CLOSE UP Video Interviews

UPDATE TO DEVELOPING STORY: PHILADELPHIA GUIDELINES ABOUT SIX FOOT SPACING WERE INCONSISTENT WITH STATE, BECAME CONSISTENT and ARE NOW INCONSISTENT AGAIN, APPLYING A LOOSER STANDARD.

On July 23, Philadelphia issued revised guidelines to require 6 feet between passersby and tables in line with May 27 state requirements.

On October 9, Pennsylvania updated May 27 guidelines but still required 6 feet between passersby and diners.

On October 15, Philadelphia revised the guidelines again to only require a 6 foot passageway, not a 6 foot distance between diners and pedestrians. This is no longer consistent with state standards.

October 22, 2020 Several restaurants in Chestnut Hill  appear compliant with state standards, more appear to exceed current city standards as shown in the photo on the left.

Documentation on extended pages.

BUT then at least one restaurant proprietor must have friends in high places. It blocks the sidewalk.

----------------------

ORIGINAL STORY: Approximately July 21, 2020

Living a block and a half away from Germantown Avenue we like to stroll up and down. It's enjoyable and it's healthy. It's one of the reasons we live here.

We understand Chestnut Hill restaurants, several which we patronize (and now do more take out from) are just trying to stay financially afloat. Due to Covid19 many have added extra outdoor seating both next to the building and at the curb. But If you were to walk past a few of these restaurants you might be 2-3 feet away from open-mouthed diners, a delicious opportunity to spread the corona-virus.

In his July 17 Inquirer article,"Eating out during the pandemic is a dilemma. Outdoor dining appears to be the most safe," Craig LaBan writes "It’s nonetheless unrealistic to expect customers hungering for a taste of quarantine escape to consistently respect boundaries, just as it’s naive to expect restaurateurs, with so little guidance or oversight to suddenly become altruistic public health experts, and not try to squeeze in a few more seats than they should."

No, Mr. Laban, there may be little oversight but the guidance is clear. Pa Governor Wolf's Covid-19 *mandate* about outdoor restaurant seating is clear. "Spacing must also allow for physical distancing from areas outside of the facility’s control (i.e. such that pedestrians on a sidewalk can pass with at least six feet of distance to customer)." Source www.governor.pa.gov/covid-19/restaurant-industry-guidance

Here's the math. The average width of an adult is 1.25 feet so a pedestrian would need 6 feet distance from a table on their left side and 6 feet on the right for a restaurant to be in compliance: In other words the width of the walkway to keep both pedestrians and diners safe is *13.25* feet.

I conducted a little informal survey of how wide the pedestrian passage is at Chestnut Hill establishments with outdoor seating. The most ample passage was outside Iron Hill Brewery with a width of 9 or more feet and staggered tables. The general manager was kind enough to pose to provide a sense of scale. Outside Campbell's Place, the pedestrian passageway is 6 feet or less and similarly so at establishments at the top of the Hill. Without addressing the governor's 6 foot mandate, Campbell's owner Rob Mullen writes that according to the City's Health, L&I and Streets Department Campbell's outdoor seating is in complete compliance. (It is not clear what seating arrangement the inspectors saw when they made their inspections.) October 23, 2020 update: the city now appears to have been enforcing its own looser standards, inconsistent with state standards).

Perhaps we should just cross the street, as a friend suggests, to avoid the restaurants. Perhaps the restaurants could take away just a few tables to be closer in compliance with the law. Perhaps I should watch the next episode of "Breaking Bad" on our daughter's NetFlix account and sulk about how the only real thanks health care workers want is the one they're not getting- people and businesses uniformly embracing good public health practices and regulations. Photo gallery here Crowded outdoor restaurant seating puts diners and walkers in danger of catching Covid-19

Documentation follows about changing and conflicting Pennsylvania and Philadelphia 6 foot distancing requirement.

"So typically, when patients arrive in the preoperative area, we meet and make sure that the plan is correct. And then the nurses will put a small IV in your hand through which we can administer a very, very gentle sedative. We also give you many eye drops to prevent infection and to dilate the pupil as widely as possible before we take you to the operating room.

Once in the operating room, we make sure that you're positioned comfortably on the table. There is a large microscope that goes between your face and my eyes. It's quite large and it's in between us (I take it for granted now) and so my view of your eye is quite magnified. And with the foot pedals, I'm able to focus in and out and zoom the microscope- and that's the right foot. And with the left foot, I'm able to control the irrigation, the aspiration and the fluidics of that machine that breaks up the cataract. Both feet and both hands. And my hands are hovering right above the patient's face. And then your neck has to be extended enough that you're looking through the microscope and able to see everything. The surgeon is sitting at the patient's ear. So right eye? I'm sitting by your right ear. Left eye, we switch the room around, move the pedals and sit on the other side.

