Baker-Polito Administration Files New Legislation to Improve Road Safety

@MassGovernor tweeted

"Today (Monday, Apr 26, 2021) we filed road safety legislation that includes several provisions we previously filed in 2019 and several new proposals like increasing penalties for individuals who cause personal injury while driving on a non-administratively suspended license."

Shared from Twitter: https://twitter.com/MassGovernor/status/1386696555797876739

The press release with details

https://www.mass.gov/news/baker-polito-administration-files-new-legislation-to-improve-road-safety

CommonWealth Magazine coverage:  https://commonwealthmagazine.org/criminal-justice/baker-proposes-new-seatbelt-traffic-camera-law/

Press release video link = https://youtu.be/Wm5jlK4PzGE

2 Tenors and a Passion For Wheels - Apr 26 - 1 PM

We look forward to seeing you all tomorrow, Tuesday April 27 at 1 PM for "Two Tenors and a Passion for Wheels" presented by Alan Earls.  

"Although not well known today, tenor James Melton was a phenomenally popular star of opera, stage, records, radio and screen from the 1920s to the 1950s. He was also an obsessive collector of antique cars and, thanks to a Massachusetts man (also a tenor in amateur circles), became a collector of early antique bicycles as well. Meet the men, learn about their collections and spend a short sojourn in a simpler time."

Click below to join our zoom event Tuesday at 1pm

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86379784997?pwd=aEVpNS8rTHdXRVlpWUE3UE1GSTVNZz09

Meeting ID: 863 7978 4997
Passcode: 503942
One tap mobile
+13126266799,,86379784997#,,,,*503942# US (Chicago)
+16465588656,,86379784997#,,,,*503942# US (New York)

--

Ariel Doggett

Virtual Program Coordinator

Respite Coordinator

"We rise by lifting others" - Robert Ingersoll

There is no act of kindness too small

2 Tenors and a Passion For Wheels - Apr 26 - 1 PM

"no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness"

"These “breakthrough” infections occurred among people of all ages. Just over 40 percent were in people 60 or older, and 65 percent occurred in women. Twenty-nine percent of infected people reported no symptoms, but 7 percent were hospitalized and just over 1 percent, 74 people, died, according to the CDC.

Public health officials have said breakthrough infections were expected, since manufacturers have warned loudly and often that the vaccines are not 100 percent protective. The Pfizer and Moderna versions have consistently been shown to be above 90 percent effective, most recently for at least six months. Studies have also shown they are nearly 100 percent effective at ensuring that the small fraction of vaccinated patients who do contract the virus will not get severe cases or require hospitalization."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/how-did-that-happen-catching-covid-19-even-after-being-vaccinated/2021/04/23/a31983a6-a21b-11eb-a774-7b47ceb36ee8_story.html

For more info on this from the CDC:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/breakthrough-cases.html

Greater Attleboro Area Council for Children Hosts Virtual Flower Arranging Class

Greater Attleboro Area Council for Children Hosts Virtual Flower Arranging Class – A Wonderful Present for Mother's Day

Looking for an amazing idea for a Mother's Day gift? Something that your mother has never received before? The Greater Attleboro Area Council for Children is hosting an hour-long virtual Flower Arranging Class on Zoom Thursday, May 13 at 6:00 PM.

The class will be led by Debbie Bottomley, who has won multiple awards for her flower arranging skills. Participants will learn simple tips and ideas to make flowers last longer and look beautiful in any kind of container.  

Virtual Flower Arranging Class

Included in the ticket price are all of the flowers needed to follow along with Debbie to make the arrangement. Participants will need a container of about 4 inches in diameter, such as a teacup, coffee mug, or mason jar to hold the arrangement.

Tickets must be purchased by May 9. A maximum of 50 tickets are available and the participants must live within the Greater Attleboro Area to pick up the flowers or have them delivered.

Amy's Flower Studio on Rt 1 in North Attleboro is partnering with the Council for Children to create each bunch of flowers to be picked up on site the day before the event.

A gift certificate will be sent out via email with the confirmation. A Zoom link will be sent to each ticketholder before the event.

Please visit the Council for Children page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/events/184901089990406) or www.councilforchildren.org to purchase a ticket as well as for registration instructions and delivery information. 

Contact info@councilforchildren.org with questions. 

 

Community centered senior living can answer the question: "Where will we live as we age?"

