Road Construction: Fighting the Tar Trucks

By: Joseph Geliebter, Ph.D.

I think the women who led a protest movement on my street during the 1930s were quite prescient.

It was about 80 years ago that my block – currently in the process of being repaved – was initially paved and converted from a dirt road. The ladies living here at the time weren’t having any of it. Armed with their voices and the baby strollers that they pushed, these women formed a human roadblock to prevent heavy duty trucks from rolling smooth tar over the hard-packed dirt that once formed my street.

This past summer, as my street was being repaved, I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to those women protesters. Eighty years ago, they wanted to protect their beautiful yellow dirt road, where horse-drawn carriages once delivered milk. They wanted to preserve a way of life.

Watch the “Road Construction” Video!

Road Construction from Unplug Reconnect on Vimeo.

 

These many decades later, we were reminded of that simpler time, if only briefly, when the street-repaving project rendered our block inaccessible by car. For just a few days, we experienced life as it must have been in the 1930s. We walked to and from errands instead of hopping in and out of our cars. We saw more of each other and actually stopped to chat awhile. The pace of our lives slowed down, if only briefly.

The women protesters of that other era faced more than just a few tar trucks, of course; they were railing against the forces of a new industrial age – and they were outmatched. But if their futile protest movement sent us any message, it’s this: while progress must go forward – we must make the most of it, but we need to remember to slow down our lives and strive for the ideals of simpler times.

TOMORROW – Dr. Geliebter discusses unplugging with Leo, the building inspector.

 

Unplug & Reconnect Supports the National Day of Unplugging

Are you ready to take the unplugging challenge?

Once again, the Sabbath Manifesto is sponsoring the National Day of Unplugging, which begins on sundown this Friday (March 23) and lasts through sundown on March 24.

During the National Day of Unplugging in 2010 and 2011, people all over the world took the unplug challenge and put down their cell phones, signed out of email, and stopped their Facebook and Twitter updates. This year, the event’s sponsor is hoping for an equally enthusiastic participation rate.

Why not take the pledge today to unplug? Simply visit the National Day of Unplugging pledge page to pledge your unplugging hours.

What Parents Should Know about Social Media

Parents are not nearly as aware as they should be of the impact social media sites have on their children’s lives, according to a new study published in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The study identified social media sites as including social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, gaming sites like Club Penguin and the Sims, and video sites like YouTube and blogs. They’re extremely popular with teens and pre-teens, say researchers, who cited a poll showing 22 percent of teenagers log on to their favorite social media site more than 10 times a day and more than half log on more than once a day. Further, 75 percent of teenagers own their own cell phones, and 25% use them for social media, 54% for texting, and 24% for instant messaging.

There are benefits to using social media, the researchers note, including enhanced communication with peers, social connection, the development of social skills, the opportunity to participate in homework circles, and more. But there are also problems – among these are cyberbullying, privacy issues, “sexting” and sleep deprivation associated with Internet addiction.

Parents may lack the technical knowledge to keep pace with their children’s online activities or fail to understand how important an extension of their children’s offline lives social media has become.

Online Dangers

Here are some dangers parents should be especially watchful for:

  • Cyberbullying – using digital media to communicate untrue and often embarrassing or hostile information about another person. The most common online risk for teens, cyberbullying can lead to depression, anxiety, severe isolation, and even suicide.
  • Sexting – sending, receiving, or forwarding sexually explicit messages or photographs – is a growing phenomenon. One survey found that 20 percent of teens had sent or posted nude or seminude photographs or videos of themselves. Risks include legal problems and school suspension for perpetrators and emotional distress for victims.
  • ‘Facebook Depression’ – Researchers defined this new phenomenon as depression that develops when preteens and teens spend too much time on social media sites and begin to display the classic signs of depression.
  • Privacy Concerns – Preteens and teens may be unaware of the digital footprint they are creating when they post too much information about themselves. They often fail to understand that “what goes online stays online,” which could later haunt them.
  • Targeted Advertising – It’s important to understand that many online sites use behavioral ads, which operate by gathering information on the person using the site and then target that person’s profile to influence purchasing decisions.

Parents can do two basic things to address these concerns, researchers say. They can talk to their children about their online use and discuss the specific risks they may face when they use online sites. They can also work to become better educated about the many technologies their children are using so they can better monitor their children’s online behaviors.

Sleep Texting a Growing Phenomenom

We’ve written before about the incredible popularity of phone texting, particularly among teenagers. So we were less than surprised when we heard about a growing phenomenon known as “sleep texting.”

As its name implies, sleep texting is texting while one is asleep. Usually the victim of sleep texting starts out texting while awake, falls asleep, and then continues texting while catching some Z’s.

In a recent broadcast about this phenomenon, NBC News reporters interviewed Dr. Mike Howell, a sleep doctor with the University of Minnesota Sleep Medicine Clinic. Dr. Howell noted that those most likely to sleep text are young people who come to him suffering from sleep deprivation and who are strongly attached to their phones.

When they sleep text they’re not quite awake and not quite asleep, according to the news station, which reported sometimes embarrassing scenarios for sleep texters – such as one young woman who unwittingly found herself texting an ex-boyfriend in her sleep, saying things that made her waking self cringe.

Sleep texting is no laughing matter. Doctors say sleep deprivation – one of the results of sleep texting – can have dangerous side effects such as heart problems, obesity, depression and worse.

To cure patients of sleep texting, doctors prescribe unplugging from phones and other technology for at least four days. During that time patients may feel withdrawal symptoms, but ultimately they begin to feel relief, according to the NBC report.

 

 

The Conductor on the Train Says ‘Shhh!’

A growing number of commuters traveling on New York’s Metro North railroad apparently like to unplug and reconnect during their morning commute – so much so that the MTA recently announced yet another expansion of its pilot “Quiet Car” program to include rush-hour trains on its New Haven line.

The transportation agency’s Quiet Car initiative asks customers to refrain from using cell phones and to disable the sound feature on pagers, games, computers and other electronic devices during travel. Commuters riding in these specially designated cars are also asked to conduct conversations in subdued voices and to use headphone devices at a volume that cannot be heard by other passengers. If riders don’t comply, conductors hand them a card that reads “Shhh!”

According to the MTA, Quiet Cars have been catching on across the northeast. New Jersey Transit began its Quiet Car program on the North East Corridor Line in September 2010. Following a positive reception, Metro North partnered with NJ Transit to expand its Quiet Commute program in June 2011 to include all of Metro North’s peak West of Hudson Service, both the Pascack Valley and Port Jervis lines.

The pilot then expanded to 36 peak Hudson and Harlem Line trains in October 2011. The following December, the Long Island Rail Road launched its Quiet Car pilot program on select peak hour trains that operate between Far Rockaway and Atlantic Terminal.

MTA spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said it’s likely the initiative will be made permanent, due to overwhelming favorable response.

Want to enjoy some unplugging time during your rush-hour commute? New printed timetables show a “Q” to designate trains with a quiet car, which are usually the first car for morning trains and the last car for evening trains.