Backyard Pools Research Articles

West Coast Weather

West Coast Weather Grace Kearney (bio) We had not spoken in months when you invited me to your baptism—your "bapti-Zoom"—and I heard myself saying, "Yes, of course," as I have to all your rebirths. The ceremony took place in a backyard pool in Berkeley, befitting, to my mind, the ill-defined character of the church to which you now belonged. ("When a church has a podcast and a professionally designed website but no denomination listed, it's Evangelical," my sister in divinity school told me, foretelling your repeated attempts to bring me into its fold.) The video quality was poor, which was too bad, as I wanted to hear which Bible verse you had chosen to read. I heard only the splash, and the faint sound of applause. I had angled my camera so that you could see, though you did not look, the wall behind me, where the painting you made me five years ago still hangs. Inspired by The Phantom Tollbooth, it shows a little boy driving an open-roofed car down a road lined with palms, their trunks wavy and distorted, like driving in a dream. ________ When we found the Enterprise on Escondido Road closed on Sundays, we downloaded a car-sharing app and with a few taps secured a shiny red car, available immediately on the other side of campus. It was our junior year of college and we were prone to shortcuts. Plus, it was a convertible, and nothing is more Spring Break or Road Trip or Route 1 than a red convertible. Prone, too, to the idea of Platonic forms. We had both been reading Plato's Republic when we met, high on our own intellect like so many college freshmen before us. While the trappings of reality surrounded us—the election of a Dorm President, the mad scramble for friend groups—we closed the door and sat cross-legged on my thin mattress and decided the Real lay elsewhere. We answered each other's questions with questions. You drew diagrams. Whenever a third party entered the room, the difference was obvious: men spoke at us, and we spoke to each other. There was only one solution, we joked, platonically. We went to parties only to observe and debrief on the stumbling walk home. On Halloween, we went to Sig Ki with everyone else but [End Page 45] wore white bedsheets over our heads, sexless and bodiless, eyes and ears only. As we peeled onto 280 North, the wind was merciless. For the sake of Spring Break we kept the roof down, but it was too cold when night fell and we realized the roof was stuck. The wind blew our voices back into our mouths, wiped the sheen from our faces. Not long after, the front left tire blew out. You were driving and I was annoyed by your carelessness, though of course it was not your fault. But hadn't this happened to your own car last month? You didn't answer. You were annoyed, too, because now Angelo would be asleep by the time we got there. He was, and so was everyone else, laid out in sleeping bags on the wooden deck. You crawled into his, and I lay out my own. Harbin Hot Springs, according to the website, was a hot spring retreat and workshop center. According to its patrons, it was a nudist camp. This was something your Angelo was into, and you were talked into, and I accepted as a detour on our trip. There was a recommended order for the array of heated pools: tepid bathtub water, standard hot tub water, icy pool water, and a boiling pot with clay walls, where I sat and let blackness hover on the edges of my vision. Time passed in a dizzy blur of bodies. I didn't see you for most of the day, until I wandered into the communal pantry and there you were, eating chocolate chips and raspberries. "Have you ever done this?" I asked, and pressed a chocolate chip into the pocket of a raspberry. "No, but it's perfect," you said. You shared my food kleptomania. That first year together...

From Stroke to Stoke: The Multiple Sporting Legacies of the Southern California Home Swimming Pool

Despite its celebrated place in the American imagination, the backyard pool as both object and technology has largely gone unexamined by historians. In this paper, we begin to remedy that gap, tracing its explosive rise back to 1940s Southern California. From there, we examine the various technological, economic, and architectural forces that guided its journey from plaything of the rich to banal accoutrement of backyards across the Southern Californian suburbs. But as quickly as they appeared, pools morphed into something new, and wholly unexpected: spaces for skateboarding. As many pools were drained due to drought, water levels receded to reveal smooth walls and curves that were perfect for skating on, launching skateboarding into a new era. Additional technological advancements in truck and wheel design allowed skaters to take advantage of these gunite surfaces, whose popularity would in turn influence the construction of skateparks around the country and cause participation in the sport to explode. Drawing from both historical and architectural sources, we argue that the technological advancement of these two sports was brought about not just by inventors but by individuals adapting existing technology to new sportive purposes.

