It’s mid-March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free. That’s a problem.

Akron Beacon Journal

It’s mid-March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free. That’s a problem.

Caitlin Looby, Akron Beacon Journal – March 19, 2023

Trumpeter swans find some open water along the Lake Erie shore last month. The ice in Ottawa County has melted since then as temperatures have been unseasonably warm.
Trumpeter swans find some open water along the Lake Erie shore last month. The ice in Ottawa County has melted since then as temperatures have been unseasonably warm.

It’s the middle of March and the Great Lakes are virtually ice-free.

Ice has been far below average this year, with only 7% of the lakes covered as of last Monday — and no ice at all on Lake Erie. Lake Erie’s average ice coverage for this time of year is 40%, based on measurements over the past half-century. The lake typically freezes over the quickest and has the most ice cover because it’s the shallowest of the five Great Lakes.

But communities along Ohio’s north coast, including Cleveland, Sandusky and Port Clinton, have seen considerably less ice forming on Lake Erie in recent years.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, Lake Erie’s ice coverage peaked in early February at 40%, a nearly 20% decrease from the historical average.

No ice isn’t a good thing for the lakes’ ecosystem. It can even stir up dangerous waves and lake-effect snowstorms.

So, what happens when the lakes are ice-free? What does it mean for the lakes’ food web? Is climate change to blame?

Little ice cover can be disastrous

This winter has already proved how dangerous lake-effect snow can be.

At the end of November, more than 6 feet of snow fell on Buffalo, New York, which sits on the shores of Lake Erie. A few weeks later on Dec. 23, more than 4 feet of snow covered the city and surrounding areas once again. The storm resulted in 44 deaths in Erie and Niagara counties, which sit on Lakes Erie and Ontario, respectively.

December 2022 storm:Winter storm leads to more than 1,300 crashes, multiple fatalities on Ohio roads

Cleveland and Sandusky reside on the shores of Lake Erie as well. The 2022 storm that swept the region on Dec. 23 dropped relatively little snow, only about 2-4 inches, but created dangerous conditions nonetheless.

In some places in Northeast Ohio, temperatures dropped from nearly 40 degrees to zero and below. Wind chills fueled by hurricane-force winds dragged the temperature even lower to minus 30 or even 35 below zero. This storm was the first time in almost a decade that the Cleveland Weather Forecast Office issued a blizzard warning.

A 46-vehicle pileup on the Ohio Turnpike near Sandusky claimed four lives.

A 46-vehicle pileup killed four people injured many others on the Ohio Turnpike during a winter storm with whiteout conditions Dec. 23.
A 46-vehicle pileup killed four people injured many others on the Ohio Turnpike during a winter storm with whiteout conditions Dec. 23.

During stormy winter months, ice cover tempers waves. When there is low ice cover, waves can be much larger, leading to lakeshore flooding and erosion. That happened in January 2020 along Lake Michigan’s southwestern shoreline. Record high lake levels mixed with winds whipped up 15-foot waves that flooded shorelines, leading Gov. Tony Evers to declare a state of emergency for Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties.

And while less ice may seem like a good thing for the lakes’ shipping industry, those waves can create dangerous conditions.

The Great Lakes are losing ice with climate change

The Great Lakes have been losing ice for the past five decades, a trend that scientists say will likely continue.

Of the last 25 years, 64% had below-average ice, said Michael Notaro, the director of the Center on Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The steepest declines have been in the north, including Lake Superior, northern Lake Michigan and Huron, and in nearshore areas.

Record high temperatures:Another weather record broken in Greater Akron; third record high set this month

More: What’s the state of the Great Lakes? Successful cleanups tempered by new threats from climate change

But this also comes with a lot of ups and downs, largely because warming is causing the jet stream to “meander,” said Ayumi Fujisaki Manome, a scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan who models ice cover and hazardous weather across the lakes.

There is a lot of year-to-year variability with ice cover spiking in years like 2014, 2015 and 2019 where the lakes were almost completely iced over.

Ice fishermen stay close to shore off of Bay Shore Park in New Franken, Wisconsin, in January, which saw relatively little ice cover on the Great Lakes.
Ice fishermen stay close to shore off of Bay Shore Park in New Franken, Wisconsin, in January, which saw relatively little ice cover on the Great Lakes.
No ice makes waves in the lakes’ ecosystems

A downturn in ice coverage due to climate change will likely have cascading effects on the lakes’ ecosystems.

Lake whitefish, a mainstay in the lakes’ fishing industry and an important food source for other fish like walleye, are one of the many Great Lakes fish that will be affected, said Ed Rutherford, a fishery biologist who also works at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory.

Lake whitefish spawn in the fall in nearshore areas, leaving the eggs to incubate over the winter months. When ice isn’t there, strong winds and waves can stir up the sediment, reducing the number of fish that are hatched in the spring, Rutherford said.

Whitefish haul from the Great Lakes.
Whitefish haul from the Great Lakes.

Walleye and yellow perch also need extended winters, he said. If they don’t get enough time to overwinter in cold water, their eggs will be a lot smaller, making it harder for them to survive.

Even so, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife released a report stating that Lake Erie’s 2022 walleye and yellow perch populations in the central and western basins are above average. Yellow perch hatches in the central basin are below average, however.

Declining ice cover on the lakes is also delaying the southward migration of dabbling ducks, a group of ducks that include mallards, out of the Great Lakes in the fall and winter, Notaro said. And if the ducks spend more time in the region it will increase the foraging pressure on inland wetlands.

Warming lakes and a loss of ice cover over time also will be coupled with more extreme rainfall, likely inciting more harmful algae blooms, said Notaro. These blooms largely form from agricultural runoff, creating thick, green mats on the lake surface that can be toxic to humans and pets.

In this 2017 photo, a catfish appears on the shoreline in the algae-filled waters of Lake Erie in Toledo.
In this 2017 photo, a catfish appears on the shoreline in the algae-filled waters of Lake Erie in Toledo.

Lakes Erie and Michigan are plagued with these blooms every summer. And now, blooms cropping up in Lake Superior for the first time are raising alarm.

“Even deep, cold Lake Superior has been experiencing significant algae blooms since 2018, which is quite atypical,” Notaro said.

More: Blue-green algae blooms, once unheard of in Lake Superior, are a sign that ‘things are changing’ experts say

There is still a big question mark on the extent of the changes that will happen to the lakes’ ecosystem and food web as ice cover continues to decline. That’s because scientists can’t get out and sample the lakes in the harsh winter months.

“Unless we can keep climate change in check … it will have changes that we anticipate and others that we don’t know about yet,” Rutherford said.

Caitlin Looby is a Report for America corps member who writes about the environment and the Great Lakes. Beacon Journal reporter Derek Kreider contributed to this article.

A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis

The New York Times

A Sandwich Shop, a Tent City and an American Crisis

Eli Saslow – March 19, 2023

Joel Coplin unlocks a gate on the fence surrounding the building where he lives and operates an art gallery, four blocks from the location where Joe Faillace operates The Olde Station Subway Shop, in Phoenix, Ariz. on Feb. 11, 2023. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)
Joel Coplin unlocks a gate on the fence surrounding the building where he lives and operates an art gallery, four blocks from the location where Joe Faillace operates The Olde Station Subway Shop, in Phoenix, Ariz. on Feb. 11, 2023. (Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

PHOENIX — He had been coming into work at the same sandwich shop every weekday morning for the past four decades, but now Joe Faillace, 69, pulled up to Old Station Subs with no idea what to expect. He parked on a street lined with three dozen tents, grabbed his Mace and unlocked the door to his restaurant. He picked up the phone and dialed his wife and business partner, Debbie Faillace, 60.

