Worker’s comp makes my head hurt

I had a nice simple worker’s comp policy, just covering me and one clerical employee. The premium was on the order of $200/year, almost none of which was actual risk. But it wasn’t worth worrying about at that rate. Then I hired a nanny for the summer and added her to the policy. And suddenly my agent couldn’t figure out anything, my underwriter turned out to be a very unpleasant person to talk to, and the audit division of the insurance company claimed they could fix most things at the end of the year but not little headaches like expense constants.

You don’t want to read the rest of this note unless you like thinking about worker’s comp. I resent having to think about it at all, particularly on Rosh Hashanah, but I needed to figure this out before we formally hired a part-time nanny for the fall today. So here’s what I’ve learned recently.

If you hire a domestic worker for less than 16 hours per week, you do not need to buy worker’s comp for that person. Source: http://www.mass.gov/lwd/workers-compensation/investigations/who-needs-workers-compensation-insurance-in.html. Is this true even if you have a worker’s comp policy covering other workers? What if there is a week at 20 hours, but most weeks are less than 16 hours and the average is less than 16 hours? Is it based on the highest week or the average week? If average, over what span of time? Can I hire one individual as a domestic worker for 15 hours per week and a clerical worker for 15 hours per week, and only cover them for their 15 hours as a clerical worker? (Assuming that the time split is documented well.)

This 16-hour limit is based on:
http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXI/Chapter152/Section1
“The provisions of this chapter shall remain elective as to employers of seasonal or casual or part-time domestic servants. For the purpose of this paragraph, a part-time domestic servant is one who works in the employ of the employer less than sixteen hours per week.”

That suggests that a summer nanny, for example, would not need to be covered by worker’s comp even if they were full-time for that summer. But I haven’t yet found the definition of seasonal, let alone checked out case law on it. (And really, how much time am I going to put into this?)

The WCRIB of Massachusetts has out-of-date worker’s comp rates on their website in many places. For current rates, these are the best links I’ve found so far:
https://www.wcribma.org/mass/Products/miscellaneousValues.aspx
https://www.wcribma.org/mass/Products/ratesAndRatingValues.aspx#rates
https://www.wcribma.org/mass/Products/Manuals/MA_Manual.aspx

The expense constant is $159 for an earned standard premium of less than $200, $250 for an earned standard premium of $200 to less than $1000, and $338 for an earned standard premium of $1000 or more. Does the earned standard premium mean the calculated premium before any class code minimum premiums are applied? For example, class 0913 has a per capita premium of $188 for the year, but a minimum premium of $252. If that’s your only employee, is the expense constant $159 or $250? According to Basic Manual Rule VI-F-4 “The Admiralty or Federal Employers’ Liability Act Special Minimum Premium and the Classification Minimum Premium are not included in Subject Premium or Standard Premium.” So if the classification minimum premium is not included in the standard premium, then the expense constant based on the standard premium should be $159 in this example.

The expense constant for a domestic worker in a private residence is supposed to be $64 per worker, different from the threshhold-based expense constant in the paragraph above. Is the expense constant prorated for short-term employment? For my situation, it should not matter since I have a standard expense constant of either $159 or $250, and Basic Manual Rule XIV-G says “If a policy is written with both per capita and remuneration based exposure, only the larger of the per capita and standard expense constants is charged.” The standard expense constant is clearly higher than the per capita expense constant, so only the standard expense constant should apply. Updated: I had thought that this rule meant I should compare the per capita expense constant with the non-per-capita expense constant, but WCRIB says that the standard expense constant is calculated based on all premiums including per capita. At $64 per full-time domestic worker, I think the only way that the per capita expense constant would be higher if you also have payroll-based premiums is if you have four or more full-time domestic workers.

Is the expense constant added to your premium before or after the class code minimum premiums are calculated? My past experience says that it’s before, and Basic Manual Rule VI-E-4 says before as well.

A per capita rate is supposed to be prorated by the amount of time of actual employment. My insurance company audit department says that prorating means either half-year or full-year, rounded up. Is that right? Is the class code minimum premium also prorated? Basic Manual Rule XIV-E-3 says “Each pro rata charge shall be based on the period of employment but shall not be less than 25% of the per capita charge.” That’s not a very helpful answer, though it strongly suggests that the prorating should at least be done by 25% chunks rather than 50% chunks.

As a sole proprietor, I can elect to be covered by my worker’s comp policy. My income is presumed to be $41,300 for purposes of this coverage, so my calculated premium as an 8810 clerical worker would be $37.17 for the year. Hey, look, an easy one! There’s a few extra dollars for the terrorism surcharge (yes, there’s a terrorism surcharge), so it winds up costing about $40 as long as it doesn’t tip me over to the next higher expense constant.