"Community-centered senior living works for seniors and communities" 

"The coronavirus pandemic shined a spotlight on nursing homes in Massachusetts, with more than 5,500 residents dying of COVID-19 (down from 6,722 after the state revised how it reports deaths in long-term facilities). The deaths underscored the risks for residents who live in a communal setting, especially for those who share a room. A design developed decades ago for hospital-like efficiency, the shared room can contribute to substandard care and a dehumanizing, undignified end of life. It must disappear.

This will require investment in new models that support seniors’ right to thrive in life-enhancing environments that are far superior to conventional institutional living. This funding initiative must motivate the developers and owners of nursing homes to create private living spaces for residents. It must also motivate them to include an invitation to “community-centered living” in their nursing home redesign of common space."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/26/opinion/community-centered-senior-living-works-seniors-communities/

"Where will we live as we age?"

"The concept that Boston could possibly become the Silicon Valley of aging is a fascinating idea. There are, however, questions to be addressed and misconceptions that need to be put aside before we can claim the title. For example, where and how will the older generation live as we age? Who will provide support when needed? Is there the political will to help us answer these questions?

As of July 2019, people age 65 and over represented nearly 12 percent of Boston’s population — and that number is growing steadily. According to a 2018 AARP survey, 76 percent of Americans age 50 and up stated that they wished to remain in their own homes, or at least their own communities, as they aged. Yet the same survey revealed that only 59 percent felt that they would be able to age in place. Respondents cited obstacles including uncertainty about how to access support and services, and how to maintain a sense of community, with increasing age."

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/26/opinion/where-will-we-live-we-age/

FISH Of Franklin Is Resuming Services!

Good News Franklin! 

The Steering Committee and volunteers of FISH of Franklin are pleased to announce that, after more than a year of suspended services due to COVID-19, our volunteer service of providing rides to medical appointments for Franklin residents will begin again in May.

There will be some new requirements in order to keep our volunteers and clients safe:

• all clients must be fully vaccinated and finished with the two-week waiting period following vaccination in order to receive a ride
• all drivers will also need to be fully vaccinated and finished with the two-week waiting period
• drivers and clients will be required to wear masks
• clients must be able to walk and to enter and exit vehicles and doctors' offices without assistance

Any Franklin resident who wishes to access this service should call the FISH line to request a ride, and leave a message with name, phone number, date and time of the appointment, and location of the appointment. The client will receive a call back from a volunteer. FISH is not an emergency service, and anyone with a medical emergency should dial 911.

FISH phone number: (508) 528-2121

FISH of Franklin is a service provided by volunteers age 21 or over, and more are always welcome! Anyone interested in becoming a volunteer should contact Chris at 508-553-3023.

We have missed you and look forward to resuming our services!

"we found ticks pretty much wherever we looked”

"Disease-carrying ticks, commonly associated with wooded areas, are also abundant near beaches in Northern California, according to a study. They weren’t found on beaches themselves, but in the brush and vegetation beachgoers may walk through to get to the sand.

Daniel Salkeld, a research scientist at Colorado State University who led the study, said researchers wanted a “bird’s-eye view” of where ticks are found in Northern California and what they are infected with, such as bacteria that causes Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

“We were looking at coastal scrub and looked at redwood forests and oak woodlands and that kind of thing, because everyone tends to look at the same kinds of places,” he said. “And we found ticks pretty much wherever we looked.”

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/25/ticks-lyme-beaches/

Franklin Health Director Cathleen Liberty recorded a session last week that you'll get to hear shortly. We discussed several non-COVID-19 items and among them were ticks. One session from 2020 was focused on ticks and you can listen to that here  https://player.captivate.fm/episode/afe173c3-294e-49c5-9bec-ecf19105c9be

"The new term from this conversation is “questing”. Questing is the term for the tick looking to jump to a food source."

Reminder: St. Mary's Women's Faith Formation Group - May 1

St Mary's Women's Faith Formation is pleased to announce that Fr. Flavio from La Salette Shrine will be speaking at our May meeting about "Making Mary Part of Our Lives". 

Our meeting will  be held Saturday morning, May 1, starting at 9:30 AM on Zoom. There will be time for discussion.  This meeting is open to all women. 

If interested in attending this 45 minute meeting, please email Deacon Guy (deaconguy@stmarysfranklin.org) for Zoom link contact information.  

This will be our last session until we restart again in the fall.  

 

Reminder: St. Mary's Women's Faith Formation Group - May 1

Franklin Girls T&F take 2nd at Hockomock Championships

"Congratulations to our amazing team of girls for finishing 2nd overall at the Winter Track Hockomock Championship!! 

