Posted onMay 17, 2022|Comments Off on TOMCAP workshop this Thursday at 7 PM
From the Medfield Energy Committee – Learn the details of the draft Town of Medfield Climate Action Plan (TOMCAP). At the annual town meeting (ATM) last year the town voted as a town goal to have the town achieve Net Zero by 2050, and since then the Medfield Energy Committee has been working diligently to plan out how that can get done. A draft Climate Action Plan is now ready for release and to share. Participate in this interactive workshop this Thursday, May 19 at 7 PM to craft the final details of the Climate Action Plan for your town.
Comments Off on TOMCAP workshop this Thursday at 7 PM
To join through a conference call, dial 929-436-2866 or 312-626-6799 or 253-215-8782 or 301-715-8592 or 346-248-7799 or 669-900-6833 a. Enter the Webinar ID: 812 5008 9206 b. Enter the password: 808096 The packet with meeting materials for this meeting is available at this link: https://www.town.medfield.net/DocumentCenter/View/6111/BOS-Meeting-Packet-May-10-2022
The proposed new School Building Committee bylaw was the sole controversial issue at the annual town meeting (ATM) last night. It passed by a vote of 162 – 149.
Posted onMay 10, 2022|Comments Off on Digital tech bad for kids
Wisdom and a warning this morning from the New York Times – see below – connect to article here –
“What makes less sense to me is why our society has done so little to protect children from the apparent damages of ubiquitous digital media. They are almost certainly larger for most children than the threat from Covid.”
Also, there was an excellent 60 Minutes piece on Sunday on the increased mental health issues youth are experiencing – via this link –
Good morning. We look at the mental health crisis facing adolescents — and the role of digital technology.
The local Boys and Girls Club in Glasgow, Ky.Annie Flanagan for The New York Times
On the phone, alone
Many measures of adolescent mental health began to deteriorate sometime around 2009. It is true of the number of U.S. high-school students who say they feel persistently sad or hopeless. It’s also true of reported loneliness. And it is true of emergency room visits for self-harm among Americans ages 10 to 19.
This timing is suspicious because internet use among adolescents was also starting to soar during the same period. Apple began selling the iPhone in 2007. Facebook opened itself for general use in late 2006, and one-third of Americans were using it by 2009.
Last month, The Times began publishing a series on adolescent mental health, and the latest piece — focusing on pediatricians who are struggling to help — has just published.
The author of the series is Matt Richtel, who has spent more than a year interviewing adolescents, their relatives and their friends. In my recent conversations with Matt about his reporting, he has gone out of his way to emphasize the uncertainty about the specific causes of the crisis, including how much of a role social media plays.
“When you look at specific research on the role of social media impacting young people, it’s quite conflicted,” he said. Some studies find that adolescents who use social media heavily are more likely to feel sad or depressed, while others find little or no effect. There is no proof that, say, TikTok or social media’s “like” button is causing the mental-health crisis.
But Matt also thinks that some of these narrow questions of cause and effect are secondary. What seems undeniable, he points out, is that surging use of digital technology has changed life’s daily rhythms.
It has led adolescents to spend less time on in-person activities, like dating, hanging out with friends and attending church. Technology use has also contributed to declines in exercise and sleep. The share of high-school students who slept at least eight hours a night fell 30 percent from 2007 to 2019, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic has noted.
Technology use is not the sole cause of these trends. Modern parenting strategies, among other factors, play a role as well. But digital technology — be it social media, video games, text messaging or other online activity — plays a strong role, many experts say.
“If you’re not getting some outdoor relief time and enough sleep — and you can almost stop at not enough sleep — any human being is challenged,” Matt said. “When you get the pubescent brain involved in that equation, you are talking about somebody being really, really challenged to feel contented and peaceful and happy with the world around them.”
The role of any specific social-media platform or behavior may remain unknown, but the larger story about American adolescents and their emotional struggles is less mysterious.
“They have too much screen time, they’re not sleeping, on phones all the time,” Dr. Melissa Dennison, a pediatrician in central Kentucky who sees many unhappy adolescents, told Matt. Dennison regularly encourages her patients to take walks outdoors or attend church.