“All clear,” he said. “Everything looks good.”

“You’re sure? No issues?” she asked. “What’s going on with the neighbors?”

He looked out the window toward Madison Street, which had become the center of one of the largest homeless encampments in the country, with as many as 1,100 people sleeping outdoors. On this February morning, he could see a half-dozen men pressed around a roaring fire. A young woman was lying in the street. A man was weaving down the sidewalk in the direction of Joe’s restaurant with a saw, muttering to himself and then stopping to urinate.

“It’s the usual chaos and suffering,” he told Debbie. “But the restaurant’s still standing.”

That had seemed to them like an open question each morning for the past three years, as an epidemic of unsheltered homelessness began to overwhelm Phoenix and many other major American downtowns. Cities across the West had been transformed by a housing crisis, a mental health crisis and an opioid epidemic, all of which landed at the doorsteps of small businesses already reaching a breaking point because of the pandemic. In Phoenix, where the number of people living on the streets had more than tripled since 2016, businesses had begun hiring private security firms to guard their property and lawyers to file a lawsuit against the city for failing to manage “a great humanitarian crisis.”

The Faillaces had signed onto the lawsuit as plaintiffs along with about a dozen other nearby property owners. They also bought an extra mop to clean up the daily flow of human waste, replaced eight shattered windows with plexiglass, installed a wrought-iron fence around their property and continued opening their doors at exactly 8 each morning to greet the first customer of the day.

Debbie arrived to help with the lunch rush, and she greeted customers at the register while Joe prepared tomato sauce and weighed out turkey for chef’s salads. Their margins had always been tight, but they saved on labor costs by both going into work every day. They remodeled the kitchen to make room for a nursery when their children were born and then expanded into catering to help those children pay for college. They kept making sandwiches for a loyal group of regulars even as the city transformed around them — its population growing by about 25,000 each year, housing costs soaring at a record pace, until it seemed that there was nowhere left for people to go except onto sidewalks, into tents, into broken-down cars, and increasingly into the air-conditioned relief of Old Station Subs.

Their restaurant was located in an industrial neighborhood that had always attracted a small number of transients. Over the years, Joe and Debbie came to know many by name and listened to their stories of eviction, medical debt, mental illness and addiction, and together they agreed that it was their job to offer not only compassion but help.

They had given out water, opened their bathroom to the public and cashed unemployment and disability checks at no extra cost. They hired a sandwich maker who was homeless and had lost his teeth after years of addiction; a dishwasher who lived in the women’s shelter and first came to the restaurant for lunch with her parole officer; a cleaner who slept a few blocks away on a wooden pallet and washed up in the bathroom before her shift.

But the homeless population in Phoenix continued to grow. Soon there were hundreds of people sleeping within a few blocks of Old Station, most of them with mental illness or substance abuse issues. They slept on Joe and Debbie’s outdoor tables, defecated behind their back porch, smoked methamphetamine in their parking lot, washed clothes in their bathroom sink, pilfered bread from their delivery trucks, had sex on their patio, masturbated within view of their employees and lit fires that burned down trees and scared away customers. Finally, Joe and Debbie could think of nothing else to do but to start calling police.

Within a half-mile of their restaurant, police had been called to an average of eight incidents a day in 2022. There were at least 1,097 calls for emergency medical help, 573 fights or assaults, 236 incidents of trespassing, 185 fires, 140 thefts, 125 armed robberies, 13 sexual assaults and four homicides. The remains of a 20- to 24-week-old fetus were burned and left next to a dumpster in November. Two people were stabbed to death in their tents. Sixteen others were found dead from overdoses, suicides, hypothermia or excessive heat. The city had tried to begin more extensive cleaning of the encampment, but advocates for people without housing protested that it was inhumane and in December the American Civil Liberties Union successfully filed a federal lawsuit to keep people on the street from being “terrorized” and “displaced.”

Shina Sepulveda had been living in the encampment for a few weeks or maybe for a few months. It was hard to know for sure, she said, because she had been experiencing delusions. What she remembered was escaping from a cult in Mesa, Arizona, building the first internet search engine, losing billions of dollars to a government conspiracy, cutting wiretaps out of her brain, retaking her dynastic name of Espy Rockefeller and then moving onto a sidewalk across the street from Old Station Subs.

For as long as she had been homeless, she tried to nap during the relative safety of the day and stay up late at night to help look over her small corner of the encampment. She put on makeup and sat down at a plywood desk, where a handwritten nameplate introduced her as “Doctor, Poet, Psychologist, Partner at Law,” and where in reality she was now the 47-year-old caretaker of a half-dozen people — because, even if many of her stories were fantastical, she had earned a reputation for being generous and kind and for knowing a bit about everything.

“Hey, Espy, can you help me?” Brandon Mack said as he walked over from his nearby tent. He lifted his shirt to reveal two stab wounds from a few days earlier. He had fought with a neighbor over a coveted corner spot on the sidewalk, walked to the emergency room, gotten 18 stitches and then returned to recover on a molding mattress in a partly burned tent.

Espy took out a pair of scissors, scrubbed them with hand sanitizer and started to cut away a few of his stitches. She wiped away the pus and blood with napkins, tossing them into the street. Then she turned her attention to the next person in need of help. Cecilia wanted soap, so Espy handed her a bar she had scavenged from the nearby shelter. C.J. was drunk and needed help getting into the street to go to the bathroom. A man known as K.D. was moving his tent down the sidewalk because he’d gotten into an argument with a neighbor who insulted his pit bull. “Nobody talks down to Dots,” K.D. said. “I’m ready to go off. I’m armed and dangerous.”

“I was a police officer,” Espy told him. “If you really have to shoot, don’t aim to kill. Just fire a warning shot.”

Joe came into work the next morning and saw a bag of drugs in the road, human waste on the sidewalk, a pit bull wandering the street and blood-soaked napkins blowing toward his restaurant patio, where he and Debbie were scheduled to meet with a real estate agent about the future of Old Station. Debbie still insisted that she was ready to be done with the restaurant. Joe didn’t want to run it without her, but he also didn’t want to walk away with nothing. They had spent the past several months exploring a compromise, seeing if they could sell the business and retire together.

“Are we getting any bites?” Joe asked the agent, Mike Gaida.

“Oh, yeah. I get calls every week,” Mike said, and he explained that at least 25 potential buyers had looked over the financials and recognized a strong family business for the reasonable price of $165,000. Several bailed once Mike mentioned the encampment, but at least a dozen potential buyers secretly came to check out the property. “Most of the time, they don’t call back,” Mike said. “If I track them down, it’s like, ‘God bless those people for staying in business, because I couldn’t do it.’”

“It’s taken years off my life,” Debbie said.

“For her it’s, ‘Get me out. We’ve got to sell, sell, sell,’” Joe said. “But we refused an offer for $250,000 eight years ago, and it keeps dropping. I don’t want to give this place away.”

“I get it,” Mike said. “If you were a half-mile in another direction, you’d be sitting on a million bucks. Instead, it’s, How can you dispose of it?”

A few days later, Joe arrived for work to the sound of a gunshot coming from across the street and a bullet pinging off a nearby fence. He hurried inside and called police. “Yeah, it’s Joe again, over at Old Station,” he said, and a few minutes later two police officers were walking the perimeter of his restaurant, searching for the bullet. Soon Debbie would be waking up and getting ready for work.

“What the heck am I going to tell her to keep her from losing it?” Joe wondered, and he began to rehearse the possibilities in his head. It was only one bullet. Nobody had gotten hurt. Police had come right away. The shooter wasn’t targeting the restaurant. The gunshot was random. It could have happened anywhere.

Joe went outside to get some air. K.D. was ranting on the sidewalk, banging his hand against a fence, contorting his fingers into the shape of a gun and then firing it off at the sky.

