Part One

PROVIDENCE – Ever since my interview last week with writer Rebecca Altman, when our conversation veered into a time warp of convergence around Schuyler Avenue in Kearny, N.J., I have been tempted to take a road trip to revisit the landscape of plastic factories built on the edge of the Meadowlands, to reacquaint myself with memories from long ago in a galaxy far away in my life.

I had suggested to Altman that we take a day trip together to revisit Schuyler Avenue, once an intense focus of her research, given the location of the DuPont factory that was the original facility where Teflon and its legacy of “forever” plastics was first processed – which was next door to where my grandfather, a plastics pioneer, had built his factory, on land purchased from DuPont. Cellulose and polystyrene and polyvinylchloride, oh my! Her current schedule did not allow for such improvised flexibility.

But the idea of a road trip to Kearny intrigued me. The last time I had been back to Kearny had been in 1995, a quarter-century ago, when I had been “given” the family responsibility of selling the building further up on Schuyler Avenue where my father’s small business had been located. That was the year we had moved my father to an assisted living facility because he was no longer able to manage his daily life.

The dystopian imagery of Kearny has always provoked my writer’s imagination. I had once described the numerous highways that crisscrossed the Meadowlands as “arching invertebrates” above a miasma of weeds. The new housing developments that plunged down off of Schuyler Avenue into the weeds became “ski jumps” into prosperity, built upon tenuous ground laced with an unknown toxic legacy. The skyline of New York City, which appeared to rise and fall on the horizon, as one traveled toward the city from the west, resembled an animation city “rising and falling on a hydraulic lift” on some futuristic movie set, far removed from the hardscrabble dreams of a factory town.

My first attempt at a novel had revolved around a central character, Rosey, a middle-aged woman whose life and marriage were falling apart. The conflict I sought to illuminate in the still-unfinished work was complex: Could Rosey re-invent a new life for herself in a factory town, modeled on Kearny? [The unfinished manuscript did help me to get hired as a television scriptwriter for “The Rockford Files.”]

It was not surprising, then, when the “Sopranos” emerged as a popular TV drama, that I found myself transported back in time by all the visual images of Kearny that served as a backdrop to the story, including those of the Stickel Bridge connecting Newark and Kearny [now part of Interstate 280], which had been a part of my daily commute when I worked for my father during the summers in my late teens.

Such a road trip today would be like taking a deep dive into my past, similar to the trip that Altman and her father had taken together to rediscover the factory town where he had once worked for Union Carbide. But to what purpose? I am still wrestling with how best to confront my past relationship with the plastisphere.

Frank Carini, editor of ecoRI News, in his op-ed published on Sept. 24, entitled, “Climate deniers, covidiots and conspiracy quacks really have nothing to fear,” offered a take-down of the rationale behind the refusal to create safety guidelines for the chemicals and plastics that never break down,  accumulating in our bodies and in our lives.

PFAs, Carini wrote, or “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, of which there are about 5,000, are chemicals manufactured to make nonstick cookware, stain-resistant clothing, and firefighting foams. They’ve been linked to cancer, impaired liver function, chronic intestinal inflammation, elevated blood pressure during pregnancy, thyroid disease, low birth weight, and cardiovascular disease. One would think society would be doing all it could to curb the use of substances called ‘forever chemicals’ because the chemical bonds that hold the compounds together don’t break down easily.”

Carini continued: “Fortunately for the American greedy, the bond between politicians and lobbyists is just as strong. The over-influential American Chemistry Council won’t let the people we elect address the dangers of PFAs, even as evidence continues to accumulate about human and wildlife exposure.”

Measuring value, taking stock
Having now entered my eighth year of publishing of ConvergenceRI, the digital news platform I launched on Sept. 23, 2013, I admit to struggling a bit to put together this story that marks that occasion with an appropriate burst of pomp, circumstance, insight and reflection.

To have survived and thrived in a disrupted world of news media in Rhode Island for eight years is a remarkable achievement all by itself, to persevere in an enterprise where change, flexibility and nimbleness are necessary attributes to cover an ever-changing landscape.