Update after the annual audit, February 2013:

The state says that for a domestic worker who works 27% of the year (counting by days), the premium should be prorated to 27%. Travelers Insurance says that the prorating is 50% (initial estimate). Or 95% (first audit correction). Or 90% (second audit correction). Actually, they aren’t sure. They’re willing to go along with 27% since the state has given specific direction about my particular policy, but their computer is not willing. So it’s a manual override to 27%, with a note saying that they have no idea why their computer is giving different answers. And their annual audit procedure had no way to even document the start and end dates for the domestic worker.

And Travelers Insurance appears to believe that if the expense constant was ever calculated to be $250, even if that calculation was wrong, it should not be corrected to $159. So on a policy that should calculate out to $300, they charged $500, grudgingly corrected it to $495, and were dragged kicking and screaming to $390. To be fair, they did warn me last summer that they would have trouble with the expense constant at the time of the audit. But since it worked in their favor, they didn’t see the problem with waiting.

Bizarrely, Travelers Insurance is perfectly willing to apologize for any inconvenience, or for the processing delay, or for the hold time, but not for repeated overbilling. And despite having been through this in painful detail with them, I have no idea what they would try to charge me next year for the identical coverage.

Memento mori

I most recently wrote about 9/11 over a year ago. What I could not say in that post was that 6 hours before we saw the quilt, we found out we had been matched to adopt a baby, the baby who is now yelling downstairs. Life goes on, even as we remember the past.

I have friends who chose to marry on 9/11 a few years after the event to create new memories and associations for the date. Thank you to them for doing that, and for reminding me of it last night.

My state rep now was a sophomore in high school in 2001. My nation’s president now was a state senator in 2001. And 47 million people in our country today were not yet born in 2001. You and I remember, but they cannot. 9/11 is our national yahrzeit, but cannot remain so forever.

I want to remember the dead, and appreciate being alive. We owe them that.

Thoughts on translating the haggadah

I remember when I first started noticing that the English in the prayerbook did not match the Hebrew. I had thought I could find the words I knew in Hebrew, match them up with the English words, and start to learn the other Hebrew words. But the translations didn’t work that way, as translations often don’t. Some parts were close translations, but other parts wandered off apparently using the Hebrew simply as inspiration.

A close translation is important in many contexts: when studying the original language, when translating for a patient or doctor in a medical context, when translating in a courtroom or in a legal setting. But people differ as to how much poetic license they might want a translator to take in other contexts. A word for word translation is unlikely to capture rhythms and internal rhymes, cannot replicate wordplay and word associations, and will inevitably remove, change, and add nuances and emphases. All of these things affect the reader’s understanding of the text, but then no two readers understand a text identically anyway.

For the Passover haggadah, I’m looking for a translation of each passage that captures the primary intent of the passage, and I don’t believe the primary intent of any passage in the haggadah is to confuse or alienate the reader. The haggadah is explicitly intended for a broad audience, including children. The haggadah is the only Jewish text some people ever encounter, the only Jewish text some people ever read aloud, and the only Jewish text many people are ever asked to explain or discuss.

There cannot be a single ideal translation. But we can choose among translations which make sense to us now and which still honor the primary intent of the original language. Whatever we decide that intent is.

The good news is that no haggadah has to stand alone. No haggadah has to pretend to ask or answer all questions. Vardibidian can have his annotated haggadah with good commentary, and Shmuel can have his haggadah that tries as carefully as possible to replicate the nuances of the original Hebrew, and Lisa can have her haggadah with good transliterations, and the world’s shelves are large enough for all of these and thousands more. For those of us who care, we can find several best haggadot, each with different strengths and weaknesses, and the best ones for us will each be different.

I want to make a haggadah which can be of good service to many different readers in the moment at the seder table, including participants who are uncommitted, uncertain, untrained, or concerned about feeling unwelcome. The seder can be a positive experience for those participants as well, and the haggadah should help make it so.

A book for a friend

LIFE AFTER THE FIRE!

• • •
 
Will you tell me 
the story of what 
happened?

One night a fire happened at
our house. Fires are dangerous,
so we all went outside.

• • •

Firefighters came with lots of
firetrucks and hoses,
and they put the fire out.

• • •

Fires can happen anywhere,
but remember that we are all safe.
We will make sure we are ready in case
another fire does happen somewhere.

• • •

We will make sure we know how to go
outside, because the best thing to do if
a fire happens is to go outside.

Firefighters will always come and
put the fire out. The most important
question firefighters ask is whether
everyone is out of the building.