“This could be the last straw for her,” Joe said, and then he saw Debbie driving toward the parking lot, steering around K.D. and hurrying through the gate.

“Wow. Tough morning?” she asked.

He took her inside the restaurant while he tried to come up with the right words. It was only one shot. The restaurant was still standing. They’d run Old Station together for 37 years, and maybe they could hang on for a while longer. But instead Joe told her the only thing that felt true.

“The whole thing’s a disaster,” he said. “I get it. It’s OK. I understand why you’re done.”

Want to improve your overall health? Look at these 5 areas of your life

Deseret News

Want to improve your overall health? Look at these 5 areas of your life

Hanna Seariac – March 18, 2023

Salad greens and vegetables in Cambridge, Mass.
Salad greens and vegetables in Cambridge, Mass. | Wikimedia Commons

When it comes to health advice, a lot of people have very different opinions. Sometimes you’ll hear people say to eat keto and lift weights, while other times people will say that you should do cardio and count calories. With the litany of different suggestions, it can be difficult to find a routine that works for you.

Many people want to improve their health and aren’t sure which areas matter the most — should sleep and diet be the main focus or should it be exercise? The real answer is focusing on developing a healthier lifestyle and improving different aspects of your life that can have a positive impact on health.

Some of the most apparent ones, according to Stanford, are sleep, diet, exercise, stress management (and with spring coming around the corner, sunlight helps) and relationships. Here’s how you can make little improvements in each of these areas.

Related

How to improve your sleep

Improving sleep may seem like an impossible task. After getting home from school or work, time can just fly by. There are a couple things to do to help you have better sleep. First, ditch the blue light before sleep. As tempting as it is to scroll through social media or text with your friends right before going to bed, looking at blue light can negatively impact your sleep. According to the Cleveland Clinic, scrolling on your phone can also keep your brain active, which will make it harder to fall asleep.

Try turning off your electronics a couple of hours before bed and doing other activities, like reading a book or meditating before bed, which can help you to relax. Make sure to set your alarm before you put your phone down.

Related

Another thing that can improve your sleep is avoiding caffeine before bed, per the CDC. Try to stop drinking caffeine at noon each day, so that way when you go to sleep, the effects of it have worn off. Improving sleep is about making small changes that will benefit you in the long run. Good sleep is important for hormonal regulation and overall health, and it can set you up to make good decisions in the long run.

How to improve your diet

Improving your diet can feel like a daunting task. One easy way to make changes is to think about making simple switches. If you eat chips with lunch, consider swapping them for carrots and celery. If you’re cooking a pasta dish, consider switching the white flour pasta for a chickpea or red lentil pasta. If you love fried chicken, try making a baked version.

Related

A few of these switches can be helpful in making incremental, positive changes toward health. Also consider what you can add to meals that you love. Say you really like mashed potatoes — consider doing half potato and then half cauliflower. Or think about a pasta dish you like, such as baked ziti. Think about how you can add broccoli and spinach to it. If your diet could use some improvement, chances are if you immediately switch to salads all the time, you won’t be making sustainable changes.

There are other small changes you can make. Healthline suggests that you pay attention to protein intake and stay hydrated throughout the day. Another tip is to stay away from diet foods. Think about eating whole foods when trying to improve your diet.

Related

How to start exercising

If you’ve stopped exercising, it’s not too late to start doing it again. Real Simple suggests that when you’re trying to get back into the swing of exercising, start small. Instead of immediately trying to go back to where you were when you were exercising the most, get back into the habit of doing some movement each day.

The best exercise to do is the one that you will do consistently and that you like. Experiment with fitness classes or going to the gym or exercising at home or outside. Finding a routine that you like can be helpful to start exercising.

Another way to start exercising is to create accountability for yourself. Talk to a friend about getting back into a routine and develop an accountability plan. Even if you start out small, doing a little bit of exercise each week can help you to feel better.

Related

Why sunlight matters for stress management

Stress management can be a tricky thing to do. According to the Stanford Lifestyle Medicine Program, managing stress can be done by identifying the cause of the stress and then responding accordingly. Sunlight also can be an important part of stress management.

According to The Wellesley News, sunlight can make us feel less stressed. There’s just something about the sun that helps us feel better. According to a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, sunlight increases the amount of vitamin D that you absorb — many people are deficient in this, so getting enough light each day can help your health.

When working a 9 to 5, it can be hard to find the time to go outside. Consider taking your lunch break outside. This is a great time to go for a short, brisk walk as well, which can help you get some movement in. Your mood may also be positively impacted by spending more time in the sun.

Related

How to focus on relationships

Focusing on relationships can improve your overall health. If you’re happy with your relationships, you may also be more inclined to spend more time improving your health in other ways, too.

Improving relationships is more of an art than it is a science. Spending time with the people you love can help you improve your relationships. When you’re with a person you love, take time to listen to them — really listen to them — and think about what they’re saying. Make sure to let people in your life know that you value them. It can improve your overall mood and health to have strong relationships.

I moved to Alabama To Fight Trump. I Thought It’d Be Temporary — Here’s Why I Decided To Stay.

HuffPost

I Moved To Alabama To Fight Trump. I Thought It’d Be Temporary — Here’s Why I Decided To Stay.

Ellen Gomory – March 18, 2023

The author at The Nick, a local bar, in Birmingham, Alabama.
The author at The Nick, a local bar, in Birmingham, Alabama.

In July of 2018, I arrived in Huntsville, Alabama, sight unseen.

My 2009 Honda Accord was packed to the brim with the contents of my Bushwick, New York, apartment, which had started to feel like a distant memory somewhere in the rolling, monotonous beauty of the Smokies. The trunk held garbage bags stuffed with clothing and liquor boxes filled with books. In the backseat was bedding, framed art and a coffee table my uncle made in the 1980s. My plan was to stay for five months ― through the end of the midterm elections ― and then return to the life I had been living in Brooklyn for the better part of a decade.

I had only been down to Alabama once before, several months prior, to volunteer at the Equal Justice Initiative’s opening of its museum dedicated to victims of lynching. It was there that I met Alabama’s Democratic House minority leader, who offered me a job working on the midterms. It was also there, in the Red Roof Inn on Zelda Road, that I picked up a mean case of bedbugs, which left itchy welts across my face and arms that took weeks to disappear.

Now I was headed to meet Alice, a volunteer on the campaign who had offered to put me up for a few nights and rent me an apartment at one of the properties she owned in downtown Huntsville. The rent was $400 per month for a large one bedroom ― less than half of what I had paid for my portion of the dilapidated two-bedroom I’d been renting in Brooklyn.

Alice and her wife lived about 20 minutes outside of Huntsville in Harvest, an unincorporated rural community. Driving around Huntsville, which I had been told would soon be the largest city in Alabama, I wondered Where’s the city part? The sight of cotton fields sent chills down my spine, and by the time I arrived at Alice’s, I was fundamentally questioning my decision to move.

I was not a professional campaign worker. In fact, this was my first job in politics. Until Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, I had been working in book publishing, teaching yoga and generally enjoying the many privileges that my whiteness allowed me. Like so many New York City liberals, that election had been a wakeup call, and I’d committed myself to doing more, to educating myself, to fighting for the rights I’d naively thought were guaranteed.

I’d read myriad think pieces about how we needed to spend more time in those parts of the country that had voted for Trump. But if Hillary Clinton couldn’t even be bothered to go to Wisconsin, did I really need to uproot my life and move to Alabama?

The scene in Harvest, Alabama, outside of Huntsville.
The scene in Harvest, Alabama, outside of Huntsville.

