A Small Island That Makes a Big Difference for America’s Veterans

Having just returned from leave, Luis Puertas was in the lead of a four-vehicle patrol unit in Iraq on Sept. 20, 2006, when an IED, hidden at the base of a street lamp, suddenly exploded. As a result of the blast, Puertas lost both of his legs and several members of the 4th Infantry Division were injured. Dozens of surgeries and years of rehabilitation put Puertas’ life on hold, and relaxation was the farthest thing from his mind.
But this summer, Puertas received a much-deserved vacation, thanks to Holidays for Heroes.
Founded in 2013 by summer resident Tom McCann, Holidays for Heroes brings Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and their families to Nantucket, Mass., for all-inclusive retreats. Banners at the nonprofit’s events say “Honoring Their Sacrifice,” which is exactly what the group does. With two to three retreats, dubbed “holidays,” per summer, they organize everything from beach barbecues and dinners to outings and entertainment for wounded warriors. Often, it is just unstructured rest and relaxation, though, which the veterans want most — so the organization’s primary task is simply to enable that by hosting them at no cost on the island. During Fourth of July weekend, the nonprofit hosted two heroes — Puertas, who is from Tampa, Fla., and Joel Dulashanti of Portland, Ore.
Scores of volunteers work tirelessly to make the holiday a perfect experience for visiting veterans like Dulashanti and Puertas. As year-round Nantucketer Donna Hamel says, “It might be a little overwhelming for some of the veterans, especially if they have disabilities.” And it can also be hard for the organizers — feeding, housing, entertaining and transporting the vets takes tremendous effort.
But that’s never been a problem.
“[Holidays for Heroes] gives people an opportunity to do something for a different cause than they might usually,” says Hamel.  And it’s exactly that involvement that has driven a lot of the group’s success. As McCann says, “We’ve been very fortunate that every single club, organization, business and individual on this special island has gotten behind the Holidays for Heroes mission.” From clothing boutiques to inns to restaurants, support has poured in. For instance, the Independence Day Firecracker 5K has existed for years, but it adopted Holidays for Heroes as a benefitting charity.
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Even with such great community support, however, the veterans’ holidays would not be possible without McCann and the Holidays for Heroes leadership. For both McCann and the organization’s executive director, Magdalena Padzik, helping our servicemen and women is more than just a way to give back, it’s personal — their individual experiences have informed a deeper love for and commitment to our veterans.
On Memorial Day 2011, McCann was on Nantucket with his family. They fished, went to the beach and rounded out the day with a barbecue. That evening, while watching the celebrations from Washington, D.C., on television with his wife, Mary-Jo, McCann saw Joe Mantegna and Gary Sinise perform a veterans’ tribute. It was at that moment McCann realized that the great day and the beautiful place — Nantucket — that he was blessed to experience should be shared with those who sacrificed for America.
Drawn by the idea of helping our veterans, McCann knew that doing so would require starting a nonprofit. To help him get Holidays for Heroes off the ground, he enlisted the help of his longtime friend Cheryl Bartlett, a fellow islander. Currently serving as the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bartlett leads a life of service. When McCann pitched the idea to Bartlett, she loved it, and has been his co-chair ever since.
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Padzik, another key leader, joined the group after meeting McCann at Holiday for Heroes’ first event. She and her family lived in Soviet-era Poland, and her father was part of the Solidarity Movement, a non-communist trade union that the U.S.S.R. tried to destroy through martial law. In order to stay safe, the Padziks moved to America when Magdalena was 4 years old. For more than a decade, she’s lived on Nantucket.
“Freedom is not something we had [growing up], which is really why this is so important to me,” says Padzik, whose appreciation for those who defend her liberty runs deep.
While Padzik’s days are already full — she’s a mother and works as the manager of a local bank —  she, like McCann, can’t ignore the plight of veterans.
McCann says that “once you walk into Walter Reed [Medical Center],” where Holidays for Heroes finds most of its veterans (including Jason Redman, an Iraq vet and founder of the nonprofit Wounded Wear) to invite for a weekend on Nantucket, “and meet all these amazing young men and women… it just opens your eyes forever. The cause is big and the need is huge.”
Especially in light of the recent Veterans Affairs hospital scandal, the void in assistance for America’s armed forces is something that is not lost on Holidays for Heroes. While the centerpiece of the organization’s work is its world-class Nantucket getaways, it’s also beginning to reach out to veterans across the country to help them start businesses and fund their children’s education.
While similar programs do exist (such as Landing Zone Grace Veterans Retreat), Holidays for Heroes is unique because of the people of Nantucket that embrace both the organization and the veterans that it hosts. On the island with his fiancé, Amber, and daughter, Emilia, Puertas explains that the weekend arranged for him by the organization was “a lot more than just a vacation…it [was] much deeper than that.”
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That kind of experience, though, is sadly not the norm for America’s veterans. But whether it’s the countless hours put in by McCann, Bartlett, Padzik and other volunteers, or simply someone on vacation running with and cheering on heroes and civilians alike in the 5K, Holidays for Heroes and the whole island community shows everyone a unique model of service for those who’ve served.
As Puertas says of McCann, “There’s a lot of things in life we want but can’t have, but he takes that pressure away and treats you like you’re part of his family… we could hang out together and not feel so alone.”
 