• • •

For a while, we won’t live at
our old home. Carpenters and
plumbers and electricians are
fixing our old home.

The house will be very noisy
and dirty while that is happening,
so we will stay somewhere else!

• • •

We may live with our friends. We
may live with your cousins or
grandparents. We may live in a hotel,
or in an apartment, or in a house.

No matter where we live,
you will have a place to sleep
and we will be together as a family.

• • •

We probably
will not live in
an underwater cave
with an octopus!

That would be very wet,
and the octopus might not have
enough beds for all of us.

• • •

What will I wear?

You will wear clothes, even if they are
different clothes! Friends and other
kind people will give us shirts, and
pants, and socks, and shoes, and hats,
and all the other clothes you need.

• • •

Some of your clothes are fine,
and just need to be cleaned.
That may take some time,
because there is a lot of cleaning to do.

• • •

Some of your toys were damaged
and can’t be fixed. Many of your toys
are too dirty to play with right now.
A few of your toys will come back
after they are cleaned.

• • •

We will find new toys to play with.

Some of the new toys we find
will be just like your old toys,
and some will be new!

• • •

We will read all sorts of new books!
We will read books from the library
and books that friends give us to read.
And we will look for other copies of
your favorite books, even if it takes
a while to find them.

• • •

Some of our books are fine,
and just need to be cleaned.
That may take some time,
because there is a lot of cleaning to do!

• • •
 
Will I still see my friends?

Yes! You will still see your friends at the
playground, or at daycare, or at school.
You will go to visit your friends at their
homes, and your friends will come visit
us wherever we are living.

• • •

Your friends may ask you questions
about what happened. It’s ok to talk
about the fire and how you feel.

• • •

Will you still sing me a song 
or tell me a story before I go to sleep?

Yes! Wherever we are, we will sing you
a song or tell you a story before you go
to sleep. We still have our voices,
and we still have each other.

Primary today

The only contested race around here (other than Governor's Council, meh) is South Middlesex Register of Deeds. 6 candidates, three of whom are tempting to vote for.

NOT Antonelli. What a disgrace.

Maryann Heuston is supported by the current Register, who is well-liked and well-respected. But she sent out a mailer saying nothing except that every local politician in the area supports her, with not a single reason as to why. That’s insulting. On the bright side, the Registry seems to work ok, and she has the background to build on that. As long as you think an 8-year backlog in record processing in one area is ok given that everything else basically works well, vote for Maryann Heuston. She has huge support in the political arena. To me, that’s a negative.

Maria Curtatone sent out the best political mailer I’ve seen for any race. Detailed, specific, great. She wants to make things work better, and also reduce the nepotism. (She’s the sister of Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone, if you’re wondering.)

Tiz Doto also looks great. More emphasis on eliminating corruption, nepotism, and favoritism. Also wants to make things work better. Seems to be campaigning less hard than Maria, but also less local to me which can affect appearances. He has the most well-rounded experience of working with the registry, as an attorney, realtor, and title guy. I got his mailer very late, after I had already decided to vote for Maria.

I hope Maria or Tiz wins. I won’t be surprised or upset when Maryann does.

UPDATE: Maria won! Tiz came in last, which is better than siphoning more votes from Maria, I suppose. I hope Tiz is not too discouraged. I think some percentage of the electorate would have been happy to vote for him if Maria had not been in the race.

The four haggadot

Our tradition speaks of four types of haggadot: one which is wise, one which is wicked, one which is simple, and one which does not even know how to ask a question.

The wise haggadah, what are its features? It has commentary and encourages discussion. It is easy to read and eager to expand our understanding. This haggadah should be embraced as a study partner and celebrated as a resource both for the wise child and for the well-learned seder.

The wicked haggadah, what are its features? It alienates the seder participants, defies understanding, and encourages rifts in the community. This haggadah should be studied but never used.

The simple haggadah, what are its features? It allows us to focus on the most important components of the seder, and introduces new participants to the joy of celebrating Passover. This haggadah should be used but never studied.

As for the haggadah which does not even know how to ask a question? This is the haggadah which phrases its commentary in absolutist terms, which encourages compliance over discussion, and which therefore cannot expand our understanding. This haggadah should be neither studied nor used.

Four non-literal children, part 2

From The Wandering Is Over Haggadah:
Note: licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution‐ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to share, adapt and change the content. Please be sure and credit JewishBoston.com and the Jewish Women’s Archive (jwa.org).

As we tell the story, we think about it from all angles. Our tradition speaks of four different types of children who might react differently to the Passover seder. It is our job to make our story accessible to all the members of our community, so we think about how we might best reach each type of child:

What does the wise child say? The wise child asks, What are the testimonies and laws which God commanded you?
You must teach this child the rules of observing the holiday of Passover.
 