In the past, I have marked the occasion of my annual anniversary of publishing by remarking on ConvergenceRI’s continued growing traction in the marketplace. My metaphors to describe the art of convergence were always optimistic: climbing a mountain; replenishing the soil of conversation; investing in the most valuable possession we have, our own stories; and braiding and knitting together the threads of our lives in a sustainable fashion.

This year, in a time of growing darkness, brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and the attempts by President Trump to usurp power and push the nation toward authoritarian rule, the metaphor I am choosing to describe the task at hand is still optimistic: “Keep your eyes on the prize.”

Entering my eighth year, I can say proudly that the renewal rate for subscribers to ConvergenceRI remains at nearly 94 percent [an amazing number, given that normal yearly attrition for paid subscriptions is between 15 and 20 percent]. Very few subscribers drop out every year, always to be replaced by new subscribers.

Another remarkable datapoint to consider: the average reading time for feature stories in ConvergenceRI in the last six months is more than 6 minutes, an astounding feat for a digital news platform, given the desire for immediate gratification in our news flow.

Subscribers continue to find great “value” in the content. A readers’ survey found that more than 90 percent of respondents, when asked what they liked best about ConvergenceRI, said that it was finding stories that were unavailable anywhere else in the Rhode Island market.

Sometimes, that sentiment often gets expressed in heart-felt messages from subscribers, such as the unsolicited text message written in early September from a community agency executive: “Just letting you know how much you are appreciated.”

What I have learned
This week, in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it is customary to find time to allow yourself to be reflective and take stock of your activities for the past year and to acknowledge your shortcomings and your mistakes, which is part of my cultural heritage, having been raised in a Jewish family.

In years past, decades before I launched ConvergenceRI, I would take one day each fall and spend it baking apple pies. The apples, a mix of Cortland and Macoun and MacIntosh varieties, were picked from local orchards. The recipe was adapted from one of my mother's; I soaked the apples in cider before baking, adding lemon and a touch of maple syrup as the only sweetener.

In the years when I had a wood cook stove in my kitchen, first a Kalamazoo and then a Glenwood, I would fire up the stove and bake the pies, using wood gleaned from a friend who was a logger and who allowed me to come to his worksites in the hills of Western Massachusetts and cut up the tops of red oak trees he had harvested for firewood.

My time this year, I realized, might be better spent in baking pies instead of journeying back to Kearny. At least with the pies, there would be tangible evidence of my labors, and some immediate gratification in my being able to enjoy the fruits of my hard work [pun intended].

I can count the number of stories I have published during the last seven years, more than 1,500, along with some 4,500 sidebars, always attempting to ask the questions that need to be asked, and to answer, “Why is this story important?”

But the metric of counting the number of stories written and published does not capture the true import of what I believe the stories have accomplished: sparking engagement and conversation and convergence, breaking down the silos, and enabling voices to be heard outside of the traditional mainstream narrative. How do you measure that?

Learning to listen in 10 different ways
I think back to the first time that I met and talked with retired epidemiologist and pediatrician Dr. Peter Simon at Olga’s Cup + Saucer in the fall of 2013, and he urged me to write about health equity. Eight years later, health equity has become a cornerstone of investments in health being made by the Rhode Island Foundation, with its $1 billion in assets. It is front-and-center in the long-term statewide health plan being developed by the Foundation. How did that sea change happen?

For sure, it was not a result of what was being reported in The Providence Journal or The Providence Business News, who both have tended to ignore health equity zones. It was, in large part, I believe, the result of my detailed, in-depth reporting in ConvergenceRI – and the fact that Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation, continues to be an enthusiastic subscriber.

Sea changes are often hard to discern when they occur. The constant ebb and flow of tides obscures the long-term directional changes. I think about the evolving role of the community recovery movement in Rhode Island, and the way that it has changed the conversation for the better around peer recovery and harm reduction.

I can point to the numerous conversations and interviews conducted with the late Jim Gillen and Traci Green, with Holly Cekala and Jonathan Goyer, and with Shannon Monnat and Ian Knowles, creating a platform where their voices could be heard.

Rhode Island is once again confronting an epidemic of drug overdoses, with the likelihood that the perverse death toll will reach 400, 20 percent higher than the previous high water mark of 336 deaths in 2016. For the all government-based interventions and millions of dollars invested, there are some truths that still are not self-evident.