 

Millions of Tiny Hairs Might Replace Your Windshield Wipers

Do your wipers ever seem two swipes behind the storm, leaving you wishing that the rain never even made it to your windshield in the first place? Soon enough, it never will, thanks to an amazing innovation that has the potential to revolutionize glass.
Sounds crazy? Not to a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), whose new technology can control the behavior of glass.
Here’s how it works:
The engineers have created an elastic material that’s covered with tiny hairs that are about one quarter of the width of human hair. Introduce a magnetic pull and these fibers sway accordingly. Coat a windshield (or a window) with this hairy material, and water can be, in effect, redirected off of the glass.
The hair-like structures are most similar, and in fact inspired by, cilia — the tiny hairs in our noses that filter air.
The technology goes far beyond its inspiration, though, according to City Lab. It can even stop a water dead in its tracks on a vertical surface.
MIT’s latest advancement doesn’t just stop with liquids, though. It can also redirect sunlight, which could completely change the nature of windows. Not only can the hairs be manipulated to lighten or darken the glass gradually, they can also completely shut out light. Window shades and blinds may soon be a thing of the past.
“[The technology] could filter how much solar radiation you want coming in, and also shed raindrops. This is an opportunity for the future,”  MIT graduate student Yangying Zhu told MIT News.
If this innovation takes off, everyday life will be improved significantly. Beyond increased convenience, it can also improve safety, especially on the road. By wicking away water and reducing glare, everything from commutes to road trips will undoubtedly become much safer.
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The State That Has Made It Illegal to Throw Away Unwanted Food

We’ve mentioned that food waste is an expensive, environmental nightmare. Americans waste 40 percent of the food that’s produced each year to the tune of $165 billion.
One state has figured out a way to make this stop — by making it a crime.
Starting in October, Massachusetts’s biggest food wasters will no longer be able to send their unwanted food to the landfills, NPR reports. The ban, recently finalized by Gov. Deval Patrick, targets places that produce more than a ton of organic food waste per week, such as universities, hotels, grocery stores, sporting and entertainment venues and other manufacturers.
Instead of simply dumping leftovers, they have the choice to donate the usable food or to send the unwanted food to composting facilities, to plants that can turn scraps into biogas or to farms to use as livestock feed.
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NPR notes that it’s the “most ambitious commercial food waste ban in the U.S.”
David Cash, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, described to NPR all the benefits of the ban — including more food for the hungry, money saved on waste disposal, fewer landfills and less greenhouse gases, more green energy and green energy jobs and even fertilizer.
“This is not just a win-win situation,” Cash said. “It’s a win-win-win-win-win-win-win. Seven wins.”
The ban isn’t as draconian as it sounds. Initially announced in 2012, the 1,700 producers that this ban affects have already been preparing and reaping the benefits. Supermarkets, for example, found that they can save $10,000 to $20,000 annually per store by diverting food from the landfills.
The ban — which may eventually extend to smaller businesses and homes — is part of the state’s ambitious goal to reduce its waste stream by 80 percent by 2050. Other states such as Vermont and Connecticut also have similar rules, but nothing as aggressive as Massachusetts’s.
With any luck, the rest of the country will soon catch on, too.
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Guess Which State is the Tops for Education

