Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Commemorating Lincoln's Last Ride, Funeral Train Car Home and National Funeral




Philadelphia Inquirerer, Front Page (Page A1), Wednesday, February 24, 2015:


A replica of the train that carried Abraham Lincoln’s body home to Illinois. Organizers hope to retrace its route in reverse, beginning in May. Historic Railroad Equipment Association
A funeral car replica in an early stage. The lavish original was to have been used for presidential travel but Lincoln was slain before seeing it. Above, The Inquirer reported on the train in 1865.
These two brass hand lanterns have been authenticated as having been on the 1865 train that carried President Abraham Lincoln’s body. Historic Railroad Equipment Association
The project started with David Kloke of Bartlett, Ill., who began building the locomotive and tender about six years ago. He is shown with a decorative feature over the wheels.
The train that carried Lincoln’s body home to Illinois. A spokeswoman for the re-creation project, quoting Lincoln, calls it “a grassroots effort … ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people.’ ” McLean County (Ill.) Museum of History via Bloomington Pantagraph

TRAIN REPLICA MAY STOP HERE
Commemorating Lincoln’s Last Ride
A working-replica locomotive, tender, and funeral car are being readied for memorial trip.
By Edward Colimore INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
   Along hundreds of miles of railroad tracks, mourners stood silently, reverently, as a doleful whistle and wisps of smoke and steam announced the approaching funeral train. Many wept and bowed their heads as it passed.
   In towns where the locomotive stopped, thousands surged forward, pushing and jostling to get a better view. Bands played melancholy tunes and preachers offered up solemn prayers.
   They focused on a dark maroon railcar, swathed in black crepe, carrying the martyred Abraham Lincoln, who had come on another train four years earlier to tell throngs at Independence Hall that he’d “rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender” the country.
   On April 22, 1865 — a week after the president’s assassination — Lincoln returned to the same hallowed place, his body to be viewed by more than 300,000 who filed by his 
coffin in the Assembly Room, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were signed.
   Now, another train is being prepared, 150 years later, to follow part of the 1,600-mile route from Washington —through such cities as Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Trenton
   — to Springfield, Ill., where Lincoln was buried.
   A working-replica locomotive, tender, and Lincoln funeral car, valued at about $3 million, are nearly ready for what organizers hope will be a re-creation of the 16th president’s journey — in reverse.
   It would begin in May in Springfield, where Lincoln’s trip ended, and continue through the summer and fall. Visits have already been confirmed in towns across Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky, said organizers, who expect to add other cities.
   Details of a possible stop in Philadelphia are not available, though local supporters have suggested displaying the train in front of the National Constitution Center.
   In the meantime, funds are being raised through a website and Facebook page — an additional $100,000 is needed — to transport the train on flatbed semitrailers.
   The 1865 trip “gave the entire country an opportunity to grieve and heal,” said Scott Trostel, historical consultant for the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Train project, the nonprofit arranging the event. “There were ceremonies in virtually every city to memorialize the man, and everybody came.
   “The whole community was involved, providing bands, decorating stations, and picking flowers,” said Trostel, of Fletcher, Ohio, author of The Lincoln Funeral Train — The Final Journey and National Funeral. “That’s the way 
it worked in 1865 and the only way it will work today.”
   The assassination triggered a great public outpouring of grief, and the funeral train helped make the tragedy a shared experience, said Andy Waskie, a Temple University professor, historian, and author of Philadelphia and the Civil War —Arsenal of the Union. Nothing like it had ever happened before.
   The re-creation of that time 150 years later “brings alive a tremendous occasion throughout the country,” Waskie said. “We shouldn’t let this anniversary go by.”