Yet, the reality is that the landscape has shifted dramatically. Indeed, the pendulum has now shifted toward creating an overdose prevention facility in Rhode Island, the new nomenclature for a safe injection site. Dr. James McDonald at the R.I. Department of Health, publicly spoke out in favor of such a facility in an article in The Providence Journal. How did that happen?

I believe that ConvergenceRI has played a critical role, providing a platform for those important conversations to take place. For sure, there are still many rivers to cross – the creation of a database that integrates the diseases and deaths of despair, including alcohol, suicide, drugs, and gun violence related to domestic violence. And, the critical need to recognize the insightful work of sociologist Shannon Monnat on how the economic disruptions of the last 40 years have played an integral part of the “addiction” epidemic.

The question to ask is: Will things change next year on Smith Hill? At some point, the R.I. General Assembly needs to confront the inequities related to health insurance reimbursements for mental health and behavior health, as well as women’s health and dentistry, which are inexorably linked to higher costs in our health care delivery system.

As a subscriber wrote to me after the latest edition of ConvergenceRI, following a story about stigma: “I have come to truly appreciate how you continue to relentlessly push important points and issues, despite the apparent lack of system response, such as [Shannon] Monnat’s findings, asthma and absenteeism in schools, reporting deficiencies, the on-going ‘deadly experiment’ [in reopening schools], and then also introduce completely new knowledge [for me, anyway] in the really interesting and informative plastics story.”

Housing advocacy
When it comes to recognizing that housing is “the place where jobs go to sleep at night,” ConvergenceRI has documented the extraordinary work being done, call it bottom-up innovation, by West Elmwood’s Sankofa Initiative and by ONE Neighborhood Builders' numerous programs to rebuild the communities, one street, one house at a time.

When the inaugural Rhode Island Life Index, an initiative created by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island and the School of Public Health at Brown University, “uncovered” that housing was the number-one concern, it should not have surprised anyone who has been a diligent reader of ConvergenceRI. And yes, the data constructs of the Index were based on the community needs assessments conducted by health equity zones.

Sometimes, it is difficult to be heard, given all the noise and click-bait distraction in the marketplace. On Sept. 7, ConvergenceRI published “Healing the digital divide,” detailing how ONE Neighborhood Builders was seeking to build out a wireless mesh network to bring high-speed Internet services to more than 1,500 households in Olneyville, addressing a critical unmet need. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story.]

Some three weeks later, on Sept. 24, the Boston Globe’s Dan McGowan wrote a very similar story, talking about ONE Neighborhood Builders’ efforts, entitled “In low-income Olneyville, a free Wi-Fi program could be a game-changer for families.”

When I brought my earlier story to his attention on Twitter, saying that I took it as a compliment, McGowan wrote back, graciously: “Great story! Sorry I didn’t see it until now.”

The business of health care
One consistent focus of ConvergenceRI has been to report on health, often as a place where innovation has taken hold from the bottom-up – from health equity zones to neighborhood health stations to improvisations around telehealth. One story that stands out for me in the past year is the work of pediatrician Dr. Beata Nelken in Central Falls, who has established a new practice serving families with culturally appropriate care. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “A pediatrician takes on COVID in Central Falls.”]

Another has been the work of the Rhode Island Public Health Institute to set up one of the first LGBTQ primary care practices in the state – as well as managing a COVID-19 testing site for the Latinx population. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “Meeting the unmet needs for testing.”]

A third story is the way that Healthcentric Advisors has developed its own innovative digital health platform to connect and track patients with symptoms of the virus. [See link below to ConvergenceRI story, “From a novelty to a necessity.”]

A fourth story has been the way that community health centers, such as the Providence Community Health Centers, have been on the frontlines battling the spread of the coronavirus. A fifth story of note has been continuing to follow the work of EpiVax and Dr. Annie De Groot in working to develop a peptide-based vaccine to combat COVID-19. A sixth story has been to try and frame the questions that need to be asked about the proposed merger between Care New England, Lifespan and Brown’s medical school.

All health care is personal, all health care is complex, and all health care delivery systems are difficult to navigate, and expensive, driven by market forces. Once again, there are still many rivers to cross, and many stories to tell.