We can thank this state for many things: The Red Sox. John F. Kennedy. And one hell of a strong city. And as it turns out, the Bay State is also the best place in America for an education.
Massachusetts, home to some of the nation’s top universities, is wicked smaht. The Washington Post recently published a column about the state’s superior education system, citing results from Education Week‘s annual Quality Counts report card.
For the seventh time running, the small New England state has topped the country’s scorecard and is the only state to score an A- on a child’s so-called “chance for success,” that weighs all the factors that would help a young person thrive academically. Meanwhile, the country as a whole scored a measly C+.
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The study found that more than 60 percent of children in Massachusetts have at least one parent with a post-secondary degree, 14 points higher than the national average. There are also many more children enrolled in preschool — 59.4 percent, compared to 47.7 percent nationally. Additionally, a higher percentage of Massachusetts middle schoolers are proficient at standardized testing (47.5 percent on reading and 54.6 percent on math) compared the national average (34.0 percent and 34.4 percent, respectively).
And while we often lament how our country’s youth lag behind the rest of the developed world in reading and math, Slate reports that Massachusetts students actually rank fifth in the world in reading — ahead of pupils in Singapore and Japan. In math, Massachusetts is ninth, leading both Japan and Germany.
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So why is Massachusetts so academically advanced? As the Post puts it simply, “a bipartisan commitment to education reform.”
To any politician reading this, results happen when people work together. The state has consistently shown heavy support for education system over the years, especially with its Education Reform Act of 1993 that put a lot of public dollars towards its schools (especially ones that are low-income), and demanded high standards from its educators.
And even though our country is currently deeply divided between conservative and liberal values, since the passage of the act, “Massachusetts Republicans and Democrats alike continued investing heavily in education,” the Post says.
Granted, Massachusetts didn’t score perfectly across the entire educational spectrum; like many other states it needs to close its achievement gap for minority and low-income students. Still, it looks like the whole country might want to look northeast to learn a thing or two.
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Which City Has the Best Tap Water?

Not all water faucets produce equally. In fact, tap water can vary a lot these days — from grimy to cloudy to just simply flammable.
In Boston, however, you can find some great water. That’s because the city just won a national tap water taste test competition (yes, that exists) organized by the American Water Works Association.
The annual competition (which, by chance was held in Boston this year) revealed the secret to Boston’s delicious H2O: Watershed protection, according to Yes!
The city purchases its water from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, which for the better part of the last 30 years has been buying conservation land near the Quabbin and Wachusett reservoirs — both of which are the sources of Boston’s water.
This uninhabited, undeveloped space naturally filters the water before it reaches the reservoirs, as well as during its journey to the city, purifying it. This natural cleansing doesn’t just make it healthy and tasty; it also just about eliminates the need to use expensive chemical filtration on it, too.
The tasty tap water doesn’t come cheaply, though. It has cost the Authority billions of dollars to purchase the four hundred square miles of protected forest surrounding Quabbin and Wachusett Reservoirs, as well as their cleanup and conservation efforts along the Charles River and in Boston harbor.
Though with the huge improvement in quality made since 1985 (when the Authority was established), it seems like money well spent.
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Welcoming Wounded Veterans Onto the Field of Their Dreams