Results from the meet are posted on the Franklin Track and Field Website

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14ykcN-RrpCnWmNTUTg5AoGjit8khuWt_/view?usp=sharing 

An amazing way to finish off the season!! 🥈🏆"

Shared from Twitter: https://twitter.com/FHS_girlsXC/status/1386367534270763010

Note the FHS boys results are not yet posted.  https://www.franklintrack.org/

https://www.franklintrack.org/

"You distinguish between science that’s objectively established as true and science on the frontier"

"Neil deGrasse Tyson is perhaps the country’s best-known popularizer of science. The astrophysicist, who is 62, has achieved that status through his ever-expanding body of work in television, podcasting, journalism, social media and books (his latest is the new “Cosmic Queries”) and as director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. 

He has done so at a time when, distressingly, skepticism toward established science has become increasingly widespread. Tyson himself received some scrutiny in 2019 after he was subject to two claims of sexual misconduct, which he subsequently described as misunderstandings. Those claims were investigated by his employers at the museum as well as Fox Broadcasting and National Geographic, which respectively air his series “Cosmos” and “StarTalk”; all three of them decided to continue employing Tyson. 

“We’ve lost confidence in our civic entities,” Tyson says about declining public trust in science. “That’s a strong destabilizing force, and some of that spilled over into the scientific community.”

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/19/magazine/neil-degrasse-tyson-interview.html

Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Rose Center at the American Museum of Natural History in New York in 2006. He has been the director of the Hayden Planetarium since 1996. Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

"at some point, surplus became more important than feeding people"

"The global, industrialized food system faces increasing scrutiny for its environmental impact, given its voracious appetite for land is linked to mass deforestation, water pollution and a sizable chunk of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The implied trade-off has been that advances in agriculture have greatly reduced hunger and driven societies out of poverty due to improved productivity and efficiencies. But Mark Bittman, the American food author and journalist, argues in his new book Animal, Vegetable, Junk that these supposed benefits are largely illusionary.

In a sweeping deconstruction of the history of food, spanning the past 10,000 years of organized agriculture, Bittman takes in everything from Mesopotamian irrigation to the Irish famine to the growth of McDonald’s to posit the rise of uniformity and convenience in food has mostly benefited large companies, fueled societal inequities and ravaged human health and the environment. Al Gore, the former US vice president, has called the book a “must-read for policymakers, activists and concerned citizens looking to better understand our food system and how to fix it”.

Continue reading the article online (subscription may be required)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/25/our-unequal-earth-mark-bittman-cheap-food-american-diet

For more about Mark visit his web page  https://www.markbittman.com/

Mark Bittman, the American food author and journalist - "Animal, Vegetable, Junk"

Finance Committee - Budget Hearings - Apr 27, 28, 29 and May 4

Finance Committee Meetings

Please find the agendas and links for the upcoming Finance Committee Meetings Posted below: 

•  April 27 Agenda = Central government, Human Services, Culture and Recreation, Debt and Interest, Benefits

https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/4.27.21_fin_com_agenda.pdf

• April 28 Agenda = Public Safety (Police, Fire, Regional Dispatch)

 https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/_2021-04-28_finance_committee_agenda_.pdf

• April 29 Agenda  = Dept of Public Works 

 https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/_2021-04-29_finance_committee_agenda_.pdf

• May 4 Agenda = Schools

 https://www.franklinma.gov/sites/g/files/vyhlif6896/f/agendas/_2021-05-04_finance_committee_agenda_.pdf

Additional details on the FY 2022 budget can be found
https://www.franklinma.gov/town-budget/pages/fy-22-budget-materials

Finance Committee - Budget Hearings - Apr 27, 28, 29 and May 4

Franklin TV: "Owl-cam Sees All! Necessity is the mother of invention."

by Pete Fasciano, Executive Director 04/25/2021

We have all been reprogrammed by ‘Le Virus’. What was is no more, and we are headed toward our new normal, whatever that might be. The term ‘new normal’ has become part of our viral lexicon. We say it, but what is it? No one can fully know. That said, we are already living some part of it in our day-to-day. Specifically, we have changed the way we connect and communicate, and IMHO, some of that change is here to stay. I’ve opined in past scribblings on this page that Zoom is here to stay. I still believe that.

Before: Me? On a video? OMG! No way! My hair! My house! I’m a mess.
After: Zoom?  Yeh, fine.  Let’s hang out. Casual athleisure attire is de rigueur.