We cleanse the area around the eye with antiseptics again to prevent infection. And then we put a sterile sheet over your face and open just the area for the eye that we're going to work on. We put a metal speculum, a little holder, in between the eyelids so that if you would happen to fall asleep during your surgery I'll still be able to do the work and continue on. And then we make two very small incisions into the eye. We gently open the front of the capsule of the cataract in a perfectly round fashion. And then we use a phacoemulsification hand probe which pulverizes and aspirates the debris from breaking up the cataract. So we remove the hard, nut-like aspects of the cataract. Then we use a different hand-piece to tease out the sticky bits leaving the capsule of your own tissue open, clear and intact. Then we fold the lens implant and put it into the capsule and let it unfold in place. Then it's just a matter of removing some of the gel that we had used to smooth the entry and exit of instruments in and out of the eye.

We inject a little bit of antibiotic into the eye, make sure the wound is secure, and take away the drape. And then we put a few more drops in, put a protective shield on the surface of the eye and take you to the recovery room. And within about 20 minutes you're able to get up and go.

The eye is a moving target. there is nothing at all that paralyzes or stills the human eye. So we need to just talk you through it and make sure that you are kind of playing our game to hold still and to look straight up at the light. When you're looking through the microscope, the view is so magnified that the tiniest of movements looks large which is very helpful in what we need to be doing. But also it's a problem if the patient is moving because even one millimeter is too much. There's not a lot of wiggle room within the anterior chamber of the eye. There's between two and five millimeters of depth we have to work within.

Microsurgery!"

Walking through cataract surgery video interview with an ophthamologist

Amy E. Weber, MD

​
Found object/ceramic artist Lisa Schumaier constructs whimsical and politically pointed raku and paper-mâché sculptures. In one, small paper cutouts with the faces of friends and family members pump signs up and down in front of a large paper-mâché Republican Party elephant. Originally, the figures were protesting the first Iraq war, then the second Iraq war and now they are about to find new purpose when Lisa adds pink pussy hats to some. She does projects with students and, in a subtle nod to the science is real movement, they’ve fashioned rolling soda can penguins 🐧, bobbing wire hanger penguins and affixed penguins to the base of one of the large scene installations Lisa has prominently on display in the hallway outside her studio with in Alexandria’s Torpedo Factory Artist Center. Watch video tour of artist's funny political protest art and interview.

​A couple blocks away from the Alexandria Virginia Archaeological Museum, sea biscuits were found at the site where a bakery stood in the early 1800s. Also known as hardtack, the biscuits were food for long distance travelers and sailors because flour mixed with water then baked dry could last without spoiling (for a long time) At the museum on New Year’s Eve day, archaeologist Hilary Huley, helped visitors like your correspondent mold and imprint our own sea biscuits to take home for baking (but not consuming) Watch video making hardtack in historical Old Town Alexandria Virginia

Clockwise from top left. Teens from Wordsworth Academy, a special needs school assist children in making recycled bottle planters. An activist with Sea Shepherd talks about the group's efforts to save endangered porpoises and whales.  From the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ, a horseshoe crab. FEMA is ready to assist in disasters, this representative from the flood mitigation unit assures. Evergreen Lane farm sets up aquaponics systems. Photo on web here.

A Penn Environment representative demonstrates how planting trees will cool the earth and counter global warming using a lamp, a model house and tree and a temperature reading gun. Video and interview here.

Architecture students from Philadelphia University demonstrate the model they've desgined of a turbine that would sit in the ocean off of Santa Monica California that would not only generate energy from wave action but would allow people to walk through the apparatus. The walkway is composed of segments which compensate for undulations and thus would grant visitors a level walking experience while connecting directly with the source of their [electric] power. The designers, entering their model in a competition, describe their invention as "habitable generative art." Watch video and interview here.

Speech pathology students from Salus University offer samples of thickened juice to educate the public how thickened liquids can help people with swallowing problems inadvertently breathe liquids into their lungs. Watch video and interview here.

Quaker Action activist Chris Baker Evens urge the PECO [Exelon] electric utility to agree to  buy back energy from residents of North Philadelphia who install renewable, solar energy panels on their rooftops. At a booth across the way at the Philadelphia Science Festival, PECO representatives advise the public how to save on their energy bills. Watch video and interview here.

Alison and Robin of Philadelphia's Resource Exchange demonstrate and explain how scraps of clothing and many other things you might be inclined to trash can be used to make art or recycled for other purposes. Watch video interview here.

PHILADELPHIA SCIENCE FESTIVAL

Here's a video collage of the carnival.

When you have three kinds of clouds coming together and catch the "rat's end" of  the storm, you have a good chance of catching a rainbow she says. We ran into this couple at a rest stop on the PA Turnpike. They were coming from a music fest and  headed towards another and had paused to see an awesome rainbow. Watch video here.

Twins Hannah and Dara talk about their relationship, how they are alike and how they are not. Watch video interview here