Growing up in New Jersey, I knew about as much about the South as I did about Timbuktu. When I applied to Tulane University, my grandmother, a die-hard New Yorker, said without a hint of sarcasm, “But you know you can’t get a decent education below the Mason-Dixon line.” The bedbugs were surprising to no one ― my decision to move was a shock.

With some trepidation, I let myself into Alice’s house using her keypad and waited for her to come home. The campaign was in full swing, so I occupied the afternoon with calls, fundraising emails and drafting the paperwork for a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization.

When Alice arrived, we greeted each other cautiously. We’d spoken many times on the phone, mostly about campaign-related business, and her low voice, thick accent and easy demeanor immediately put me at ease. She was understandably more skeptical of me. What was a girl from New Jersey with no prior work experience in politics doing down here in Alabama?

Over dinner and bourbon, we got to know each other. I told her about my family, the guy I was dating and my desire to find more meaningful work. Alice shared her struggle to lift herself out of rural poverty and become the vice president of a major tech company, and the difficulties she’d faced in coming out. We began to develop a friendship.

As part of my Alabama education, Alice pulled out a white board to explain the state’s deepest political divide. On one side she wrote “Alabama.” On the other side she wrote “Auburn,” with a line dividing the two. Under Alabama, she wrote “Roll Tide”; under Auburn, “War Eagle.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why is one team called ‘Alabama’ if both teams are in Alabama? And why is Auburn’s chant ‘War Eagle’ if their mascot is the tigers?”

Alice looked at me like I had two heads.

“What’s not to get?” She asked. “I think you’ve had too much bourbon.”

Football as religion was just one of many cultural discoveries I made over those first months in Alabama, the majority of which could be easily packaged into an early-aughts rom-com. Meat and three’s, Jason Isbell and chatting with people in line at the grocery store were all foreign concepts, and I reveled in their discovery. Well, everything except football.

Alice was my first friend, but I quickly made more, and before long Alabama began to feel like home.

The author on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where voting rights protesters marched on Bloody Sunday in 1965.
The author on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where voting rights protesters marched on Bloody Sunday in 1965.

The campaign was busy, but the work felt meaningful. We hoped to capitalize on Doug Jones’ historic Senate win and break the Republican supermajority in the state house ahead of the census and redistricting. Since state lawmakers are responsible for drawing up voting districts, it was crucial that we win in districts across the state where Democrats had not only lost but in many cases had not even run a candidate for many years. Given the state’s history of civil rights organizing and voter suppression, the task felt especially vital.

During the campaign, I visited New York frequently, on both personal and fundraising trips. Each time I came up, I was surprised by how little I missed the city and how eager I was to return to Alabama. The energy and schlep of the city that had energized me throughout my 20s felt draining, and the disdain with which so many Northeasterners treated my new home felt frustrating.

At a fundraising event in lower Manhattan, I told the host about my recent move. He simply responded, “I’m sorry.”

Almost no one I knew had ever visited Alabama, and most seemed to think that the state was populated by illiterate Trump supporters who didn’t wear shoes.  The grace that well-meaning liberals offered the Midwest did not extend to a state whose reputation had been solidified during the civil rights movement. Most people I spoke with still associated Alabama with Gov. George Wallace’s proclamation of “segregation forever” and Bull Connor’s assault on peaceful protesters with dogs and fire hoses.

Though Alabama’s brutal, racist history is very much alive and undeniably woven into the fabric of the state, it is far from unique to Alabama. I was consistently surprised by the smugness with which Northeasterners talked about Alabama without any apparent awareness of our own region’s history of racism or, more strikingly, the state’s equally potent history of activism. In sneering at the state as a whole, people seemed not to realize that they were also sneering at activists, organizers and everyday people working to make the best with what little resources they might have.

The joke that Alabamians are shoeless and illiterate is much less funny when you consider the state’s history of racism and lack of job opportunities or public school funding.

Yard signs at one of Sen. Doug Jones’ COVID-19 drive-in rallies.
Yard signs at one of Sen. Doug Jones’ COVID-19 drive-in rallies.

Following a brutal midterm loss, I decided to stay in Alabama and work for the state House Democratic Caucus. When the session ended, I went to work for Terri Sewell, our sole Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and then on Doug Jones’ second Senate race. I moved to Birmingham, fell in love and bought a house. I got engaged, started teaching yoga again and completed a master’s program in journalism at the University of Alabama. Before long, 4½ years had passed and I had built a life for myself.

To my friends and family up North, my decision to stay was even more confusing than my initial decision to leave. Then, I had been on a mission with a clear goal and end date. Now, I was just… living?

Gradually, more friends and family came down to visit and started to understand the appeal. The pace down here is slower, the food is excellent and history is everywhere. Politically and culturally, the state is still deeply conservative, but I found a group of friends (largely through political work) whose progressive ideals align with my own. We joke that the only time Alabama makes positive national news is for football, but within challenge and struggle, there is also beauty and culture. Social justice and equity work become more potent in the face of clear and vocal enemies.

As a country, we are still mired in the work of consensus building. We are still deeply and fundamentally divided. Partially, I believe the issue is one of exposure. The echo chambers of social media and online news are further isolating and entrenching people in their beliefs and, despite the commitments many of us made to understanding those with opposing viewpoints, it’s easier to hand-wring with likeminded friends.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) recently made headlines for proposing a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Though pundits were quick to ridicule her, it’s a sentiment I’ve often heard in casual conversation with Northern friends on the left. “If the South is going to hold us back from meaningful climate and social progress, why not just let them secede?”

The answer, in simple terms, is that separation hurts those with the least. If creating a fairer, more equitable society is truly what we as progressives care about, then we have a responsibility not to pull away but to lean in.

We’ve seen what leaning in has done in Georgia, but it took Stacey Abrams and many other organizers and activists well over a decade to implement the internal structures that have turned Georgia purple. And still the fight continues. There is still so much important work to be done and so many people fighting to hold on to the ugliness of the past. Dismissing Alabama or the South as a whole does nothing to advance that work; it only confirms to people down here that they have been left behind.

A photo the author took of Rep. John Lewis in Selma, Alabama, a few weeks before he died.
A photo the author took of Rep. John Lewis in Selma, Alabama, a few weeks before he died.

Ellen Gomory is a New Jersey native living in Birmingham, Alabama. She is passionate about storytelling, progressive politics, the Real Housewives and her pug, Eloise. 

Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

The Guardian

Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

David Smith in Washington – March 18, 2023

<span>Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images</span>
Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

When a fiery train derailment took place on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. The former US president visited East Palestine, accused Joe Biden of ignoring the community – “Get over here!” – and distributed self-branded water before dropping in at a local McDonald’s.

Related: Levels of carcinogenic chemical near Ohio derailment site far above safe limit

Then, when the Silicon Valley Bank last week became the second biggest bank to fail in US history, Trump again lost no time in making political capital. He predicted that Biden would go down as “the Herbert Hoover of the modrrn [sic] age” and predicted a worse economic crash than the Great Depression.

Yet it was Trump himself who, as US president, rolled back regulations intended to make railways safer and banks more secure. Critics said his attacks on the Biden administration offered a preview of a disingenuous presidential election campaign to come and, not for the first time in Trump’s career, displayed a shameless double standard.

“Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald Trump and he sets new standards in a whole bunch of regrettable ways,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “For his true believers, they’re going to take Trump’s word for it and, even if they don’t, it doesn’t affect their support of him.”

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March and of New York’s Signature Bank two days later sent shockwaves through the global banking industry and revived bitter memories of the financial crisis that plunged the US into recession about 15 years ago.