Doug McBrierty grew up on Cape Cod, a die-hard Red Sox fan. So when he returned from the Iraq war with a traumatic brain injury, it was a given that baseball would be part of his recovery, thanks to the Wounded Warrior Project.
Five years ago, the nonprofit gave McBrierty a $3,500 scholarship to attend the Red Sox fantasy camp in Fort Meyers, Florida. Even though he hadn’t played catch in twenty years, McBrierty felt welcome at the camp staffed with former Red Sox players.
“Ability didn’t matter,” McBrierty told Mary E. O’Leary of the New Haven Register. “They greet you with open arms. It’s like a family reunion every year,” he said. McBrierty, who is now a firefighter, struck up a friendship with Gary Allenson, a former Red Sox catcher who currently manages the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, a minor league baseball team.
Today, McBrierty attends the camp every year to help other wounded veterans play ball. “There are a lot of people there with disabilities, but they take the time to teach them,” McBrierty said. Rico Petrocelli, a former Red Sox shortstop and third baseman who helps at the camp, recalls a veteran who’d lost an arm in combat and learned to hit again, and another vet who walked with a cane, but “made a diving catch in right field.”
Now McBrierty, Petrocelli and others are working to raise money to send more veterans to baseball camp. Many former Red Sox pitched in autographed items for a silent auction that was held a couple of weeks ago in New Haven, Connecticut.
The Wounded Warrior Project funds a variety of adaptive sports experiences for injured veterans — from skiing to skydiving to scuba diving.
For those veterans who grew up dreaming of being on the baseball diamond, the chance to join the boys of summer at a fantasy camp can’t be beat.
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Will Providing Drivers’ Licenses to Undocumented Immigrants Improve Safety?

According to the New York Timesthere are around 11.7 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, many of them driving — regardless of whether or not they are licensed. Which is a somewhat scary situation facing the rest of us out on the roads.
In response, a growing number of states (including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, and Washington) have begun to issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants. According to the Seattle Times, as of last year all but two states — Arizona and Nebraska — had altered their laws to at least allow immigrants brought here as children to obtain driver’s licenses.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., told Andrea Billups of NewsMax, “It doesn’t given them any legal status, but by giving them a government-issued ID, it helps them imbed in society.”
As for the rest of the states who haven’t given driver’s license privileges to undocumented people yet, it might make financial sense to do so. According to Hispanically Speaking News, when the Massachusetts legislature was debating this idea in March, the head of the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles, Celia Blue, said licensing undocumented drivers “would generate nearly $15 million in state revenue through license fees and other charges, plus $7.5 million in renewal fees every five years.” Massachusetts state senator Joseph Vital said, “This isn’t to excuse the fact that they’re undocumented. But they’re on the roads. They’re driving. Many uninsured.”
When Colorado passed a law allowing for the licensing of undocumented immigrants last June, the bill’s sponsor, state Senator Jessie Ulibarri, said that law enforcement supported the legislation, according to Reuters. “Our roads will be safer when we can properly identify everyone who drives on them. We estimate that thousands more Colorado drivers will get insured because of this law.”
Sarah E. Hendricks of Drake University wrote in her April report “Living in Car Culture Without a License: The Ripple Effects of Withholding Driver’s Licenses from Unauthorized Immigrants,” published by the Immigration Policy Center, “States that do not offer driver’s licenses to unauthorized immigrants will limit the contributions that immigrant communities as a whole can potentially make, are likely to face negative economic and public safety consequences, and tend to fail in attempts to use such restrictive state-level policies to reduce the presence of unauthorized immigrants.”
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It Wasn’t Easy to Welcome 25,000 Refugees, But Boy, Is This Town Glad It Did