What does the wicked child say? The wicked child asks, What does this service mean to you?
To you and not to himself! Because he takes himself out of the community and misses the point, set this child’s teeth on edge and say to him:
“It is because of what God did for me in taking me out of Egypt.”
Me, not him. Had that child been there, he would have been left behind.

What does the simple child say? The simple child asks, What is this? To this child, answer plainly:
“With a strong hand God took us out of Egypt, where we were slaves.”

What about the child who doesn’t know how to ask a question? Help this child ask. Start telling the story:
“It is because of what God did for me in taking me out of Egypt.”

I like a lot of aspects of this translation. The language is clean and simple. None of the children are gendered except the wicked child. The wise child’s question is nicely simplified, though I’d still change the final word of that question to “us.” There’s a good introduction which explains our obligation to reach out to everyone. The types of children are not actually enumerated at the beginning, which is a step towards realizing that the children of the haggadah are oversimplified archetypes, not categories into which we should slot our own children.

Enumerating the children at the beginning better hews to a repeating pattern in the haggadah: a complete statement is made, and then is expanded upon. Adding something along the lines of the final sentence of the first paragraph above really completes the first paragraph.

I’m less enamored of starting each child with a rhetorical question to the reader. I think it only works well for the fourth child.

Testimonies in the wise child’s question may refer to either the stone tablets given to Moses containing the ten commandments, or to the ark containing the tablets. Can you imagine a wise child asking “What are the ten commandments?” To me, testimonies is so much more commonly a Christian term that it is jarring in this context. I still want to remove the word, and I’m a bit surprised that it was retained in this translation. Lisa points out that this may be the only place in the haggadah which mentions the stone tablets. So much of the movie Exodus Book of Exodus is left out of the haggadah (most notably any mention of Moses) to encourage questions and to make us tell the rest of the story in our own words.

Four non-literal children

The story of the four children/sons from the Passover haggadah neatly encapsulates many challenges in translating the haggadah: how faithful to be to the original Hebrew, how far to go towards egalitarian language (does anyone really care if the wicked child is referred to as “he”?), how to refer to God, which phrases are direct quotations of Torah passages and which phrases are restatements, when to use first and second and third person, how to think about both the reader and the intended audience.

Here’s a translation from the Red Sea Haggadah, posted on Open Source Haggadah:

The Torah speaks of four kinds of children: The wise child, the wicked, the simple one, the one too young to know to ask.

The wise child asks: "What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded you?" (Deuteronomy 6:20) To that one, you explain all the laws of Passover, down to the very last detail about the Afikoman.

The wicked child asks: "What mean you by this service?" (Exodus 12:26) By saying "you," and not "we" or "me," he excludes himself from the group, and denies God. Answer that child plainly: "This is done because of that which the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt." (Exodus 13:8) For me, not for you: had you been there in Egypt, you would not have been redeemed.

The simple child asks: "What is this?" Answer that one: "By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage." (Exodus 13:14)

Of the child too young to ask, it is written: "And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt." (Exodus 13:8)

Two questions leap out: (1) Why is the wise child not rebuked for saying “you,” when the wicked child is rebuked for saying “you”? (2) Why do the wicked child and the child too young to ask deserve the same answer? I prefer to change both the wise child’s question and the answer to the young child to the inclusive “us” and avoid those questions on an initial reading.

The Union Haggadah from 1923 begins:

By a fitting answer to the questions of each of the four types of the sons of Israel, does the Torah explain the meaning of this night's celebration.

I hate this translation. While the four children are still types rather than individuals, they are now the only types. And the answers to come are mere beginnings, not actual explanations.

From 1787:

Blessed is the Creator, blessed is he, blessed is he who gave the law to his people Israel, blessed is he whose law expresseth of these four different sorts of children. The wise, the wicked, the simple, and one not having the capacity of asking.

The wise saith, what mean these testimonies, statutes, and judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded us? then thou shalt say unto him according to the Paschal, as it is ordered us.

The wicked saith, what mean you by this service? by which expression, he draweth himself from the community and denies the omnipotence. Then shalt thou say unto him, on this account did the Lord do this unto me, on my going out of Egypt, to me and not to thee, for hadest thou been there, thou wouldest not have been redeemed.

The simple saith, what is this? and thou shalt say unto him, by strength of the Lord he brought us out from Egypt the house of bondage.

And to him not in capacity of asking, thou must inculcate knowledge into him, as it is written, and thou shalt declare unto thy son, in that day, saying, this is done because of that which the Lord did unto me, when I came forth from Egypt.

