It Takes a Village...

MARCH 21, 2016
Central Mass. organizations fight childhood obesity

TARYN PLUMB

As the old adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child.

Adopting that philosophy, numerous area organizations are pooling resources and joining forces to combat youth obesity, which affects more than a third of local children and teenagers.

"The case against obesity has been made," said Jennifer Madson, associate director of programs at Girls, Inc. of Worcester, noting the increased risk of health problems in obese kids, such as diabetes and asthma, as well as impacts to mental health. "We are trying to find as creative and engaging ways as possible to address it. There's never enough that can be done." According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. children aged 6 to 11 who are classified obese increased from 7 percent in 1980 to 18 percent in 2012, while the rate of obesity in those aged 12 to 19 jumped from 5 to nearly 21 percent over the same period.

Youth from lower-income households – inner-city areas, for example, or, at the other end of the spectrum, isolated rural areas – are at an even greater risk of becoming obese.

"Poverty and obesity go hand-in-hand," said Kelsa Zereski, director of philanthropy for the Reliant Medical Group Foundation, which gifts annual grants to local organizations that dedicate resources to batting obesity.

Community effort

In 2015, Reliant provided $150,500 to 30 local charities, funding is made possible largely through two major fundraisers, a charity auction and golf classic in the spring and a 5K in the fall.

"It is cheaper to order off the dollar menu at a fast food restaurant," Zereski said, "than to go into the grocery store and purchase fresh food to make a healthy meal for your family."

In the inner city, particularly, children have limited access to sports fields and open areas, said Madson, and many are simply deterred from going outside because they live in high-crime areas.

"It screams all the more that we need to do these types of programs," she said. Many of the 1,800 girls served by Girls Inc. fit into this high-risk category.

Girls, Inc. threads the themes of health, fitness and nutrition throughout its daily initiatives.

Through its Fit Girls program, participants are involved in 100 hours of healthy activities over the school year, such as swimming or dance-offs – or hiking or boating in the summer – and are given healthy snacks daily. Various nutrition programs, meanwhile, inform them about reading and understanding nutrition facts or different ways to get the recommended amount of calcium.

"Nutrition can be incorporated into everything," said Madson. "Fitness can be incorporated into everything."

One program that organizations have found to be particularly effective is "5-2-1-0 – Let's Go!"

Initially developed in 2006 in Maine, the effort stresses a numbers approach: 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, 2 hours or less of screen time, 1 hour or more of physical activity, and 0 sugar drinks.

"We did see an increase in healthy eating choices and physical activity," said Cindy Landry, school age director at YWCA Central Massachusetts, which held a 5-2-1-0 pilot last year at Worcester's Roosevelt and Wawecus Road elementary schools.

As part of that, 91 students from 14 local schools spent two days a week doing physical activities, learning about nutrition, and making snacks such as guacamole and dairy- and nut-free pesto.

Liking broccoli

Reliant Pediatrics has teamed up with YMCA Central Massachusetts to offer a similar initiative at its Central Community Branch in Worcester and Boroughs Family Branch in Westborough.

According to Dr. Martha Waite, a Spencer-based Reliant pediatrician, over the course of eight weeks, children work with nutritionists and personal trainers and do daily fitness activities. Participants establish their own goals to eventually work up to the 5-2-1-0 standard; for example, decreasing their soda drinks from three a day to one (and eventually none), or slowly increasing physical activity to 20 minutes a day (and gradually up to an hour).

So far, 110 children have participated in seven sessions of the program (through which they are required to bring at least one family member) and can maintain momentum with an alumni class.

"We really encourage an entire family to undergo a lifestyle change," said Waite.

In YWCA Central Massachusetts' Learning 4 Fun After School program children do 45 minutes of physical activity a day, learn ways to wean themselves off candy and soda, and plant, taste, smell and study the elements of fresh vegetables and herbs.

"Maybe they didn't even realize that they would like something like broccoli," said Landry. "It's opening their minds."

This is a key emphasis of the Community Harvest Project's Sprouting Minds initiative. Launched in 2013, the nonprofit based at Brigham Hill Community Farm in North Grafton offers various iterations of the program for different ages (pre-k through 12th grade) throughout the year.

Ranging from an afternoon to a full week, Sprouting Minds incorporates a farm tour, seedling plantings, nutrition education lessons, vegetable taste tests and cooking demonstrations. Older students can also "adopt-a-row" of vegetables that they care for from planting to picking.