While laptop cams are pretty good for one-on-ones, they fall short for whole family shots and groups. Enter Owl-cam. It’s a smart camera. It’s wikkid soopa-smaht!

Owl-cam Sees All!

The Meeting Owl is a webcam. Like a webcam, it sees you; it also hears your voice. It has a built-in speaker system. Camera-microphone-speaker, all-in-one, and all connect to your computer with one standard USB cable. No fuss. No muss.

Owl-cam knows who is speaking in a group and shows only that person or persons to the other participants at the far end of the Zoom meeting. What is Owl-cam, and how does it work this magic? It has not 1, but 8 built-in directional microphones arranged in a circle inside its vaguely owl-like casing. Hence, its round shape.

The dome camera is actually at the top, but looks sideways for a 360-degree panorama view. The microphones inform the camera where the person speaking is seated. The camera pulls that person from the panorama image.  When two people speak, it does a side-by-side split-screen image of both.

You’ll see Owl-cams in action in the days ahead. We’re installing some in Town Hall, the Senior Center, our own community room, and wherever future groups gather to conduct hybrid Zoom meets in our new normal.

And – as always –
Thank you for listening to wfpr●fm. 
And, thank you for watching.

 

Get this week's program guide for Franklin TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) online

http://franklin.tv/programguide.pdf  or for archive purposes

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EDxLKpRhX5qRnUkh_l2g5gEkUXyfKICF/view?usp=sharing

Recap: "King Philip Stuns Franklin With Late Touchdown"

Ryan Lanigan, founder and Editor-in-Chief of HockomockSports.com, provides the recap for Friday's FHS vs KP football game:

"For three quarters, Franklin and King Philip were locked in a rock fight on Mactaz Field. 

Then came the fourth quarter fireworks. 

After neither team found the end zone in any of the first three quarters, there were three touchdowns in the final period including two in the final five minutes. Franklin took the lead with just over three minutes to go but King Philip answered with a game-winning drive, scoring with just over a minute to go to secure a 14-10 win. 

“I don’t know [how we won it], there were so many ups and downs in that one,” said King Philip head coach Brian Lee. “It was the type of game that we’ve had success in the past, the type of game we’ve competed in but this group, we’re very young and we don’t have many seniors out there, and throughout this year we were having trouble in the close games. But they kept coming back, it was just awesome to see."

Continue reading the article

https://hockomocksports.com/king-philip-football-stuns-franklin-with-late-touchdown/

For a photo gallery from this game

https://hockomocksports.smugmug.com/2020-2021/Fall-II-2021/King-Philip-Franklin-Football-04-23-21/

King Philip junior Danny Clancy comes down with the game-winning touchdown catch with just over a minute left in the game. (Ryan Lanigan/HockomockSports.com)

FDA and CDC Lift Recommended Pause on Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) COVID-19

Following a thorough safety review, including two meetings of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have determined that the recommended pause regarding the use of the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) COVID-19 Vaccine in the U.S. should be lifted and use of the vaccine should resume.

The pause was recommended after reports of six cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals following administration of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine. During the pause, medical and scientific teams at the FDA and CDC examined available data to assess the risk of thrombosis involving the cerebral venous sinuses, or CVST (large blood vessels in the brain), and other sites in the body (including but not limited to the large blood vessels of the abdomen and the veins of the legs) along with thrombocytopenia, or low blood platelet counts. The teams at FDA and CDC also conducted extensive outreach to providers and clinicians to ensure they were made aware of the potential for these adverse events and could properly manage and recognize these events due to the unique treatment required for these blood clots and low platelets, also known as thrombosis-thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS).

The two agencies have determined the following:

• Use of the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine should be resumed in the United States.
• The FDA and CDC have confidence that this vaccine is safe and effective in preventing COVID-19.
• The FDA has determined that the available data show that the vaccine’s known and potential benefits outweigh its known and potential risks in individuals 18 years of age and older.
• At this time, the available data suggest that the chance of TTS occurring is very low, but the FDA and CDC will remain vigilant in continuing to investigate this risk.
• Health care providers administering the vaccine and vaccine recipients or caregivers should review the  Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine Fact Sheet for Healthcare Providers Administering Vaccine (Vaccination Providers)external icon and Fact Sheet for Recipients and Caregiversexternal icon, which have been revised to include information about the risk of this syndrome, which has occurred in a very small number of people who have received the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine.

Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine fact sheet for recipients

https://www.fda.gov/media/146305/download

Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine fact sheet for healthcare providers

https://www.fda.gov/media/146304/download