This translation is a great place to start. I want children, not sons. I want to repeat “child” more, though, to keep this passage focused on responding to our children, even though the types of children can certainly reflect aspects of any adult.

The Torah speaks of four sorts of children: the wise child, the wicked child, the simple child, and the child who cannot ask a question.

Then on to the children.

The wise child asks, “What are the meanings of these testimonies, statutes, and judgments, which the Lord our God has commanded us?” To that child we must explain all the laws of Passover, down to every detail of the Afikoman.

The wise child’s question is in contrast with the wicked child’s question in two ways: by whether the child is including himself in the community and by whether the child is acknowledging God.

Does the wise child’s question need to be so cumbersome? Testimonies? There has to be a better word to use there. We could echo the common “Ended is the Passover seder, according to custom, statute, and law” with What do these all mean, the customs, statutes, and laws which the Lord our God has commanded us? Or we could eliminate the direct question: The wise child asks about the meanings of all the customs, statutes, and laws of Passover which the Lord our God has commanded us. But then we don’t provide a direct example of how to ask. Should we divide up the wise child’s question into two questions, according to the two common translation options of what are they and what do they mean: What are these testimonies, statutes, and judgments, which the Lord our God has commanded us? What do they mean? 

The wicked child asks, “What do you mean by this service?” This child is excluding himself from his community and denying God. To that child you shall say, I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came forth from Egypt. For me and not for him; if he had been there, he would not have been redeemed.

Not with that attitude, young man. The response to the wicked child is harsh, hopefully untrue, and memorable. There are some great discussions about whether the best literal translation to start the response to the wicked child is “blunt his teeth” or “set his teeth on edge.” What I haven’t run into is discussion about a difference between carnivores and herbivores being sharp teeth vs. blunt teeth, and that blunting his teeth is therefore a way of excluding him from partaking of the Passover offering, the roasted lamb. The wicked child excludes himself from the community, and we in turn exclude him from full participation.

Small word choices matter. The child is excluding himself from [his/the/our] community. Each of these have different implications. I prefer “his” because a seder often includes participants who are not part of the Jewish community, and because it indicates that even when the child is excluding himself, the community does not actually stop being his community.

The simple child asks, “What is this?” Tell him, with a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, where we were slaves.

Out of Egypt, rather than forth from Egypt, because the simple answer starts with escaping slavery. Coming forth from Egypt implies the journey toward, whether it is toward freedom, toward Israel, or toward receiving the Torah. The Hebrew very nicely repeats “out of”: out of Egypt, out of the slave house. There are additional layers of meaning with that phrasing, saying that we were brought out of Egypt and out of the slave house, while directly equating Egypt with a slave house.

For the child who cannot ask a question, you must teach him, as it is written: And you shall show your child on that day, saying, we do this because of what the Lord did for us when we came forth from Egypt.

Show your child along with the words, because words may not be enough for a child who cannot ask a question. Reinforce the inclusive “we” as much as possible, both to reassure the child that he is included and to contrast with the exclusion of the wicked child.

If the same translation is used for the response to the wicked child and the silent child, then I’d want to put the wicked child after the silent child, and explain that the identical answer is because the wicked child’s question is no more meaningful than not asking a question at all. This is a softer way of dealing with the wicked child (and one I haven’t seen discussion of), though much less faithful to the traditional approach.

Table Talk

Table Talk featuring Steven Marshall was one of our favorite pieces when we saw reMIX by Momix on Long Island last weekend.

Money does grow on trees

We’d like to prune our two small ornamental fruit trees in our front yard: a crabapple and a Japanese cherry. When we pruned the crabapple in 2011, it was a major structural pruning starting with a larger form than now, and cost $90. The Japanese cherry is smaller (taller, but much less mature, much smaller diameter, and much less work needed). Seemed like it should be $150-$180 to do both trees.

AC, who did the pruning in 2011 for $90 on one tree, quoted us $260 for the two trees this year.

BTP quoted us $275. The guy seems to have a better idea of what we’re aiming for, but they also recommend that we do winter moth spraying with spinosad/Conserve (early on the fruit trees for $75, later on the large maple out back for $125). And fertilize the large maple for $90, or $150 if we fertilize from the neighbor’s side as well. And do a thinning on the large maple for $875 to remove dead wood and improve air flow. These all seem like nice things to do, but not necessary.

I’d rather pay someone by the hour for the pruning, if I could find someone who knew what they were doing, talked to us about what we wanted, and then did a careful job.

