Strollerderby : boston

White Firefighter Reunited with Black Baby He Saved Forty Years Ago

JeanneSager — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:31:00 GMT

It was the height of the sixties, when racial tensions were taught in the City of Boston and across the United States. A white fireman was caught by a photographer, his lips pressed to the face of a black baby girl, his face racked with determination to save her life.

This week, more than forty years later, that baby and her grateful godmother finally met the man who saved her.

"November, 1968, a report of children trapped inside the building," William Carroll says into the camera. "Those things you remember like it was yesterday."

The baby was covered in soot, Carroll remembers, unable to breathe with no pulse pumping in her tiny wrist. He'd crawled on his stomach through the thick smoke to find her lyin in a crib in the burning Roxbury Housing Projects, clad only in a diaper. He grabbed Evangeline Harper - now Evangeline Anderson - and rushed from the building. The picture snapped by a photojournalist on scene would shape the future of the city, and he would earn commendations for bravery.

But Caroll wasn't thinking about any of that. He had a child to save.

Forty years later, Anderson met up with a Boston Globe reporter at a community meeting. She saw an opportunity to track down the man who'd saved her - through the newspaper that made famous her picture. Caught on tape by the Globe as a companion piece to their article, the meeting is worth watching (here) for one of those "restores your faith in the good of man" moments.

First delving into it, I thought the race issue would have the bigger pull - making me all weepy to see racial tensions melting away. Instead, all this brought out in me was the mother side, the part that wanted to wrap my arms around a guy who saved a baby. As Anderson tells him - "had it not been for you, I would not be here today."

"We did a good thing that day," Carroll said, "I hope I gave her a shot."

Awww. Maybe every day should be hug a fireman day?

Image: Boston Globe

Male Blogger: Laboring Mom Not a 'True Emergency'

JeanneSager — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:56:00 GMT

You're about to give birth to your second child. Your contractions are three minutes apart and holding steady. Oh yeah, and your car is stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. What are you going to do now?

According to a blogger at the Volokh Conspiracy, you call an ambulance and meet them at the next exit because, well, he doesn't consider this a "true emergency." Excuse me, David Bernstein, do you want to deliver a baby in the middle of the Mass Turnpike? Methinks you'd be yelling "help, emergency," about then.

I hate to take anything into the "man" vs. "woman" range, but this is one of those examples of a guy climbing on his high horse to tell us how a pregnant woman's body is going to work. Hate to tell you buddy, even WE don't know how the whole birth process is going to go. Bernstein's prime evidence for why he thinks Jennifer and John Davis were reckless and refused to just call an ambulance? The baby didn't come for another five hours.

Think of that. A baby that came in its own darn good time. No wonder they call the site the Volokh CONSPIRACY.

Alright, maybe I'm taking this a little hard. I actually have never had the frantic drive to the hospital. My labor had to be induced to encourage my daughter to come out of her comfy little cave. I agonized about the possibilities because of the area where I live and the timing of my due date: we're nearly a half hour from the hospital, and I was set to deliver right around the Memorial Day holiday in a highly trafficked tourist area.

I also dealt with a highly put out male co-worker who wanted to plan a vacation, and couldn't believe that our editor couldn't pin down a date when I'd begin my maternity leave. I was still working the day before I went into the hospital to have a nurse begin my pitocin drip. Trust me, I tried my darndest to get her moving earlier. She had the same stubborn streak then that makes for such pleasant morning interactions now.

Or maybe it's simply being a parent that made me feel for the Davises. In the Boston Herald article Bernstein took to task for its pro-parent tone, Jennifer Davis says her husband maneuvered into the breakdown lane to continue the rush to the hospital. Two state troopers gave them the go-ahead to keep going. A third, however, detained the couple and went back to his cruiser to look up John Davis' driving record (six traffic infractions in twenty years, by the way), and made them wait until he was done writing out another motorist's ticket. He then quizzed the contracting Jennifer, making her unzip her jacket to prove she really had a pregnant belly under there. He finally issued a citation before letting the couple go - the $100 bill arrived in the mail the other day.

The Davises, by the way, had actually pulled over to ask the trooper if they could continue in the lane to the exit where they'd get off and choose another route to the hospital. This was hardly the case of a trooper pulling over a speeding driver in the breakdown lane and diligently investigating suspicious activity. This was a police officer forgetting his mission is to protect AND serve.

Yes, I'm taking the side of the parents in this one too. Now what do you want to bet David Bernstein will find a conspiracy here?

Image: Boston Herald

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Moose With Loose Poops: Most Disgusting Book Title Ever?

JeanneSager — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:28:00 GMT

Sometimes a little bathroom humor goes a long way. But the title of a children's book meant to help get them through the "misery of tummy aches, caused first by vomiting and then by diarrhea," is just plain disgusting.

The Moose With Loose Poops will hit shelves in January, the fifth in the Dr. Hippo series from Charlotte Cowan, M.D., a practicing pediatrician at Boston's Mass General Hospital for Children. The actual story about Papa Moose's bout with gastroenteritis sounds innocuous at worst. At best, it could be just what the doctor ordered for helping little ones through their fears about an upset tummy. I suppose this is the one to read AFTER Everyone Poops doesn't work and you have to dose them with Pedia-Lax for holding it in.

But that title? Where do we begin? It's "dung" got us in a tizzy here on the 'Derby. The rest of the Dr. Hippo books have run-of-the-mill monikers like Peeper has a Fever and Katie Caught a Cold. Yawn-a-palooza? Perhaps, but I could read them to my daughter without losing my lunch.Then again, the family that hangs out on the toilet together, stays together, right?

