haunted! Then I realized the haunted house had been made of stone, and this house is clearly clapboard. Consequently we have no idea where this house is, or was, either! So come to the Portland Agricultural Fair, look for the Historical booth, and get yourself a set of pictures that haven’t been seen for half a century. And please, let us know where the two mystery houses are! Or were!

 

Make Sure That Your Child’s Bike is Safe Make your child’s bike is safe by following this advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission: See that the bike fits. Here’s how to tell: Sitting on the seat, hands on the handlebar, your child should be able to place the balls of both feet on the ground. When standing and straddling the center bar, the child should be able to put both feet on the ground with about one inch of clearance between the crotch and the bar. Be sure that the bike has safety devices, such as front, rear, pedal, side-rim and wheel reflectors. A bell or horn is also worth installing. Keep the bicycle in good repair and enough air in the tires. Ever Healthy, Ever Green Cancer: In the Genes? You’ve probably read or heard news accounts about the many "cancer genes" that have been discovered in the past few years, such as BRCA1 for breast cancer and APC for colon cancer. More than 60 genes have been linked to cancer thus far. These scientific breakthroughs may give the impression that cancer is largely an inherited disease, but in fact experts estimate only about 5 to 10% of all cancers can be explained by inheriting a "cancer gene." The overwhelming majority of cancers appear to be caused by genetic damage that occurs during a person’s lifetime damage that can be triggered by environmental factors, such as diet, smoking, chemical pollutants, sunlight or exposure to certain viruses. Even "cancer genes" are not an inevitable route to cancer, and may be affected by dietary and other lifestyle behaviors. Most scientists agree that cancer is actually an accumulation of genetic changes that take place over a long period of time perhaps as long as 10 to 30 years. Because it can take so long for cancer to show up, it’s often hard to say what combination of inherited and environmental factors contributed to the disease. The upside to cancer’s long incubation period is that there may be many more opportunities to derail the disease before it starts or to treat it at its earliest stages.

Once scientists determine what makes "watchdog" genes do or not do their job, they will be better to tell us what preventative measures we can take to keep those genes performing at their optimum. Knowing that you have a gene that makes you susceptible to cancer may, for example, provide the impetus needed to quit smoking or have mammograms more frequently. The day when it may be possible to receive customized diet and lifestyle advice based on our unique genetic blueprints is still in the future. A lot is known about cancer prevention and early detection, however information you can put to use today. Here are some basic steps everyone can take that might help prevent cancer: ·Eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables and 6 or more servings of grains every day. Don’t depend on supplements they can’t give you the complex assortment of nutrients and other protective substances that whole foods can, not to mention fiber. ·Keep physically active. Studies suggest that people with active lifestyles have lower risk for certain cancers than those who are sedentary. ·Don’t smoke or use tobacco products. Tobacco has been linked to nearly one third of all cancer deaths, not just lung cancer. ·Use a sunscreen with SPF 15 or more. ·Get regular screening checkups, including mammography, prostate exams, sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy, skin exams and Pap tests. ·Discuss any family history of cancer carefully with your physician. He or she may recommend you receive certain screening tests more frequently than generally recommended, or advise you to take other preventative lifestyle measures. To learn more about the link between genes and cancer, order Nutrition, Genetics and Cancer, a brochure from the American Institute for Cancer Research, by calling 1-800-843-8114. If you believe you are at a higher risk for an inherited form of cancer and are interested in genetic screening, you can have your physician obtain a list of testing centers by contacting the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer information Service at 1-800-422-6237. Jewish New Year September 29 - October 1. Rosh Hashanah, Hebrew for "head of the year," begins at sunset on this day. Jews begin 10 days of repentance and spiritual renewal.

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