The plumbing adventure begins

A simple problem: our kitchen sink drains too slowly. We tried plunging, which never did much. We tried an enzyme-based drain cleaner, which didn’t help. And as of today, slowly means in terms of geologic eras, and the dishwasher drain is on a sympathy strike. Which makes sense since they both go into the same drain pipe, though I can get the sink to drain a bit and I can’t get the dishwasher to drain at all. Everything else in the house seems to be draining fine, so it shouldn’t be the sewer line. Snake-It-Away will show up tomorrow morning at 7:30 and fix the problem for $135. Hopefully with a mechanical solution, rather than by pouring $135 of caustic chemicals down the drain.

We have a lot of these simple plumbing problems. A broken outdoor pipe to an outside faucet (needs a new pipe run indoors to a new location out back, since this location is too exposed for a pipe). A leaking gate valve shutoff to a different outside faucet (needs a better ball valve shutoff). Two leaking house gate valve shutoffs in series (needs a better ball valve shutoff, which means coordinating with the city to shut off water from the street for half a day). More complicated: a leaking cast iron drain junction (needs to be carefully patched with PVC without damaging the rest of the main stack, and which means disconnecting and moving a godawful heavy washing machine and then reconnecting it afterwards). And if we had a plumber who could tackle all of these things, we could talk about running a line for our refrigerator, or adding a little sink to our quarter bath, or someday redoing our kitchen or main bathroom. And fixing some of the odd gas piping in the house.

But we’ll start with this one, since I like having a dishwasher and kitchen sink.

---

Update 8/29/2012: Snake-It-Away showed up at 7:40, charged $125, used a powered snake, and pointed out that the sink trap is too low to be removable and the drain pipe in the basement has no cleanout port. They were able to take apart the drain pipe in the basement where it first goes to horizontal, and run the snake through to the main stack. And now the drain works properly for both the sink and the dishwasher. Their advice for the future is that every 6 months we should stopper the sink, fill the sink up with warm water, and then let the whole sink of water drain at once to help flush the drain pipe.

If we have a drain problem with the Bosch dishwasher in the future that isn’t affecting the sink, here are a couple of useful references:

http://www.squidoo.com/Bosch_Dishwasher_Drainage_Problem_Fixes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Oq-nTnyh6A

---

Update 2/16/2013

Main water shut-off: The city put in a new water shutoff before the meter when they changed our water meter, so we can use that. The worn-out water shutoff is still in place and doesn’t work very well, but it’s harmless if we don’t use it. We now have a new ball valve (lever) shutoff where the incoming water goes horizontal at the basement ceiling, which works great.

The leaking gate valve shutoff to the driveway faucet has been replaced by a nice new ball valve (lever) shutoff.

The drain for the washing machine now goes into the drain pipe between the utility sink drains. The previous drain standpipe has been capped so it can’t leak sewer gases. The cracked cast iron drain junction near the main stack has been patched with a marine epoxy and then wrapped with a clear plastic seal, and should only have water in it if the main drain line for the house backs up.

Which it now has.

The first call was to the city water department at 781-393-2403, and they came out about 30 minutes later to check the sewer line in the street. Everything is running correctly there, so we’re waiting for Snake-It-Away to return to clean out the main drain line in the house between the stack and the street. The sewer line is backed up into the utility sinks (though far more into the closer of those sinks than the other), and apparently forced some water out the base of the downstairs toilet? I’m not sure how that happened.

We thought it was just a clogged drain pipe between the utility sinks and the main stack, and I bought a snake at Home Depot yesterday to try tackling that today. I’m glad we discovered that it’s a bigger problem than that before opening up the trap cleanout below the utility sinks.

Snake-It-Away thought they solved the problem by snaking the main drain from the cleanout to the house trap, but that didn’t work for the basement utility sinks and washing machine drain. That required opening the trap cleanout, opening the vent cleanout, snaking in all directions, and then finally using a compressed air charge down each of the sink drains with all other connected openings plugged with rags or plungers in order to get things working. We’ll see if that does it.

The snake down the main drain went about 20 feet towards the street before hitting what the plumber thinks is a house trap, which was apparently common in older houses as a way to stop sewer gases from coming up the main drain into the house. He recommends digging out that house trap and replacing it with straight drain pipe, but I’m not convinced that’s feasible or wise. My uninformed guess is that it is possible to snake through a house trap if necessary, since so many houses have house traps.

Trenchless drain replacement is now an option, where a company uses the old drain line to pull a new drain line. There’s a couple of options depending on how much you want to break apart or blow up the old drain line as you go, but it’s a way to solve a tree root problem or a collapsed drain line problem. Not sure what happens when a trenchless operation hits a main house trap.