Fearing contagion in the banking sector, the government moved to protect all the banks’ deposits, even those that exceeded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $250,000 limit for each individual account. The cost ran into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Trump with crates of Trump water in East Palestine after a train derailed in Ohio.
Trump with crates of Trump water in East Palestine after a train derailed in Ohio. Photograph: Alan Freed/Reuters

The drama reverberated in Washington, where Trump’s criticism was followed by that of Republicans and conservative media, seeking to blame Biden-driven inflation or, improbably, to Silicon Valley Bank’s socially aware “woke” agenda. Opponents saw this as a crude attempt to deflect from the bank’s risky investments in the bond market and more systemic problems in the sector.

The 2008 financial crisis, triggered by reckless lending in the housing market, led to tough bank regulations during Barack Obama’s presidency. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed to ensure that Americans’ money was safe, in part by setting up annual “stress tests” that examine how banks would perform under future economic downturns.

But when Trump won election in 2016, the writing was on the wall. Biden, then outgoing vice-president, warned against efforts to undo banking regulations, telling an audience at Georgetown University: “We can’t go back to the days when financial companies take massive risks with the knowledge that a taxpayer bailout is around the corner when they fail.”

But in 2018, with Trump in the White House, Congress slashed some of those protections. Republicans – and some Democrats – voted to raise the minimum threshold for banks subject to the stress tests: those with less than $250bn in assets were no longer required to take part. Many big lenders, including Silicon Valley Bank, were freed from the tightest regulatory scrutiny.

Sabato commented: “The worst example is the bank situation because that is directly tied to Trump and his administration and changes made in bank regulations in 2018. Yes, some Democrats voted for it, but it was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans and by Trump who heralded it as the real solution to future bank woes.

The minority of Democrats who supported the 2018 law have denied that it can be directly tied to this month’s bank failures, although Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, was adamant: “Let’s be clear. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed.”

You do need government to regulate finance … but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality

Larry Jacobs

Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator for Ohio who introduced bipartisan legislation to improve rail safety protocols, drew a parallel between the banks’ collapse to rail industry deregulation lobbying that contributed to the East Palestine train disaster. “We see aggressive lobbying like this from banks as well,” he said.

Trump repealed several Barack Obama-era US Department of Transportation rules meant to improve rail safety, including one that required high-hazard cargo trains to use electronically controlled pneumatic brake technology by 2023. This rule would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine – where roughly 5,000 residents had to evacuate for days – as it was not classified as a high-hazard cargo train.

But the debate around the railway accident and bank failures points to a perennial divide between Democrats, who insist that some regulation is vital to a functioning capitalism, and Republicans, who have long claimed to believe in small government. Steve Bannon, an influential far-right podcaster and former White House chief strategist, framed the Trump agenda as “the deconstruction of the administrative state”.

Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Republican party has gotten by for many years on this idea that less is better. However, we’re now learning in this country that, as America continues to mature, in some cases more is better, and more has to be how we get to better. Otherwise the mistakes can spin out of control and cause generations of people long-term damage.”

A Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on fire on 4 February 2023.
A Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, on fire on 4 February 2023. Photograph: Gene J Puskar/AP

Biden called on Congress to allow regulators to impose tougher penalties on the executives of failed banks while Warren and other Democrats introduced legislation to undo the 2018 law and restore the Dodd-Frank regulations. It is likely to meet stiff opposition from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and even some moderate Democrats.

Biden has also insisted that no taxpayer money will be used to resolve the current crisis, keen to avoid any perception that average Americans are “bailing out” the two banks in a way similar to the unpopular bailouts of the biggest financial firms in 2008.

But Republicans running for the 2024 presidential nomination are already contending that customers will ultimately bear the costs of the government’s actions even if taxpayer funds were not directly used. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, said: “Joe Biden is pretending this isn’t a bailout. It is.”

Another potential 2024 contender, Senator Tim Scott, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, also criticised what he called a “culture of government intervention”, arguing that it incentivises banks to continue risky behavior if they know federal agencies will ultimately rescue them.

Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “This is familiar ideological territory. The battle lines between liberalism and a fake conservatism appear to be playing out here. But the tragedy of the situation is that the liberals are right.

It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses … look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years

Wendy Schiller

“You do need government to regulate finance and, when you don’t, you get mischief making and bank failures but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality. He’s demonstrated that facts and position taking don’t matter. It’s an extraordinary political strategy but it’s even more devastating to our whole political system and our media that this could be allowed.”

This poses a huge messaging challenge for Democrats, who after the 2008 financial crisis came up against the Tea Party, a populist movement feeding off economic and racial resentments. Long and winding explanations about the negative impacts of Trump era deregulation are a hard sell compared to the former president’s sloganeering in East Palestine.

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Once again we see that Trump is taking advantage of the Achilles’ heel of the Democratic party by telling voters that the Democrats like big government because it bails out industries and it never provides a bailout for the little guy.”

Democrats’ efforts to point out that Trump was responsible for deregulation are unlikely to cut through, Schiller added.

“Any time it takes more than 10 seconds to explain something, you’re done in politics. This is why Trump has catchy phrases, sound bytes. He understands that all voters see is that rich people made a bad investment and then more rich people are making sure that their money’s available to them within three days, coming off the heels of all the closures during Covid, lost business, lost income, people struggling, inflation.

“Democrats don’t want to call it a bailout but it is a bailout. The high visibility of this bailout smothers anything else the Democrats are doing for the average voter. It’s a perfect issue for the Republicans. It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses and the Democrats have to save it. Look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years: this is exactly what happens.

U.S. grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later

Reuters

U.S. grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later

Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay – March 16, 2023

U.S. grapples with forces unleashed by Iraq invasion 20 years later

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – From an empowered Iran and eroded U.S. influence to the cost of keeping U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria to combat Islamic State fighters, the United States still contends with the consequences of invading Iraq 20 years ago, current and former officials say.

Then-U.S. President George W. Bush’s 2003 decision to oust Saddam Hussein by force, the way limited U.S. troop numbers enabled ethnic strife and the eventual 2011 U.S. pullout have all greatly complicated U.S. policy in the Middle East, they said.

The end of Saddam’s minority Sunni rule and replacement with a Shi’ite majority government in Iraq freed Iran to deepen its influence across the Levant, especially in Syria, where Iranian forces and Shi’ite militias helped Bashar al-Assad crush a Sunni uprising and stay in power.

The 2011 withdrawal of the U.S. troops from Iraq left a vacuum that Islamic State (ISIS) militants filled, seizing roughly a third of Iraq and Syria and fanning fears among Gulf Arab states that they could not rely on the United States.

Having withdrawn, former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 sent troops back to Iraq, where about 2,500 remain, and in 2015 he deployed to Syria, where about 900 troops are on the ground. U.S. forces in both countries combat Islamic State militants, who are also active from North Africa to Afghanistan.

“Our inability, unwillingness, to put the hammer down in terms of security in the country allowed chaos to ensue, which gave rise to ISIS,” said former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, faulting the U.S. failure to secure Iraq.

Armitage, who served under Republican Bush when the United States invaded Iraq, said the U.S. invasion “might be as big a strategic error” as Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, which helped bring about Germany’s World War Two defeat.

MASSIVE COSTS

The costs of U.S. involvement in Iraq and Syria are massive.

According to estimates published this week by the “Costs of War” project at Brown University, the U.S. price tag to date for the wars in Iraq and Syria comes to $1.79 trillion, including Pentagon and State Department spending, veterans’ care and the interest on debt financing the conflicts. Including projected veterans’ care through 2050, this rises to $2.89 trillion.

The project puts U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Syria over the past 20 years at 4,599 and estimates total deaths, including Iraqi and Syrian civilians, military, police, opposition fighters, media and others at 550,000 to 584,000. This includes only those killed as a direct result of war but not estimated indirect deaths from disease, displacement or starvation.