"We see the excitement build. They change their attitude toward trying new things," said program manager Alicia Cianciola. She joked that parents will sometimes ask, "What did you do to my child? I can't believe they're asking for produce!"

The goal is to ultimately get them to not only eat fruits and vegetables, but like them so it isn't some sort of burden, said Tori Buerschaper, Community Harvest Project's education and outreach coordinator.

"It's getting kids more involved in cooking and tasting and trying all sorts of different vegetables," Buerschaper said. "Too often you try something once as a kid and you think 'Oh, I don't like that.' Those prejudices follow you into adulthood."

And other unhealthy habits can, as well.

"Childhood obesity can become a lifelong struggle," said Gabrielle Alan, resource development associate at the YWCA Central Massachusetts. "With a healthy start, we can make a much healthier future, make it less of a battle for them when they get older."

Original story link. 

From the Archives: A Coffee Table? No, that's a Casket!

Woodworker gives caskets two lives

Woodworker Chuck Lakin makes caskets that double as furniture, before their final use

By Taryn Plumb GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

OCTOBER 26, 2011

If you happen to visit Gini Landry’s home in Waterville, Maine, you’ll meet a vivacious, almost-octogenarian with an acute wit and a decades-long dedication to quilting.

And if you’re curious, she’ll show you some of her needle-and-thread creations, 20 or 30 of them, folded up and displayed in a roughly 5-foot-tall rack in her guest bedroom.

And if you’re even more curious, she’ll point out that that very case has a double purpose: When the final hour comes, it will convert into her coffin.

“I’m 4-foot-11-inches tall, and shrinking,’’ the 79-year-old said with a wry grin. “It’s made to fit me.’’

That’s right: Every day, Landry is confronted, quite explicitly, with her own mortality, with a custom-made coffin now serving as a quilt rack and situated conveniently in her home for that fateful day that comes for all of us.

Coffins don’t have to be lined with velvet and propped open vacantly and ominously on funeral parlor sales floors - they can have life before death, at least when crafted by Waterville-based woodworker Chuck Lakin.

The 65-year-old builds simple wood caskets for the not-quite-dearly departed that easily modify into bookcases, entertainment centers, storage chests, wine racks, even coffee tables.

“I don’t think coffins have to be serious, formal things,’’ said Lakin, a retired Colby College librarian.

His morbidly multipurpose creations (www.lastthings.net), starting at a base price of $800 to $900, arose out of his dedication to home funerals, a growing movement in which family members prepare a loved one’s body for burial, rather than having the process handled by a funeral parlor.

Having a coffin available simplifies that process, and also, in a time of grieving, makes decisions easier for the family.

And in the meantime, why not build them so they have multiple uses?

So far, Lakin’s built about 40, typically for friends, but also for Hospice and the Jewish Funeral Home in Portland, Maine.

With hinged sections that fold into each other, shelves that create interlocking lids, or sectional “quick coffin’’ varieties, each pine box can be customized, with those who will (eventually) eternally sleep in them required to lie down and measure their width and height. Lakin also does personalized carvings and engravings, and, upon request, builds the boxes out of different types of wood, such as poplar or walnut.

Seem macabre? If so, it’s only because our culture is so avoidant of death, says Lakin, who describes home burials as personal, moving, meaningful, and spiritual.

“There are people who don’t want to talk about death, or even consider that they’re going to die,’’ agreed Landry, a retired psychiatric nurse. “But death is a natural part of living.’’

She paused and mused, “it may be the best part.’’

In her case, once she “got past the 75 mark,’’ she started to think about her last wishes. She recoiled from the thought of a conventional casket and an elaborate funeral. She prefers her easy quilt-rack-turned-pine-box, in which she intends to be cremated, followed by a simple church service, and finally a burial at a local cemetery.

Still, though she has her final resting place quite handy, she’s certainly in no rush to use it. “I’m trying to stay out of that box,’’ she said with a chuckle.

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The 10th Circle of Hell: The SAT

Student play compares SAT test to Dante’s ‘Inferno’

By Taryn Plumb GLOBE CORRESPONDENT

MARCH 03, 2016

There’s the skateboarder in the midst of an existential crisis. The classic underachiever amidst a family of Harvard alums. The decidedly blasé heir to a thriving family business. The perfectionist who will exhaust herself until she achieves the flawless score of 1,600.

Together, this motley assortment (along with several others) sits in their own fiery circle of hell: an SAT exam room.