On our “to do” list: Replace the driveway sillcock with a frost-proof one. Replace the burst pipe section under the back deck. Possibly find a new location for a back yard sillcock, perhaps on the park side. Run a water line to the refrigerator. Find out what would be involved in replacing the main stack (and how we know it’s necessary), replacing the main drain (and how we know it’s necessary), redoing all lead-soldered connections, moving items around the kitchen, adding a sink to the first floor bathroom, and moving items around the second floor bathroom.

Lead testing

Lead is a bad thing to ingest. How bad? Don’t worry about it.

Lead is a good thing to test. When? Don’t worry about it. How? Don’t worry about it.

I find lack of information leads to more worrying than an abundance of information, so here’s what I’ve learned:

The CDC used to tell everyone not to worry about blood lead levels less than 10 µg/dl in children up to age 6, but recently lowered that to less than 5 µg/dl. So if it’s less than 5, everything is fine.

Unless you believe the studies which all agree that there is no safe level. There was nothing magical about 10, and there’s nothing magical about 5. There are just cost/benefit analyses. A few µg higher will cost you a few IQ points permanently, but you probably weren’t going to use all those IQ points anyway. The lower the lead level, the more IQ points each µg costs you.

What can you do to reduce blood lead levels? Reduce exposure. Chelation is not recommended for moderate amounts of lead.

Blood lead testing only measures exposure over the past month or two. It’s not the same as measuring uptake into various tissues.

EP or ZPP testing can give some additional info:

The EP helps to determine whether the lead in the child's system is having any type of effect on the body that we can measure. EP is one of the only ways to look for an effect of lead on the child. By looking at EP we can get a better idea of how much lead is in the body. Another way to think about EP is this: because EP is made in the body’s tissues, if EP is elevated, it suggests that other body tissues (such as the kidney or brain) are also being affected by the lead.

The EP can sometimes also be used to determine for how long the child was exposed to lead. It can also determine whether the child is still being exposed to lead; when children have another exposure to lead, the EP will rise. Finally, the EP helps the doctor to manage the child’s lead poisoning; as the lead poisoning is treated (for example, with chelation), the EP falls to the normal range.

Back to blood lead level testing. There are different testing methods, and the results are not always consistent. They have varying degrees of accuracy, varying lower threshholds, and may consistently underestimate or overestimate the amount of lead in the sample.

Winchester Hospital reports out any result less than 1.4 as simply less than 1.4. Boston Children’s Hospital uses GFAAS and reports out any result less than 2 as simply less than 2. Quest reports out any result less than 3.3 or 3.5 as simply less than 3.3 or 3.5 (according to our pediatrician).

I’d love to find a local lab that uses ICP-MS, which can be reasonably accurate down to 0.1, but no luck yet.

Some sources: www.who.int/ipcs/assessment/public_health/lead_blood.pdf, www.clevelandcliniclabs.com/portals/66/PDF/TechBriefs/LeadTechBrief.pdf, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2212280/, http://www.childrenshospital.org/clinicalservices/Site1899/mainpageS1899P7.html, http://www.childrenshospital.org/clinicalservices/Site1899/mainpageS1899P6.html, calls to Boston Children’s Hospital Chemistry Lab (don’t bother with Lab Control, Drawing Lab, or the Blood Donor Center).

Progress at Readercon

The Readercon Board of Directors has resigned or announced that they will resign. The old board stepping down is not a complete fix, but is a necessary step. There are hundreds of people who signed the petition and said they would not attend Readercon in the future unless this happened. The old board lost all credibility on the issues of keeping attendees safe, respecting women, and following their own established rules. The old board also would not have been able to set new rules of any sort and have anyone believe them. And by remaining in place, they would have compounded this public relations disaster.

I have no idea if the old board members are fleeing entirely in a huff or are going to stick around to pass on knowledge, answer questions, assist in the transition, and/or continue to do some of the work involved in keeping the con going. They don't need to continue to be on the board in order to do those things, and hopefully the community will not sense blood in the water and demand that the old board members also be permabanned from any association with Readercon. Many people love Readercon and recognize that some or much of what we love about Readercon is due to the hard work of the old board members. It's just that after this debacle, the old board members can no longer effectively set policy, enforce policy, or be a public face of the leadership of Readercon. The con needs new people to do those things.

I am relieved to know that the board members have recognized what the community needs to hear soon from a new board: This is not your father's Readercon board. Though perhaps phrased differently.

Say something

I’ve been going to Readercon for many years, almost every year. It’s my local con, and has had a satisfyingly high percentage of Things I Enjoy At Cons. I’ve heard marvelous readings, discovered new authors, met authors I admire, listened to interesting talks, and always enjoyed the bad fiction event.

And it looks like I won’t be going back as long as they refuse to protect attendees.