U.S. credibility also suffered from Bush’s decision to invade based on bogus, exaggerated and ultimately erroneous intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

John Bolton, a war advocate who served under Bush, said even though Washington made mistakes – by failing to deploy enough troops and administering Iraq instead of quickly handing over to Iraqis – he believed removing Saddam justified the costs.

“It was worth it because the decision was not simply: ‘Does Saddam pose a WMD threat in 2003?'” he said. “Another question was: ‘Would he pose a WMD threat five years later?’ To which I think the answer clearly was ‘yes.'”

“The worst mistake made after the overthrow of Saddam … was withdrawing in 2011,” he added, saying he believed Obama wanted to pull out and used the inability to get guarantees of immunity for U.S. forces from Iraq’s parliament “as an excuse.”

‘ALARM BELLS RINGING … IN THE GULF’

Ryan Crocker, who served as U.S. ambassador in Iraq, said the 2003 invasion did not immediately undermine U.S. influence in the Gulf but the 2011 withdrawal helped push Arab states to start hedging their bets.

In the latest example of waning U.S. influence, Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed on Friday to re-establish relations after years of hostility in a deal brokered by China.

“We just decided we didn’t want to do this stuff anymore,” Crocker said, referring to the U.S. unwillingness to keep spending blood and treasure securing Iraq. “That began … with President Obama declaring … he was going to pull all forces out.”

“These were U.S. decisions not forced by a collapsing economy, not forced by demonstrators in the street,” he said. “Our leadership just decided we didn’t want to do it any more. And that started the alarm bells ringing … in the Gulf.”

Jim Steinberg, a deputy secretary of state under Obama, said the war raised deep questions about Washington’s willingness to act unilaterally and its steadfastness as a partner.

“The net result … has been bad for U.S. leverage, bad for U.S. influence, bad for our ability to partner with countries in the region,” he said.

A debate still rages among former officials over Obama’s decision to withdraw, tracking a timeline laid out by the Bush administration and reflecting a U.S. inability to secure immunities for U.S. troops backed by the Iraqi parliament.

Bolton’s belief that removing Saddam was worth the eventual cost is not held by many current and former officials.

Asked the first word that came to mind about the invasion and its aftermath, Armitage replied “FUBAR,” a military acronym which, politely, stands for “Fouled up beyond all recognition.”

“Disaster,” said Larry Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff.

“Unnecessary,” said Steinberg.

(This story has been refiled to fix the spelling of former U.S. President Barack Obama’s name in paragraph 5)

(Reporting By Arshad Mohammed and Jonathan Landay; Additional reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by William Maclean)

A Study of 12,000 People Found That Taking This One Supplement May Lower Your Dementia Risk by 40%

Parade

A Study of 12,000 People Found That Taking This One Supplement May Lower Your Dementia Risk by 40%

Beth Ann Mayer – March 16, 2023

Here’s why you should discuss it with your doctor.

Could one supplement be a tool in your dementia-fighting toolbox?

It depends on who you ask, but a new, large study found that it might. The research was conducted by British and Canadian researchers and published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment & Disease Monitoring in March

Researchers followed 12,388 people around 71 years old for about a decade and found those who took a vitamin D supplement had a 40 percent lower chance of developing dementia than those who did not.

However, experts stress caution about the results. “It is important to note that this study is an observational study, not an intervention, so it cannot establish causation,” said Dr. Claire Sexton, DPhil, the senior director of scientific programs and outreach at the Alzheimer’s Association, in an emailed statement. “Also, a significant limitation to the study is that neither vitamin D levels at baseline and follow-up, nor dose and duration of supplementation, were available or analyzed.”

Sexton says further research is needed. Experts, including one of the study’s authors, discussed the research and the importance of discussing supplements with your doctor.

Related: 50 Inspiring Menopause Jokes

About the Study

Principal investigator Dr. Zahinoor Ismail, MD, FRCPC, treats patients with clinical dementia and researches early identification and prevention. He wanted to look into the effects of using vitamin D in advance of dementia.

“The genesis of the project came when I was reading some literature and saw there were potential vitamin D effects on behavioral symptoms in Alzheimer’s,” says Dr. Ismail, a professor at the University of Calgary.

Researchers collected data from the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) database in the U.S. Participants were dementia-free (normal cognition) or had mild cognitive impairment at baseline and had an average age of 71.2 years old. Most participants (80 percent) were white.

Researchers tracked patients for about 10 years. Of the 12,388 patients, 2,700 developed dementia. Researchers discovered vitamin D habits differed among participants. The dementia risk in patients who had taken vitamin D was 15 percent compared to 26 percent in patients who never had taken supplements.

Researchers accounted for age, gender, race, education and depression, and ultimately concluded that vitamin D supplementation could lower dementia by 40 percent compared to no exposure. Why might this finding be?

“Vitamin D can help prevent or clear the abnormal proteins that cause Alzheimer’s Disease,” Dr. Ismail says.

The impact of vitamin D supplementation was more pronounced in women participants.  Dr. Ismail says they found that supplementation was associated with a 50 percent lower dementia risk in females but only 25 percent among males.

“We postulated that it is related to perimenopause and menopause…in those periods, there is a loss of estrogen,” Dr. Ismail says. “Estrogen activates vitamin D.”

The benefits of vitamin D supplementation were also greater in participants who had normal cognition versus those who entered the study with mild cognitive impairment. “The earlier the intervention the better when it comes to prevention,” Dr. Ismail says.

While the study design has its flaws, one expert feels the information has importance.

“Understanding the relationship between vitamin D and Alzheimer’s disease, or other diseases potentially causing dementia, is important because it may be possible that with optimizing vitamin D levels we could potentially have some control over our risk for development of dementia,” says Dr. Marzena Gieniusz, MD, the medical director of the Alzheimer’s and Dementia Care Program at Northwell Health, New York.

Related: The Absolute Best Food for Brain Health

What To Understand About the Study’s Limitations

As Dr. Sexton Said—and Dr. Ismail agrees—the study design calls for a caveat.

“The big caveat is that it’s not a randomized control trial,” Dr. Ismail says.

If the study were a randomized control trial (RCT), one group would get vitamin D, and another would receive a placebo. Researchers would compare at a follow-up, explains Dr. Nikhil Palekar, MD, the director of the Stony Brook Center of Excellence for Alzheimer’s Disease and the director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Clinical Trials Program with Stony Brook Medicine.

“It’s interesting,” Dr. Palekar says. “They have a large [sample size]. People with exposure to vitamin D had 40 percent lower rates of dementia. It’s an amazing number. The problem is that they didn’t look at other stuff that patients were on. They could have been taking other supplements that may have helped. They didn’t look at what dose they were on. They didn’t look at how often or how long people took vitamin D—a month? A year? Five years?”

In other words, “It sounds impressive, but there are lots of caveats,” says Dr. Palekar.

Related: Great Blue Light-Blocking Glasses

Dr. Ismail notes that it’s challenging—and not exactly feasible—to conduct a randomized trial that involved giving someone a vitamin D placebo for a decade. He cited ethics (“The research ethics board wouldn’t support this”) and feasibility (“I don’t think anyone would consistently take a drug for 10 years knowing that it might be a placebo”).

“We are left gathering evidence and making recommendations based on shorter RCTs, on longer organizational cohorts with large samples like ours, and ensuring there is a biological plausibility,” he says.

Talk to Your Provider

In her statement, Dr. Sexton emphasized speaking to a provider before starting any supplementation, including vitamin D.

“Always talk to your health care provider before starting supplements or other dietary interventions, and let them know which ones you are already taking,” Dr. Sexton says.