   The project has been “a grassroots effort,” said Shannon Brown, a spokeswoman for the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Train. “It really is, to quote Lincoln, ‘of the people, by the people, 
and for the people.’ ”
   Earlier donations for the train’s construction included $30,000 from Fisher Nuts Corp., $5,000 and $10,000 amounts from individuals, and recurring amounts from one donor that have reached $3,000. Most of the donations — from supporters in several states — have been for $25 or less.
   “If we make this commemorative journey, it will be the people building this train,” Brown said. 
“It’s their train.”
   The project began with master mechanic David Kloke, 68, of Bartlett, Ill., whose interest in trains and Lincoln led him about six years ago to re-create a 1865 period locomotive he calls Leviathan 63 and its tender, using National Park Service patterns.
   “I was interested in building the Lincoln car because it was so historic,” said Kloke, who is now completing it at an Elgin, Ill., shop. “It was built by the government in Alexandria, Va.
   “It was the first Air Force One — and it was gorgeous,” he said. “Lincoln thought it was too fancy.”
   The president “didn’t want the public perception to be, ‘Look at me; look at how the government is spending money,’ ” said
Brown. “It was well-appointed with walnut and mahogany, and had a marble washstand.”
   Lincoln was scheduled to see the car for the first time on April 15 but never made it, said Trostel. He was shot April 14 and died on the 15th.
   So the lavish railcar that was to have been used by Lincoln during his presidency became his funeral car, carrying his coffin as well as the coffin of his son Willie, who had died earlier.
   By 1911, the car was owned by promoter Thomas Lowery of Minneapolis and stored in a shed, where it was destroyed in a brushfire.
   The re-created version is based on photographs and other research. Its color was determined from the analysis of paint on a 
window frame that was taken as a souvenir from the original car, said Brown, a marketing specialist at Indiana University and a Lincoln buff who volunteered her services.
   The project has been picking up steam over the last several months as other volunteers have joined the cause. One of them, Ainsley Wonderling of Lake Villa, Ill., was looking to furnish the Lincoln car when she came across two pre-Civil War parlor chairs on Craigslist.
   The chairs were once part of a slaveholding Alabama plantation belonging to the ancestors of Marybeth Saunders, who ultimately donated them to the Lincoln funeral-train project.
   “It seemed to be the best outcome for the chairs,” said Saunders, of South 
Bend, Ind. “It’s such a beautiful atonement for my family history.
   “These chairs will be sitting on either side of the replica of Lincoln’s casket. How can you say no to that? I had no choice. Every ancestor was speaking through me, saying yes.”
   The funeral train arrived at the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad depot on South Broad Street about 4:30 p.m. on April 22, 1865.
   Lincoln’s remains were eventually transferred — past houses shrouded in black — to Independence Hall, where, on April 23, lines of people entered a door and exited, using temporary steps, through a window, said Waskie, the Temple professor. Many waited hours and some passed out from exhaustion.
   Lincoln had planned to visit the Union League’s then-new building at B r o a d a n d S a n s o m Streets, where, starting on March 23, a new exhibit, “1865: Triumph and Tragedy,” will highlight the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination. It will be open to the public from 3 to 6p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, and 1 to 4 p.m. every second Saturday of the month, for about a year.
   The funeral train left April 24 from Kensington Station, stopping briefing in Trenton before passing through Princeton, New Brunswick, and Newark. 
It arrived at Jersey City, w h e r e a cl o c k h a d stopped at 7:20 a.m., the approximate time of Lincoln’s death. Then, it was on to New York and other cities.
   “It’s time to recall Lincoln’s role in death as well as life,” Waskie said. ecolimore@phillynews.com 
   856-779-3833 InkyEBC
   For more information, go to https: //www.facebook.com/20   15LincolnFuneralTrain and http://the2015lincolnfuneraltrain.com 