It’s true that the decline of in-person interactions has had a few silver linings. Today’s adolescents are less likely to use tobacco, drink alcohol or get pregnant. But the net effect of less socializing is negative. Most human beings struggle when they are not spending time in the company of others.
A 12-year-old patient of Dr. Dennison in Kentucky.Annie Flanagan for The New York Times
I find Covid to be a particularly relevant comparison. Over the past two-plus years, millions of American parents have demonstrated intense concern for their children by trying to protect them from Covid. Fortunately, Covid happens to be mild for the vast majority of children, causing neither severe illness nor long-term symptoms. One sign of that: Young children, not yet eligible for vaccination, are at considerably less risk on average than vaccinated people over 65.
Still, I understand why so many parents remain anxious. Covid is new and scary. It taps into parents’ fierce protective instincts.
What makes less sense to me is why our society has done so little to protect children from the apparent damages of ubiquitous digital media. They are almost certainly larger for most children than the threat from Covid.
Posted onMay 7, 2022|Comments Off on ATM redux Monday at 7PM
From the Moderator –
TOWN OF MEDFIELD Scott F. McDermott Town Moderator
An Open Letter to Friends and Neighbors in Medfield
May 6, 2022
This is a note about coming together. As a town, and more importantly as a community, we have very important reasons to do just that. One reason to come together has immediacy, and the other reasons to come together are strategic to the future of Medfield.
On the ‘immediate’ front, this Monday evening, May 9, at 7:00PM, we need to come together as a quorum of voters to conduct our Annual Town Meeting. This is important. As you likely witnessed or heard, last Monday night we gathered in the high school gym and failed to reach the required quorum of 250 voters.
So we will try again on Monday night. Your participation is what makes our local government work. Much of the annual town meeting is about conducting the business of the town. We come together. We try to be efficient; we almost always complete our town’s annual governance responsibilities in one evening. This Monday, I assure you, we will complete our 2022 annual business in a couple of hours. In that time we will address the town’s FY 2023 operating and capital budgets, zoning articles, personnel matters, and certain financial appropriations and transfers. And, important to all, we will again address the process for the appointment of our next School Building Committee.
Please join us on Monday the 9th at 7:00PM at the high school gymnasium and cafeteria. I look forward to welcoming you and a quorum of our friends and neighbors. Please spread the word. Bring a friend. And come and enjoy the flavor of direct, participatory, democratic self-government.
Note: Covid health concerns continue. I believe the town has been highly effective over the last two years in the ‘balancing tests’ of managing through a pandemic. For Monday evening, the gymnasium will be ‘mask optional’ and the cafeteria will be ‘mask required and socially distanced.’
On a ‘strategic’ dimension, we need to come together as well. In the long life of a town, not all times are equal. Not all times are as dynamic and strategically important as the moment we are in today. As early as next month, we will be making a decision regarding the development of a portion of the land we own at the site of the former Medfield State Hospital. And, after a somewhat bruising 2021, we know the time is now to pick ourselves up, come together, and re-focus on our elementary school building needs. These are big responsibilities for a community. We face decisions and actions of great opportunity and long term consequence. We will do better with these decisions and actions if we come together as a community.
In addition, we need to look at how we self-govern. How do we preserve the core values and virtues of an open town meeting? And how do we stimulate changes to maintain those values and virtues as we head deeper into the 21st century? I will recommend that we move quickly to appoint a citizen commission to consider these questions and help to advance civic engagement and volunteerism in the key activities of our local government.
Very truly yours,
Scott F. McDermott Town Moderator TOWN OF MEDFIELD Scott F. McDermott Town Moderator
I started this blog to share the interesting and useful information that I saw while doing my job as a Medfield select board member. I thought that my fellow Medfield residents would also find that information interesting and useful as well. This blog is my effort to assist in creating a system to push the information out from the Town House to residents. Let me know if you have any thoughts on how it can be done better.
For information on my other job as an attorney (personal injury, civil litigation, estate planning and administration, and real estate), please feel free to contact me at 617-969-1500 or Osler.Peterson@OslerPeterson.com.
May 10, 2022
The local Boys and Girls Club in Glasgow, Ky.Annie Flanagan for The New York Times
A 12-year-old patient of Dr. Dennison in Kentucky.Annie Flanagan for The New York Times
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