Despite an undisputed case of repeated harassment this year and a written policy of banning harassers for life, Readercon only banned the harasser for two years. That reflects badly on Readercon, drives people away from attending the con if they feel either vulnerable or sufficiently offended, and adds an unpleasant tinge to the idea of going in the future.

You know what else does that? The fact that apparently not a single other person* who was aware of the harassment while it was going on reported it to anyone in charge or intervened to confront the harasser themselves.

Following an inadequate response after the fact from Readercon, there is now a strong and outraged community response. Where was that community response in the moment?

“Stop following her.”

“Stay away from her.”

“You are making her uncomfortable. Step away right now.”

Any of those may not be enough to stop the harassment. But they are enough to send a message to the harasser, to the target of the harassment, and to the other people nearby that the behavior is unwelcome and that the target of the harassment has support.

The target of the harassment spoke up for herself in the moment. Repeatedly. Good for her, and I wish that had been enough. But it wasn’t enough, and a bunch of people acting as silent human shields in a crowded environment is not the same as a bunch of people speaking up.

Readercon has always been more focused on words than on visuals. It’s even in the name. There’s a remarkably high percentage of authors at Readercon—people who make their living off the power of words. The programming includes lots of readings, highlighting the power of words uttered by the human voice. So use your words, people. Don’t wait for someone else to say something. You are the someone else. Act like it.

Or stop acting surprised when a small group of overworked con organizers act like hypocrites too.

*Perhaps someone other than the target of the harassment did speak up at the con. But that’s not prominent in the narratives I’ve read, whereas the number of untaken opportunities to speak up are prominent. Even if someone else may have spoken up, it does not excuse you from your own responsibility to speak up. Personally, I don’t want to know that Readercon will take some appropriate action in the weeks after the con. Well, I do, but that’s not the point. I want to know that other con attendees will actively help keep their fellow attendees safe right then and there.

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Edited to add: In Elf’s link roundup, this post has been bizarrely labeled with a warning for apologetics. That’s ironic, since that’s what I feel people are doing when they excuse the passive onlookers for failing to speak up. I clearly say that the harasser did wrong things, that the target repeatedly did the right thing, that Readercon’s original decision was wrong, that the Readercon board acted like hypocrites, and that I’m boycotting Readercon as long as the board’s original decision stands. I do criticize the passive onlookers—the people other than the target who said nothing when seeing the harassment taking place. The problem, apparently, is that community consensus is that the only wrongs were done by the harasser and the Readercon board, and that pointing out any other failures is somehow read (at least by Elf) as mitigating those wrongs. I don’t view it that way, any more than criticizing the Readercon board’s original decision mitigates the wrongs done by the harasser.

Let God sort them out

Stop wishing that more people in the theater had been armed. Just stop.

Problem #1: Bad Guy (BG) set off two smoke grenades. Not a problem for BG, since he doesn’t care who he’s shooting. Huge problem for Armed Good Guy #1 (AGG1), who is far more likely to shoot other people than shoot BG. Because the thing about a darkened smoke-filled room is that you can’t see very well. Adding armed good guys adds to the body count.

Problem #2: BG was also shooting bullets into an adjoining theater because his bullets were penetrating the wall. If AGG1 is in the adjoining theater when bullets start flying in that theater, is he going to shoot BG who isn’t even in that theater, or is he going to shoot other people who are in that theater?

Problem #3: BG starts firing. Then AGG1 starts firing. This is what you wanted, right? What does AGG2 do? He sees BG and AGG1 both firing. They’re not wearing signs saying who they are. He should, under your logic, try to shoot either or both of BG and AGG1. And thereby becomes a valid target himself for AGG3 through AGG9. And that’s with only a few percent of the audience armed.

Problem #4: Bullets don’t always hit their targets, even when the person firing is highly trained. There’s a good reason that cops don’t usually fire into crowds.

Problem #5: BG was wearing body armor. Exactly what type of ammo are you wishing was standard? Do you understand that if AGG1 is firing armor-piercing rounds in a crowd and hits someone who isn’t wearing body armor, he’s likely to hit the person behind as well?

Your fantasy that the shooter can be stopped by more people being armed depends on everybody else having perfect judgment, perfect aim, perfect sight, perfect situational awareness, and God-like abilities to identify the intentions of every person with a visible weapon. That’s a lovely fantasy, as long as you recognize it as a fantasy. Because a lapse or failure in any one element of your fantasy will more likely lead to a higher body count than a lower one.

If you try to turn your fantasy into a movie, you’ll find a willing audience. If you try to turn your fantasy into actual policy, you’re delusional and dangerous. Sadly, in this country you’ll still find a willing audience.