We all know the pain of test-taking: the pressure, the pent-up anxiety, the battle against the clock. Students from Lexington Christian Academy have brought that stressful, weighty — some might go so far as to say excruciating — experience to the stage with “Standardize Me,” an original play inspired by the new SAT that’s set to debut on Saturday.

Written and staged by academy students under the guidance of theater director Christopher Greco, the production has been performed four times, most recently at the Massachusetts Educational Theater Guild’s High School Festival preliminary round in Brookline on Feb. 27.

“It kind of feels like a Saturday Night Live skit — it’s absurd and it’s satire,” said Greco. “It raises questions about our standardized tests — are they helpful, are they accurate? It shows an inevitability in the need to be tested and the ability to transcend being evaluated. It also brings out the theme of rising to the challenge.”

With 14 actors, a moving, choreographed set of rolling desks, and frequent references to the hell-traversing protagonists Virgil and Dante of “The Divine Comedy,” the mockumentary fluctuates between the fantastic and the comedic, the realistic and the tragic. Test-takers with a range of backgrounds share their stories in a series of vignettes interwoven with passages from the portion of the epic poem by Dante Alighieri in which the author descends into the nine circles of hell with the forewarning, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

The play was prompted, in part, by changes to the SAT that take effect this testing season: obscure vocabulary words are disappearing, there will be no extra penalties for wrong answers, and reading passages will be more relevant to real life. Most notably, a mandatory essay added in 2005 will now be optional, thus lowering the highest achievable score (excluding the essay) to 1,600.

“While it’s grounded in reality, it’s also a journey of the imagination,” said senior Benjamin Rozonoyer, who plays four roles, including a College Board supervisor, a concrete baron, a father of an “average” girl from an overachieving family, and an “angelic” messenger who relays test scores.

“I like that it morphs the external and fantastic circumstances of the test,” said the Waltham 18-year-old. “It’s a lively and entertaining and fulfilling piece of work.”

Orchestral music and two towers emblazoned with “800” set the scene; characters include the serial test-taking tutor, a sparring boyfriend and girlfriend, a middle child afflicted with seasonal affective disorder who abhors math, the “inscrutable” supervisor who refers to students as “untamable wild rams,” a well-meaning proctor, and Dante and Virgil themselves.

The impetus for the repository of characters was a real-life gaffe: The accidental shredding of probation officers’ promotional exams — before they could be graded — by the state trial court in 2015. (Spoiler alert: Tests in the play are shredded and reduced to confetti.)

Senior Liam O’Toole initially proposed that cathartic destruction. “The situation would be funny for the audience, while simultaneously creating conflict and anguish for the characters onstage,” said the 18-year-old, from Arlington, who portrays a skateboarder with an identity conflict who doubles as Dante. “I thought it had a lot of comic potential.”

Meanwhile, another of the characters, “Chad,” played by senior Emma Bergstrom, was also modeled after actual events: She uses a fake ID to sit in and take a test for someone else, much like “test taker for hire” Sam Eshaghoff of Long Island, who was charged with fraud and criminal impersonation in 2011 for allegedly taking the SAT and ACT for paid clients.

“It is an interesting role for me because in reality I am afraid of cheating,” said Bergstrom, of Reading. “In real life I would never say, ‘Sometimes you have to break the rules to do good.’”

Much of “Standardize Me” formed through improvisation and tinkering, allowing students to create a sort of common ground with their stage presences.

“Like my character, I stink at math,” said 17-year-old Ann Rees Berry of the sneezy, wheezy arithmetic-hater who is equipped with an outdated, hand-me-down calculator. “I think my vehement hatred of all things numbers-related determined my casting.”

The Maynard junior added of her love of theater: “By becoming someone else, you’re better able to understand yourself, and that’s always a fascinating experience.”

Meanwhile, the play allowed both the students and members of the audience to reflect on the impersonal nature of standardized testing.

“I do not like that colleges put so much value in the four-digit numbers we receive,” said Bergstrom. Having taken the SAT last year, she recalled that it caused her “so much anxiety,” and “made me feel horrible about myself when I should not have.”

Rees Berry, for her part, will be taking the test this spring, but said she doesn’t yet have a date lined up, and hasn’t begun to prepare.

“A lot of people have told us how accurate our play is, and said it was a throwback to their own awful experiences either with the SAT or other tests,” she said. “I guess the play’s warned me about how terrible the test is, so now I’m expecting the absolute worst. Hopefully it’ll be better than the experience portrayed in the play – but I somehow doubt it.”

Original story link.