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Kelly Corrigan Transcending, Acceptance, Memoirs, Tell Your Story, Cancer




Philadelphia Inquirer, LOCAL News section, Front Page (Page B1), Tuesday, February 24, 2015:



Kelly Corrigan draws on growing up in Radnor for memoirs

image: http://media.philly.com/images/600*450/20150223-Kelly-Corrigan.jpg
Author Kelly Corrigan
Author Kelly Corrigan Drew Altizer
image: http://media.philly.com/images/172*208/20150224_inq_sauthor24z-a.JPG
Author Kelly Corrigan GALLERY: Kelly Corrigan draws on growing up in Radnor for memoirs


Kelly Corrigan loves driving down Darby Paoli Road in Villanova.
The author has returned to it many times, both on visits to her parents' house and in her best-selling memoirs about family.
It's the look of the landscape.
The way the hills slope.
The lack of stoplights on the road.
"I just think it's beautiful," said Corrigan, 47.
It also, like many roads in her life seem to, leads to her mother and father.
The Radnor native has built a career writing about her relationships with her parents and daughters.
She started out selling her first memoir, about her and her father's simultaneous battles with cancer, in friends' living rooms in 2008.
It wasn't until a video essay of Corrigan's about female bonds called "Transcending" went viral on YouTube that she herself went from a newcomer to a big name.
"Transcending" has gotten nearly five million hits. All three of her memoirs have reached No. 2 on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
This month, Corrigan is starting the paperback tour for the third book, Glitter and Glue, which was first published in hardcover a year ago.
The book tackles Corrigan's relationship with her mother.
"I didn't leave my childhood thinking my mother was going to be a big part of my life. I didn't think we really had enough in common to hold us together," Corrigan said last week from her home in California.
That changed, first during Corrigan's postcollege job as a nanny to children whose own mother had just died, and later after Corrigan's breast cancer diagnosis at age 36.
The book weaves those stories together with the ability to relate that has drawn Corrigan thousands of fans.
"The nicest thing people ever say, that makes me so happy, is, they say, 'Exactly. This is exactly how I felt,' or, 'This is exactly what I've wanted to say,' " Corrigan said.
She aims to put words to elements of life that can be hard to express but are worth thinking about, she said. Her next book will be about acceptance - the things that are "blocking us from being able to let go."
In conversation, Corrigan is as engaging and funny as she is on the page. Fast-paced and thoughtful, she weaves back and forth between jokes and wisdom. Her mother's voice frequently works its way in, via Corrigan's croaky, Philadelphia-Baltimore-accented imitation of her.
Corrigan's parents still live in the house in which she and her two brothers grew up. Both she and her father finished cancer treatment in 2006.
Corrigan, who now lives in Oakland with her husband and two daughters, 11 and 13, remembers her childhood fondly. She gives great credit to Radnor High School, from which she graduated in 1985.
Corrigan received her master's degree in literature from San Francisco State University and worked for the United Way before her writing career. She was featured in The Inquirer in 1998 for Shakespeare-teaching software she developed as a graduate student and demonstrated at Radnor.
"I am incredibly proud of her," said Mary Anne Caporaletti, who taught Corrigan's senior-year Advanced Placement literature class at Radnor. Corrigan was a brave student, she said.
Since the release of Glitter and Glue, Corrigan has taken her comedic yet poignant style to a new endeavor: a talk show for Medium.com called "Foreword," which launched on YouTube last month.
So far, she's interviewed the author Margaret Atwood and the actor Jason Segel, among others, about "big ideas."
"We're really going for . . . something more satisfying, that you will refer to in your mind over time, that will change the way you think about something in a lasting way," Corrigan said.
She is also hoping to create change on her book tour by donating all its proceeds to charity. Her reading on Monday, scheduled for Montgomery School in Chester Springs at 7 p.m., will benefit the Exton-based nonprofit Family Lives On, an organization that helps bereaved children carry on traditions they had with their deceased parents.
The family-oriented organization is a perfect match for Glitter and Glue, Corrigan said.
Her childhood house on Wooded Lane has changed little. Corrigan sleeps in her old bedroom when she visits. It's almost like a museum, she said, and one she has mined well in her writing.
Glitter and Glue was the first book Corrigan attempted. After six months, she decided it was a ludicrous aspiration, akin to wanting to win an Oscar, she said. But 20 years later, the book is on Oprah Winfrey's list of favorites. Corrigan's mother thinks it's the best one yet. And Corrigan said she has learned one important lesson:
"You're allowed to tell your story."


jmcdaniel@philly.com
610-313-8205

@McDanielJustine

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/literature/20150224_Kelly_Corrigan_draws_on_growing_up_in_Radnor_for_memoirs.html#C3LZjXR6mzYIo5XE.99

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Emerging Senior Care Tech, Internet of Things


Senior Housing News (seniorhousingnews.com):