Dr. Ismail agrees, noting that vitamin D is fat-soluble and can be toxic or affect bone health at a high level. Further, providers can run bloodwork to give customized recommendations for dosing. Your doctor also understands your medication history, including any other vitamins, supplements or medications you are on (and if they don’t, tell them).

“[Vitamin D supplements] can potentially interact with other supplements and over-the-counter medications, as well as certain prescription medications,” Dr. Gieniusz says. “Just like prescription medications, supplements can have side effects and can sometimes cause more harm than good in the setting of certain medical conditions.”

Next up: Are You Getting Enough Vitamin D? 

Big, stinky blob of algae takes aim at Florida beaches. What’s causing it? Is it climate change?

USA Today

Big, stinky blob of algae takes aim at Florida beaches. What’s causing it? Is it climate change?

Dinah Voyles Pulver, USA TODAY – March 15, 2023

Beachgoers in Florida and the Caribbean could be greeted by heavy blankets of smelly seaweed in the weeks ahead as a 5,000-mile swath of sargassum drifts westward and piles onto white sandy beaches.

Sargassum, a naturally occurring type of macroalgae, has grown at an alarming rate this winter. The belt stretches across the Atlantic Ocean from Africa to Florida and the Yucatan Peninsula and is as much as 200 to 300 miles wide.

“This year could be the biggest year yet,” even bigger than previous growths, said Brian Lapointe, an algae specialist and research professor at Florida Atlantic University’s Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute.

The belt is already beginning to wash up in the Florida Keys and Barbados and elsewhere in the region, but researchers don’t know where the bulk of it could wind up.

READ MORELatest climate change news from USA TODAY

The monstrous seaweed bloom is just one more example of a growing global invasion of macro and microscopic algal blooms thriving on an increasing supply of nutrients such as nitrogen in freshwater and marine ecosystems.

This image based on satellite photos shows the massive belt of sargassum seaweed blooming across the Atlantic Ocean and drifting onto beaches in Florida and the Caribbean.
This image based on satellite photos shows the massive belt of sargassum seaweed blooming across the Atlantic Ocean and drifting onto beaches in Florida and the Caribbean.
What is causing the algal blooms?

In addition to the unsightly piles of sargassum along the coast, some species produce toxins that affect the food chain or deplete the oxygen in the water when they start to decay, causing fish kills and the die-off of other marine species.

Here’s what to know:

Not all algal blooms are bad. Many can occur naturally and can have positive effects.

FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Huge seaweed blob on way to Florida is ‘like a Stephen King movie’

Beachgoers make their way through mounds of seaweed along the shoreline in Ormond Beach, Tuesday, May 25, 2021.
Beachgoers make their way through mounds of seaweed along the shoreline in Ormond Beach, Tuesday, May 25, 2021.
Isn’t sargassum naturally occurring?

Yes. Christopher Columbus wrote about floating mats of it in the Atlantic Ocean.

“It’s not a bad thing to have the sargassum in the ocean,” said Brian Barnes, an assistant research professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Sea turtle hatchlings swim from Florida beaches to the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic, where they spend their early lives floating and foraging in the grass.

“If it all stays offshore, we wouldn’t really have a problem,” Barnes said. But the macroalgae has mushroomed in size over the past 12 years or so, which makes it more likely to see large piles of seaweed that make it difficult to walk, sit or play on beaches.

The trend was first documented on satellite in 2011.

In some cases, there’s so much seaweed that local governments must use heavy equipment and dump trucks to haul it away, LaPointe said.

He has linked the surge in sargassum to flow from the Mississippi River, extreme flooding in the Amazon basin, and the mouth of the Congo, where upwelling and vertical mixing of the ocean can bring up nutrients that feed the blooms. He said deforestation and burning also may contribute.

DEFINITIONS: Is climate change the same thing as global warming? Definitions explained.

CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSESWhy scientists say humans are to blame.

Phytoplankton blooms increasing in size and frequency

Blooms of much smaller algae – a microscopic species known as phytoplankton – increased in size and frequency around the world from 2003 to 2020, the researchers concluded in the Nature study.

“We’ve seen something pretty similar in a lot of the things we study,” Barnes said. “We’re seeing such massive blooms now.”

The coastal phytoplankton study, by Lian Feng at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China and other researchers, used images from NASA’s Aqua satellite. They found:

  • Blooms affected more than 8% of the global ocean area in 2020, a 13.2% increase from 2003.
  • Bloom frequency increased globally at a rate of nearly 60%.
  • Europe and North America had the largest bloom areas.
  • Africa and South America saw the most frequent blooms, more than 6.3 a year.
  • Australia had the lowest frequency and smallest affected area.
Is climate change affecting algae blooms?

Blooms have been at least indirectly linked to climate change in several ways, but especially to the warming temperatures that bring more extreme rainfall that washes silt and pollutants into waterways.

The authors of the coastal phytoplankton study, Lapointe and other researchers have found:

  • A correlation in some regions between changes in sea surface temperatures and ocean circulation.
  • Warmer temperatures coincided with blooms in high latitude regions such as Alaska and the Baltic Sea.
  • Climate change can affect ocean circulation and the movement of nutrients that feed phytoplankton blooms.
  • Global climate events, such as El Nino, also show connections to bloom frequency and movement.
  • Algal-bloom-favorable seasons in temperate seas have increased with warmer temperatures.
Where will the sargassum pile up this year?

“We can’t really say which particular beach at which particular time,” Barnes said. The university publishes a regular update on the status of the bloom.

“We can get an idea of when it will be fairly close,” he said. “In general, everything flows west. It will come across the Central Atlantic and into the Caribbean, and into the Gulf of Mexico through the straits of Florida.”

Winds, currents and even small storms can influence where the sargassum moves.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands could get hit hard, Barnes said. But the floating mats also wind up on beaches in Jamaica and all around the coast of Florida.

Why this Mediterranean staple could help you live longer

The Telegraph

Why this Mediterranean staple could help you live longer

Abigail Buchanan – March 14, 2023

sofrito - Getty
sofrito – Getty

The latest study extolling the virtues of the Mediterranean diet has come this week from Newcastle University. Researchers studied data from 60,000 people, and found that eating plenty of fruit, vegetables, legumes, fish and olive oil, and very little red and processed meat, could significantly cut your dementia risk.

Along with this, they suggested that to maximise the benefits of the Med way of life, we should be having twice weekly servings of sofrito – a simple sauce made from just four or five ingredients, that is the bedrock of Mediterranean cuisine, used in sauces, soups and stews, and as a marinade for fish and meat. The ingredients vary slightly by region, but it always starts with a base of workaday staples: onions, tomatoes and olive oil. In Spain, it usually contains garlic and peppers, in Italy, celery and carrots.

Sofrito was also identified as a key component in the ‘perfect’ diet based on findings from an influential, long-running study conducted in Spain, which informed Newcastle University’s research. Its importance is “based around its ubiquity in Mediterranean cooking,” says Dr Oliver Shannon, a lecturer in human nutrition and ageing at Newcastle who led the recent study into diet and dementia risk. Few people got a ‘perfect’ diet score in the study, but “even one or two small changes to an individual’s diet could make a big difference.”

sofrito chopped vegetables - Getty
sofrito chopped vegetables – Getty

One of the crucial ingredients for brain health is plenty of olive oil, which is abundant in sofrito, and has a “healthy profile of fats –  mono and poly-unsaturated fatty acids,” says Shannon.

“It’s also rich in polyphenols, these ‘plant defence’ compounds that seem to be really good at protecting the body against oxidative stress. There’s some really good evidence now that that contributes to the cardiovascular and cognitive benefits of the Mediterranean diet.”

