redbird | Entries tagged with preparedness

cattitude and I went to a "bystander training" session last night. The presenter discussed the basic goal, which is to keep people safe and defuse situations; reasons why people just stand there when things are happening; and possible things to do. She also asked everyone to say why we were there; in addition to general "I want to do something," there was someone who has worked as a security guard for concerts and nightclubs and realizes that the techniques he used there aren't the right choice here; I said that I was looking for ways to stay (or appear) calm while doing something other than my raised-in-New York leave me alone body language. We spent part of the session in smaller groups, discussing scenarios (all taken from recent actual events), and then talked to the whole meeting about each scenario.

I think and hope it was useful; we came home with illustrated handouts (originally from the American Friends Service Committee*) suggesting ways to defuse a tense situation by interacting with the target. The presenter also said that just by attending a session like this, we became more likely to do something rather than stand there and go home later and think "I should have."

Also: we who are organizing or attending sessions like this tend to assume that it's the other side who will be hassling someone, but for these purposes a target's actual beliefs and characteristics don't matter—Sikhs are targeted by thugs who think they're Muslim, and men of just about any [nominal] political belief hassle women. Yes, I would probably be more likely to stand up for a hijabi than for someone whose attackers thought she was a Trump supporter, but they both deserve to go about their days unmolested.

*which I first read about as an organization in the context of draft resistance during the Vietnam War, and was surprised the first few times I noticed it as a current-day organization with a building on Mass Ave.

(This entry is brief because we got home late and basically fed the cats and went to bed, and I wanted to post something while I remembered.)

Yesterday morning a man knocked on our neighbor's door, then approached me and

cattitude and started asking about our utility meters. When we said they were inside he said "they" would need access to the basement. We put him off, both because I was suspicious and because we were on our way out and wanted to be on the Bikeway, not in the basement. I was suspicious in part because the man was wearing a "Liberty Utilities" badge, and we get natural gas from National Grid and electricity from Eversource. There are at least two US companies called "Liberty Utilities," and one of them even serves a few places in Massachusetts, but not Arlington or any of the adjacent cities or towns.

When we talked about it later, I thought the man had been asking about the electricity, but Cattitude, who talked to him more than I did, said it was gas, so National Grid. I called them this morning, and they said they weren’t subcontracting with Liberty Utilities, and weren't doing any work in my neighborhood, or anywhere in Arlington.

I then called Liberty Utilities, who confirmed that they have nobody working in Arlington, since they don’t provide service here.

So: I have confirmed that this was some sort of scam, either to try to learn our billing information (so he could con us into switching providers), or to get into the building. I had asked the Arlington email list for information, so I posted my conclusions there.

This evening, I looked at the National Hurricane Center's charts of current Atlantic and Eastern Pacific storms, and then followed a link on hurricane preparedness. Along with "make sure you have enough insurance" and suggestions of how much food and water to store, they advise looking up your hurricane evacuation zone.

It turns out that I live in zone B, and zone A (higher risk) starts on the other side of the street. It's a complicated map, which led us to speculating on the history of Mass Ave (the shape of the map, with a long strip where the land right at Mass Ave is not in an evacuation zone, but a block or two away is, strongly suggests that it's slightly higher ground). The risk here is clearly flooding from rainfall rather than storm surge: not just because we're inland a bit, but because of how closely the evacuation zones hug Spy Pond and parts of the Mystic Lakes.

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