In the 1980’s, 25,000 Cambodian refugees poured into Lowell, Massachusetts, escaping the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, but putting pressure on Lowell’s public schools and social services. Former City Manager James Campbell told the Lowell Sun that accommodating the needs of so many poor and non-English-speaking people was a “logistical nightmare.” But boy is Lowell glad it welcomed them.
The city built more schools and implemented bilingual programs to educate the refugee children. In return, the Cambodians settled down in the community and thrived. Campbell said that today there are 350 Asian-owned businesses in Lowell that provide jobs to people of all ethnicities. The Cambodian community also started the annual Southeast Asian Water Festival, which has become a major event in Lowell, and have shared their culture with the town in countless other ways.
Over the next few months, Lowell is taking a moment to look back on its history with Cambodian immigrants, and reflect on the arrival of more recent immigrants from such places as Iraq and Burma, through a special exhibit, “Lowell: A City of Refugees, a Community of Citizens.”
Highlights of the exhibit include stories kids wrote and pictures they drew shortly after they arrived, about the atrocities they’d faced in Cambodia. One boy wrote about how when he was five, the Khmer Rouge tied up his sister in the woods and left her to die, until one soldier spared her. The exhibit is dedicated to Dorothea Tsapatsaris, a teacher who worked with many refugees in the 80’s and preserved their work, much of which tells the story of their daily lives in Cambodia.
An interactive map tracks the immigrants’ movements from Cambodia to refugee camps to Lowell, and the exhibit tells the story of the city’s history as it welcomed its newcomers. Referring to that massive ’80s influx of refugees, Dorothea’s husband George Tsapatsaris, who was the Superintendent of Schools back then, said, “We slowly began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and today the Cambodian population is an integral part of our community and our schools.”
Over the last two years, 400 new refugee children have come to Lowell, and because Lowell is learning from its own history of immigration through this exhibit, many see this as a sign that the cycle of American renewal in one city has begun again.
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Hundreds Trek the Boston Marathon Route to Raise Suicide Awareness

Running a marathon takes a lot of courage and commitment. And so does marching the same distance while carrying a 50 pound backpack.
On March 29, hundreds of people did just that along the 26.2 mile Boston marathon route to raise awareness about the disturbingly high suicide rate among veterans. Sadly, an average of 22 veterans a day kill themselves, and the marchers are determined to reduce that number. Some turned the trek into a “ruck march” — carrying heavy backpacks like those servicemen and women wear, while others wore tutus and one accountant wore a gas mask, according to Todd Wallack of the Boston Globe.
Carlos Arredondo, the cowboy-hatted good samaritan who sprang into action to help victims of the Boston Marathon bombing last year, was on hand to support the marchers. His son Alexander was a Marine killed in Iraq in 2004, and his son Brian committed suicide in 2011. The cause is “very close to our hearts and our family,” he told Wallack.
Participants set a goal to raise $75,000 for Active Heroes, a Louisville, Kentucky-based nonprofit building a retreat for veterans and their families (the same charity one father and son team are hiking the Appalachian trail to support). Michelle Lyons, who served in Afghanistan, told Wallack that for veterans, “There is so much help out there — they just don’t know how to get to it.” As for the suicide rate among veterans, she said, “Hopefully we can bring that number down to zero.”
With the determination of these marathon marchers, veterans’ despair should be turned into hope.
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Meet a Couple Whose Service to Veterans Will Make You Smile

Who knows if volunteering is the secret to a long-lasting partnership, but for one Connecticut couple, serving veterans has certainly served their 45-year-long marriage well.
Joanne and Jerry Blum met in 1967, after Jerry returned from serving in Vietnam. He was working at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut, as a psychiatric aid, and Joanne was in nursing school, assigned to the same ward as Jerry during her three-month rotation. When she moved back to Massachusetts, Jerry’s friend convinced him to call her. And as they say, the rest is history.
They got married in 1968 and ever since, they have been working with veterans. Their whole family became involved with the West Hartford Veterans of Foreign Wars. “Joanne marched with the drill team,” Jerry told M.A.C. Lynch of the Hartford Courant. “I was in the color guard. Our daughters were in the fife and drum corps.” Professionally, Joanne worked as a nurse for thirty years at the veterans’ hospital in Rocky Hill, Connecticut.
In more recent years, the Blums started volunteering with the Jewish War Veterans. “The Jewish War Veterans is the oldest active veterans service organization in America,” said Jerry. “Their mission is to dispel the idea that Jews don’t serve in the military, and to take care of veterans.” Through Jewish War Veterans, the Blums help homeless veterans and those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. They also assist veterans in hospitals through their organization’s Grant-A-Wish program — providing the vets with such comforts as new shoes and restaurant meals.
“Any time we do anything for the veterans, it’s the best mitzvah, something that you do that’s more than a good deed. You do it with no possible return,” Jerry said, but “for the feeling inside that this is what we exist for.”
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