News Cut Category Archive: Things that are puzzling

Yes, you've found it. The only blog in America that doesn't care if Barack Obama uses carrier pigeons or text messaging to announce his vice presidential running mate. As we in the media gear up to cover both political conventions, I worry we'll also lose perspective about where these political factoids fit into the big scheme of things. Yes, the next leader of the free world is an important decision, but the process has been going on for more than two years, and there's the old adage "people don't care until after Labor Day."

Why don't they? Because they're leading real lives.

The rest of us? We're wondering what the heck happened to summer? I just saw May; it was around here somewhere a few minutes ago, and then I open up the newspaper this morning and find this: "With summer ebbing, pools about to close."

In our little neighborhood, we're required to pay for the use of a neighborhood pool, whether we use it or not. We haven't been in years, not since I started calculating how much each trip to the pool cost me. But I had big plans for this year; I was going to stop by the pool every morning before work and get in shape. It didn't happen... again.

Hope springs eternal, but eventually it falls apart. I was going to finish the rebuilding of the backyard deck this year -- the project I started four years ago. The lumber is still in the garage, but I didn't hammer a single nail over the summer. Again.

This was the year I was going to relax and pay more attention to the garden. I only planted peas and broccoli -- cool weather crops that wouldn't take up all my summer -- but I never got around to checking how it turned out. Last week, my wife cut a small piece of the mega-broccoli (long since passed) and put it on my dinner plate. It didn't taste very good.

I was going to build a rain garden and expand the perennial garden, which last year was a sea of bees and butterflies. This year? Not so much. Maybe next year.

Number of new bikes in the garage: 2. Number of summertime evening bike rides: 0.

So many plans, so few summer accomplishments.

And now the pools are closing, the State Fair is opening, and summer is ending.

How is it that summer can pass so quickly, but a presidential campaign plays out in torturous half speed?

I plan to think about that over the winter.

What was the highlight of your summer?

When nobody was looking, a new front opened on the war on terror -- Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees have banned sunblock, the New York Post reported.

Four weeks ago, Stadium officials decided that sunscreen of all sizes and varieties would not be permitted, a security supervisor told The Post before last night's game.

"There have been a lot of complaints," he said. "We tell them to apply once and then throw it out."

For fans who bring babies or young children to cheer on the home team, the guard had suggested they "beg" to take the sunblock in.

Seeing the giant bag full of confiscated sunscreen Saturday, one steaming Yankee fan asked whether he could take one of the tubes and apply it before heading into the park.

"Absolutely not," the guard told him. "What if you get a rash? You might sue the Yankees

But a few days ago, after the howling protests, the Yankees relented ... to a point. Team spokesman Jason Zillo said the Yankees will still not allow sunscreen in aerosol cans in the stadium.

(h/t: Michael Wells)

Open your wallets and purses and look at your money. Is there any writing on any of it?

MPR's Tom Weber stumbled across this while working at his father's store in Illinois over the weekend.

This dollar was slipped under Katie's pillow by the Tooth Fairy in 2005. Then, she went and spent it. It went around and around and ended up in somebody's wallet in 2008, a good souvenir gone bad.

It would be fascinating to track a dollar bill as it makes its way around the universe. One Web site has tried to do it. You enter a serial number in at Where's George and you can see the list of places it's been. The problem is, how many people out there are going to register their dollar bills? (Answer: Other than Tom Weber? None.)

A News Cut reader, specially imported from the state of Wisconsin, picks up on my riff last week about why Twin Citians are so quick to ignore Wisconsin. It's 18 miles away as the crow flies but we'll pay attention a story 200 miles away before we'll pay attention to what's going on "over there" on a daily basis.

"Look, Bob, there was bad weather in Wisconsin! Before this weekend, even." she writes.

She's right, sending along the link to the New Richmond News, which details stories of damage on the old sod at the same time a tornado was ripping up Hugo.

How does a meatpacking plant where 18 workers have gotten a mysterious neurological illness, possibly because of the work they did, win a health and safety award from the American Meat Institute?

It's an apparent head-scratcher to a lot of people, Dan McCoslin, AMI's director of worker safety and human resources, acknowledged to me this afternoon. But there actually is a decent explanation for the award to Quality Pork Products in Austin.

"Performance is 60-percent of the total awards points," he said, "measured between the total number of incidents reported to OSHA (treatment beyond first aid) and... the rate of the number of days away from work. On the program side, it's how the facility measures up... on training, employee involvement, adherence to standards; that sort of thing." (Listen to full description)

So how did the Austin plant win?

"Their overall performance is, in fact, excellent. They're consistently below the industry average in both total cases and the days away," McCoslin said. "Their overall safety program is excellent. (Listen)

Quality Pork has between 1,200 and 1,400 employees, according to McCoslin, and from a numbers point of view, 18 "incidents", though serious, is less than 1 percent of the total workforce. "Although this is vexing and everyone is still trying to get to the bottom of it, it doesn't mean they don't have a good safety program."

McCoslin says the plant "deserves something of a pat on the back for the way they handled this incident. As soon as the nurses there realized that there was something different and unique going on with these particular symptoms, they notified management, management notified the Minnesota Department of Health, the Mayo Clinic... was brought in as well, Minnesota Department of Health brought in the CDC in Atlanta. All of this started when QPP stepped forward and did the right thing and said, 'Hey, we've got something going on here and we don't know whether it's a big problem or a little problem but we do know that it's more than we can deal with.'" (Listen)

Point taken. The reason we know about it is a reflection on the plant's safety program.

Nothing is proven yet, that the the practices at the Austin plant is what is responsible for the mysterious illness, but McCoslin says the industry is watching, even though most plants don't "harvest" pig brains the way the workers at QPP did.

"I had never heard... and I've been in the industry for 40 years ... of harvesting brain tissue with compressed air," according to McCoslin. " That's not the way it's normally done. Normally, at the end of the line the reminder of the skull is split in half and brains are simply scooped out and placed in containers, chilled, packed, and sold. And the other part of that is, as you may imagine, there's not a tremendous market for pork brains these days." (Listen)

Around the same time this month that an Austin meatpacking plant was denying workers compensation claims to more than a dozen workers who got sick, it was picking up an award from an industry group for its health and safety program.

The American Meat Institute has awarded The Quality Pork Processors plant in Austin its Award of Honor. It apparently is the highest honor in the business and recognizes worker safety.

It's the same plant being sued by a worker because of a mysterious neurological illness that she and 12 co-workers developed, and the company has refused their claim for workers compensation.

Health investigators, MPR's Sea Stachura reported earlier this month, have been trying to determine whether the brain tissue, sprayed into the air as droplets, made the workers sick.

Coincidentally, the award was announced on the day the lawsuit was made public.

So, what do you have to do to win the award? Let's go to the guidelines:

The primary program goals are to motivate participants to improve their safety performance through the establishment of sound safety and health programs at the plant level and to recognize those plants that have achieved a high level of safety performance as part of the continuing effort to reduce occupational injury and illness.

and...

The program can boost employee morale, reduce expenses associated with injuries and illness in the workplace and enhance the meat and poultry industry's overall image regarding employee safety and health.

"Explain this to me," I asked David Ray, the vice president for public affairs for the American Meat Institute.

"Well, the award is not a measurement of the response to a single situation, rather it's the measurement of the total health and safety program of the plant," he said.

"But if it has a good health and safety program of the plant, would 13 people have gotten sick because of what they do for a living and then be denied workers compensation?" I asked.

That's when I find out that the person I needed to talk to is on a plane this afternoon.

I wonder how things are at the plants that didn't win the award.

Update 5:06 p.m. - Even more workers have gotten sick.