A diet that includes two dishes cooked with sofrito per week has broader health benefits, as it means that you’re cooking a healthy meal from scratch and not taking shortcuts or eating fast food, says nutritionist Jane Clarke. But the tomato base provides a specific brain boost.

sofrito - Getty
sofrito – Getty

“Tomatoes contain an antioxidant called lycopene that reduces what we call ‘free radical damage’ – the damage that the environment, our genes and lifestyle can have on our body – and reduces the risk of certain types of dementia,” she says. It’s lycopene that gives tomatoes their bright red colouring.

“What’s great about tomatoes is that the lycopene content increases and becomes more readily available to the body when it’s cooked. And you’ve lost the water so you’ve got a more concentrated source.”

Some suggest that cooking tomatoes with olive oil – as is often the case in a Mediterranean diet – further increases the concentration of this potent antioxidant. An Italian study showed that the absorption of lycopene was three times greater from cooked tomatoes in comparison to raw.

Onions and garlic get their smell from allicin, another anti-inflammatory ingredient, says Clarke. Plus, an Italian soffritto typically also contains carrots and celery. “Carrots contain beta-carotene, an antioxidant, and like the tomato, it’s more efficiently absorbed when it’s cooked,” she says. Beta-carotene, which is also present in tomatoes, helps support a healthy immune system.

sofrito - Getty
sofrito – Getty

The best news of all is that sofrito is the base of countless delicious dishes, from Spanish paella to a traditional Italian bolognese. It can also be used as a condiment. ‘We use it in many different dishes [but] you can have it as it is, with a fried egg on top, for example,’ says Jose Jara, the Spanish head chef of JOIA, an Iberian restaurant in Battersea, London. He regularly serves a sofrito sauce with tapas dishes.

Preparing sofrito is easy, but requires a fair amount of chopping to finely dice the ingredients and then a long, slow simmer. You can buy a frozen sofrito (or soffritto) base from supermarkets, or buy the ready-made sauce from Waitrose and Ocado.

However, it’s best homemade, and can be batch-cooked and stored in the freezer. ‘The base of [our] sofrito is olive oil, onion, red or green pepper, tomato, garlic and paprika,’ says Jara, although depending on who’s cooking it, they might add one or two extra ingredients, such as herbs.

Cereal before bed? Food makers push ‘sleep’ snacks at night.

The Washington Post

Cereal before bed? Food makers push ‘sleep’ snacks at night.

Anahad O’Connor and Teddy Amenabar – March 14, 2023

(Linnea Bullion for The Washington Post)

You’ve heard of breakfast cereal. But what about bedtime cereal?

Post Consumer Brands, the cereal company known for Raisin Bran, Grape-Nuts and Fruity Pebbles, has launched a new line of cereals that it wants you to include in your nightly sleep routine.

The cereal of crunchy flakes and almonds, called Sweet Dreams, comes with a description that reads like a box of herbal tea, touting notes of lavender and chamomile, as well as vitamins and minerals intended to support your body’s production of the sleep hormone melatonin. But Sweet Dreams cereal also contains as much as 13 grams of added sugar from cane sugar, corn syrup, “invert sugar” and molasses, which according to studies can be detrimental to your nightly sleep.

The company says its goal is to help people establish healthy nighttime habits “by providing a nutrient dense before-bed snack” that supports your sleep routine.

But some studies have found that eating late-night meals, including those with a lot of added sugar, actually can worsen your sleep and increase your risk of obesity. Although some of the vitamins contained in Post’s new cereal can influence your body’s melatonin levels, experts say it’s not clear that they’ll have more than a minor impact, especially when consumed in the evening.

“You’re not going to eat this at 7 p.m. and have it boost your melatonin secretion at 9 p.m. to help you fall asleep,” said Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the director of the Sleep Center of Excellence at Columbia. “It’s not going to be a quick-fix two hours before bedtime.”

Sweet Dreams is one of a growing number of nighttime snacks marketed to a large segment of sleep-deprived consumers in search of better shut-eye.

Studies show that more than half of all adults in the United States experience difficulty falling asleep, and 1 in 5 have insomnia. Marketing late-night meals as sleep enhancers is a way for the food industry to achieve one of its longtime objectives: To boost sales by creating a so-called fourth meal that follows dinner.

“It’s a potential new eating occasion,” said Nicholas Fereday, the executive director of food and consumer trends at investment firm Rabobank. “If they can somehow turn it into a ritual, and it becomes more habit rather than the occasional thing, they’ll start getting their repeat purchases.”

Expanding into late-night meals is a timely move for the cereal industry, which has lost ground in its fight over “share of stomach” to other breakfast-food competitors.

Despite an uptick in sales during the pandemic, cold cereal has largely been on the decline as breakfast habits have changed, with more people either skipping breakfast, eating foods on the go or opting for “healthier” meals – such as eggs and Greek yogurt – that are higher in protein and lower in sugar.

Other food companies are catering to late-night snackers. Nightfood sells “sleep-friendly” cookies and ice creams with vitamin B6, magnesium, zinc and other ingredients.

Numerous candy bars and chocolates infused with melatonin, herbal extracts and other ingredients claim to help you sleep. One company sells “sleepy chocolate” candy bars with magnesium, melatonin, and a blend of botanicals “designed to help you fall asleep faster and more soundly.” You can wash it down with PepsiCo’s Driftwell brand of still-water, which contains L-theanine and magnesium and is marketed to help you wind down before bed.

Scientists know that what you eat plays a role in how you sleep. Diets high in sugar, saturated fat and simple carbohydrates like white bread are associated with poorer sleep. Large studies show that eating a diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and foods high in unsaturated fats like fish, olive oil, nuts and avocados is linked to better sleep.

One reason a diet high in plant foods may help: Almost all plants, including tomatoes, olives, rice and walnuts, contain melatonin in varying concentrations. And a healthy diet provides nutrients that support the production of melatonin, such as zinc, magnesium and B vitamins. To synthesize melatonin, your body needs tryptophan, an amino acid, which you can find in milk, salmon, tuna, nuts and poultry.

St-Onge has found in her research that people who eat a lot of simple carbs wake up more frequently throughout the night.

But eating complex carbs keep blood sugar levels stable throughout the night, she said, resulting in better sleep. Some of her favorite “sleep-promoting foods” are cruciferous and green leafy vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, olive oil and lentils.

She recommends not eating too close to bedtime. But you also shouldn’t go to bed hungry. If you need a nighttime snack, she suggests eating something light, such as a bowl of plain yogurt with fresh fruit.

Erin Hanlon, a research associate professor at the University of Chicago and behavioral neuroscientist who studies sleep, said it’s fascinating to see companies marketing foods for a better night’s sleep. But, she adds, a box of sugary cereal might not be “the best way forward.”

Hanlon suggested dimming lights and limiting screen exposure, because light stops the brain from releasing melatonin.

Logan Sohn, a senior brand manager at Post, said the company recommends eating Sweet Dreams cereal as part of a relaxing bedtime routine that includes things like switching off electronic devices and practicing meditation.

As with any snack, people should consume it in moderation “while being mindful of other added sugars they are consuming throughout the day,” he said.

Tamarah Logan, a 56-year-old writer in Los Angeles, was shopping at Walmart last month when she spotted the blue box of Sweet Dreams with the tagline, “part of a healthy sleep routine.”

Logan said she has long struggled with sleep, getting only four or five hours of uninterrupted slumber each night. She doesn’t want to take supplements. So, she bought a box of Sweet Dreams Honey Moonglow, which she has been eating instead of dessert.

“I’ll have a bowl of cereal several hours before bedtime, instead of dessert or instead of a cookie with my tea,” she said. “I’m a kid of the ’70s. I grew up on boxed cereal. It’s comfort food for me.”