Emerging Senior Care Tech Holds Huge Promise, Poses Big Risks

101930
Internet-connected devices such as wearable health monitors can greatly enhance senior living communities, but the devices also pose potentially grave privacy and security risks that must be addressed by care providers and other stakeholders, suggests a recently released Federal Trade Commission report.
The FTC lays out a sound approach to security in its report, and providers could benefit from considering the recommendations, experts tell Senior Housing News.
The report focuses on “devices or sensors – other than computers, smartphones, or tablets – that connect, store or transmit information with or between each other via the Internet.” The resulting system in which interconnected, non-computer “things” are capturing data has come to be known as The Internet of Things. The FTC report is based on discussions about the Internet of Things that took place at a November 2013 workshop convened by the federal agency. The document offers recommendations on what technology companies, regulators and others should be doing to protect consumers as the Internet of Things expands.
These connected devices hold great promise for seniors in particular, the report states.
It notes that wearable health monitoring devices could enable seniors to catch problems early and avoid hospitalizations or long-term care stays. By giving caregivers access to this data, seniors could improve their outcomes and have better quality of life.
Some devices of this kind, such as activity and resident tracking technology, already are being used in senior living communities. And they’ll likely become even more common, according to Majd Alwan, Ph.D., senior vice president of technology and executive director of the LeadingAge Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST).
“The Internet of Things is coming to senior living,” he says.
This is a positive development, given the benefits outlined in the FTC report. But there is another side to the coin.
The devices also have the ability to capture sensitive personal information, meaning that a data breach could seriously compromise users’ privacy, the report emphasizes. And as medical devices such as insulin pumps also become Internet-connected, attackers could even physically harm people by seizing control.
Alwan supports many of the FTC’s recommendations for how technology companies should protect consumers. The report organized these recommendations in three main categories: security, data minimization, and notice and choice.
Security encompasses actions that tech companies could take to safeguard consumers, such as including password controls. Data minimization involves limiting what information a device collects and disposing of data in a safe and timely manner. Notice and choice is about consumer empowerment: Letting the user know what information a device is collecting and allowing people to change these settings.
Provider Collaboration is Key
Senior living providers might be smart to look for vendors that are adhering to the FTC best practices, but the responsibility is not entirely on the tech companies to build a safe and effective Internet of Things ecosystem, says Robert Choi, chief strategy officer for Collain Healthcare, an LG CNS company.
“Security starts not just with the tech company but the provider, and the philosophy and policies within the organization,” he says.
The FTC report is correct in stating that there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to security for the Internet of Things, and that certainly holds in the senior housing sector, Choi says. This means the provider and tech vendor need to collaborate, especially given the needs of some senior living residents. For instance, giving people with cognitive impairment more power and choice might not be straightforward.
“We can help to determine the security policy and configurability by the patient population to allow the consent management piece, whether it’s the facility or family member making the choices,” Choi says. “We can help the provider with how the security matrix works out, how to configure things, but ultimately it will be at the provider’s discretion.”
Diane Hosson, STANLEY Healthcare senior director of security solutions, agrees that strong security starts with provider policies to safeguard resident privacy — and meet Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act requirements.
Ensuring vendors can meet these requirements is a first step. From there, she says providers should look for devices that meet many of the FTC-recommended security practices. Audit trail features also are important, she says.
“Be sure vendors offer something that records what changes where made, by who and when,” she says. “It will be important from a learning perspective to determine what happened if something goes wrong, and for compliance assurance.”


New Call-to-action

Health care providers are coming to the Internet of Things with a strong background in balancing new technology adoption with the need to keep patient information confidential and secure, says Hosson’s colleague Steve Elder, STANLEY Healthcare senior marketing manager.
“Health care has had to adapt to stringent privacy regulations for some time,” he tells SHN. “The concerns in the FTC report are going to be very, very familiar for health care.”
The Future is (Not Quite) Here
Given the challenges and risks presented by the Internet of Things, providers might rightly be wary of the future. But these Internet-connected devices already are transforming the way care is delivered.
Monitors that can capture daily living activities, such as when seniors visit the bathroom, enable caregivers to get a clearer sense of who might need more attention at a particular moment, says Leah Davidson, marketing director at Healthsense.
“The trend is proactive care,” Davidson adds. “It’s changing care by making better use of time and placing resources where they’re needed most critically.”
Choi cites Thrive Senior Living Legacy at Falcon Point, a Texas assisted living community where LG CNS worked to connect the electronic medical record and point-of-care systems with other devices.
“The landscape of sensors and devices within that building, whether it’s smart door locks or pendants and personal emergency response systems, we connected that all to create a richer health care data repository,” he says.
This project might be a vision of the future, but it also illustrates the challenges in achieving interconnectedness. Not all devices easily integrate with each other as of today, meaning projects like this can be costly and time-consuming, he notes. To change this status quo, providers should exert pressure.
“It’s up to providers to drive vendors to integrate data to one common platform for better analytics and real-time alerting,” he says. “But that becomes a shift in pressure to vendors to take the next step toward more transparency and standards.”
Too Soon for Legislation
Of course, providers are not the only ones who could help spur more uniform standards; Congress also could enact laws and regulations to more strictly control the Internet of Things. However, the majority of FTC commissioners concluded it is too soon for this type of legislation, citing concerns about stifling innovation.
Still, greater governmental oversight of the Internet of Things might be inevitable, Choi and Hosson say.
“I hope they don’t clamp down too hard,” Hosson says. “But what I think is important is helping the health care providers to understand at a bare minimum what they need from their vendors to provide a very protected system.”
To this end, Alwan and his colleagues at CAST are preparing a report on functional assessment and activity monitoring technologies, specifically as they pertain to senior living. He anticipates it will be released in the fall. It should offer another tool for forward-thinking operators anxious to safely embrace these devices.
And the experts agree that there is good reason to be eager for the Internet of Things to reach its full potential while respecting the user’s choice. As STANLEY’s Elder sums it up: “It’s exciting stuff.”
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect corrections. Previously, it described Thrive Senior Living at Legacy Point as a continuing care retirement community and referred to LG rather than LG CNS. SHN regrets these errors. 
Written by Tim Mullaney
101930