We figured we'd lend Dr. Cowan's publishers a hand and spice up her titles a bit. Here's what we came up with:

Zilly the Zebra Has Got the Diarrhea (cha, cha, cha)
Prudence the Porcupine With Projectile Vomiting
Danny the Dinosaur with Diarrhea
Henry the Hippo with Hershey Squirts
Randy the Racoon with the Runs
Fanny the Frog and the Trouble With Flatulence
Pat the Cat Is Making Scat
Fred the Fox is Fecally Challenged
Carl the Crocodile is Constipated
Tery the Turtle and the Terrible Turds

Anyone else want to weigh in?

Image: Amazon

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Elderly Man Resues Abandoned Baby

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:00:00 GMT

An 81-year-old man from a quiet Boston suburb stepped out to pick up the mail yesterday and was surprised to find a tote bag sitting on his doorstep. He was even more surprised by the contents of the bag: a newborn baby girl, sleeping peacefully. After John Tuckerman put his hand to the infant’s cheek and she stirred, he hurriedly called 911.

The baby was rushed to the hospital and is in excellent health. She had been cleaned and dried before she was abandoned, although her umbilical cord was still intact. Whoever abandoned her also left a pillow, a blanket, and a note asking that the baby be well cared for.

Newton police are trying to find the baby’s parents and hope that anyone with information about the newborn will come forward. This seems unlikely to me, however, since the parents could potentially face child abuse charges if they were identified.

Some are arguing that this case underscores the need to publicize Massachusetts’ Baby Safe Haven Law, which makes it legal to abandon an infant who is seven days old or younger at a police station, a firehouse, or a hospital. The parents or mother who abandoned this baby girl clearly cared about her welfare. It’s likely that they would have left her at one of these “safe havens” had they known about the law.

Fortunately, in this case the baby is unharmed and will go to a loving home.

Kidnap dad caught

Brett Singer — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:20:00 GMT

Clark Rockefeller, the divorced father who kidnapped his 7-year-old daughter during a scheduled parental visit, was in a Baltimore courtroom this morning. Curious about what he was wearing? Me neither, but the Boston Herald tell us that he was "shackled at the legs and wearing a Lacoste shirt, khaki pants and loafers," which the reporter describes as "preppy."

What's unclear at the moment is just who this guy is. Baltimore prosecuting attorney Patricia Deros told the press that Rockefeller "looks like Woody Allen" (objection, counselor – relevance?), and also that they don't have a name for him other than Clark Rockefeller. Apparently he's quite wealthy, and has been described as a "fake Rockefeller," or, as the Daily News put it, Crockefeller. (Which really should be somebody's rap name, but that's a different topic.) I'm not clear on how it is that he's not a real Rockefeller but just uses the name, or if he's an unrelated Rockefeller (which, in my opinion, would sort of suck because then everyone would always expect you to pick up the tab, even though you're not really that rich.) The Boston Herald says that the allegedly kidnapping pop has "no passport or driver’s license and police have struggled to piece together his life prior to the early 1990s, before he married Boss." What I find odd is that the ex-wife hasn't provided police with more information, although of course it's possible that she did and we haven't heard about.

If you missed it, the basic details of the case appear to be that Clark Rockefeller was married to a woman named Sandra Boss, with whom he fathered a daughter named Reigh, although they called her "Snooks." They got divorced, Boss won full custody and moved to London. On a scheduled – and supervised – visit to Boston, the father jumped into a moving SUV with Red Sox stickers on the back (no comment). The social worker that was supervising the visit hung onto the vehicle as it pulled away. The drivers of the SUV were duped into helping him (I would say that this must have been easy because they were Red Sox fans, but that's going too far). In one of those details that you file under "if you wrote this in a script no one would believe it", he had purchased a house on Ploy Street in preparation for living under the name Chip Smith.

Anyway, he's been caught, and as far as I can tell the little girl is OK. If you want a timeline of articles about this case, click here. It's a weird story, and at least he's in custody.

image: NY Daily News

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Montessori Takes Boston: Is Your City Next?

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:33:00 GMT

Montessori education, characterized by self-directed learning with individual learning styles guided rather than directed by teachers, is usually a private educational option for the preschool and elementary school years. Several Boston public schools are now offering Montessori education to all comers. Will the Montessori method be able to succeed in an age of No Child Left behind? Many in Boston seem to think so...

The Montessori method allows closer integration between preschool and elementary education and is more adaptable than traditional classrooms to vastly different learning styles. On the other hand, there are those who doubt it will be able to withstand the rigorous testing requirements of a school environment ruled by No Child Left Behind.

Even so, Montessori is a proven method and provides a very high quality and individualized educational program for children. If it were available in your school district, would you jump at the opportunity to forgo the usually high tuitions ($7,000 - $17,000 per year) in favor of a public education for your child? I would.

Parents Install Webcam in Child's Hospital Room

Stefania Pomponi Butler (CityMama) — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:28:00 GMT

Parents of a young patient at Children's Hospital in Boston apparently thought it would be a good idea to install a webcam in their child's hospital room. A nurse found the camera and it caused a bit of a kerfuffle. Dr. Samuel Blackman, an oncologist at the hospital, wrote about the incident on his invite-only blog saying that the camera was put up by the parents so that a relative could "keep in touch." But as is bound to happen with a camera turned on its subject 24/7, the camera captured unsavory moments like the child throwing up and having a bloody nose.

On his blog Dr. Blackman asked, "How far can a parent or relative go in taping the healthcare of their loved one?" I sure would like to know. We were told by our San Francisco ultrasound technician that we were in no way allowed to record the experience of finding out the gender of our first baby with our DV camera. It had to do with legal/liability issues.

I can understand wanting to be close to a child that is in the hospital for an extended stay, but just going ahead and installing a NannyCam in the hospital room? As expected, the Boston family was told they could video their own child, but not other patients or staff.