Trichlor shortages threaten summer pool time

Just as the northern hemisphere is gearing up for summer, a shortage of the water treatment chemical trichloroisocyanuric acid threatens to rain on the pool parties. Trichlor, as the sanitizer is commonly known, is a popular choice for backyard pools because it is easy to use. But a fire last summer at a BioLab trichlor factory in Westlake, Louisiana, is already causing shortages and price hikes, and the problem is likely to get worse in the coming months. US homeowners will build about 110,000 pools in 2021, according to the pool supply company Pool Corp. That’s an increase of more than 20% from construction last year. The BioLab plant normally makes the majority of North America’s trichlor supply, according to a report by Goldman Sachs, but was destroyed when Hurricane Laura hit the US Gulf Coast in August. KIK Consumer Products, which owns BioLab, says it is rebuilding the facility

The Gun That Won the West

The Gun That Won the West Siân Griffiths (bio) Winchester Let's not pretend I was an unbiased researcher. I had intentions. I had best laid my plans. I set out to write an essay about guns and guilt and the female body. That's the story I'd first encountered all those years ago while watching a random episode of A&E's America's Castles. The legend lodged in me, building a little home in which to live, paying little board. It went like this: A widow and heiress, consumed by grief at the loss of her husband and infant daughter, consults a Boston medium. He identifies the source of her bad luck: she's haunted by those killed by the Winchester repeating rifle, the gun that won the West, the sale of which had made her fortune. She sought escape in motion, moving from Connecticut to California. She bought a house and hired laborers to construct elaborate traps and tricks to fool the phantoms who pursued her. The house, an icon of Victorian womanhood, became the receptacle and representation of all her torment. She constantly devised new wings, custom ordered glass, designed everything from stairwells to faucets. Building continued twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year until her death. In effect, she had scapegoated herself, shouldering her country's shame like a heavy woolen mantle. She fled directly into her own madness and transmuted guilt into architecture. How could I not be fascinated? Ghostlike, she's haunted me all these years, until finally, I began in earnest to research and write. Her story was perfect as a plum, weighty and dripping with juice. The problem, I would learn, is that the story wasn't true. 1988: Gun #1 I was a fifteen-year-old white girl living in the booming Los Angeles suburbs, amid the palm trees and orange groves of the Inland Empire. My [End Page 56] school, Riverside Poly High, was called the ''rich kids' school,'' though as one of our teachers snidely reminded us, if any of us were really rich, we would have been in private school. Her point was moot. We were generally doing well enough. Many of us had backyard pools. A lucky few got cars for their birthdays, including our future valedictorian, who had scored a white bmw complete with sun roof. I had moved from small-town Ohio a few years earlier and lacked the fashion sense to know Gucci from Jordache. Even so, I felt safe if not accepted. If there's one thing rich kids' schools specialize in, it's cultivating outsiders. Looking back, it's easy to recognize the kid who sat behind me in US History as just another outcast. I didn't recognize him as one then only because he wasn't on my radar at all. He was quiet. I don't remember even being aware of him behind me each day until the day he nudged me before class, opening his school bag and inviting me to look inside. I remember the backpack as an oily blue, the gun itself as chrome and shining. I don't remember him saying anything. I don't remember speaking either. The situation, more than anything, confused me. Why the need to show the gun? Why to me? In those pre-Columbine years, I didn't exactly feel threatened. If there was a right way to respond, I still don't know what it was. States The gun debate in this country basically boils down into two factions holding a disparate set of beliefs. Pro-Gun: I love guns and everyone should have one. Anti-Gun: I don't like guns and so no one should have one. The Pro-Gun faction believes the world will be safer only when everyone is armed. The Anti-Gun faction suggests we melt the guns. Neither stance is productive. Neither wants to be persuaded. Winchester The widow may have moved west for any number of reasons. She and her late husband had traveled to the Bay Area years before, and she had loved her time there. More recently, her brother-in-law had taken a job...

Patients need patience

I recently had a hip replacement. ‘So what?’ you probably think, ‘I'll worry about that when I get to your advanced age.’ The reason I write about it is not in search of sympathy, but to inform you what it is like being a hospital patient, in the hope that we can learn from my story how to make things better for our patients and their families. I was in a lovely hospital with which I can find almost no faults. The hospital operates an antidiscrimination policy on hot beverages. It is impossible to discriminate their tea from their coffee on the grounds of colour, smell or taste. That aside, the food was edible and the staff delightful. Everyone tried their best to be kind and thoughtful. We teach medical students about the power differential between doctor and patient, but it is both illuminating and sobering to experience a hospital from the patient's viewpoint. When you become a patient you can easily lose your identity, your dignity and hence your self-esteem. The clothes that define you are taken away and you are put in a hospital gown that can only be politely viewed from the front. You are not allowed to walk to the X-ray or physiotherapy departments, but are wheeled in a chair like an invalid. Staff members who take a moment to chat, almost regardless of the topic, brighten a long day immeasurably. As a patient, you are reluctant to initiate such exchanges because the staff must be busy. The issue is being generous with scarce time and being interested enough in fellow human beings to help them feel more human. Even in the friendliest place, there are frustrations. A wardsman arrives unexpectedly to take you to X-ray. You sit for an hour, bored to bits in the X-ray department before you have your X-ray, and then for another half hour waiting for the wardsman to return (although you could walk to the ward in 2 min). You wish you had thought to bring the novel you were so enjoying, but didn't remember because you were flustered. Forewarned would have been forearmed, but whose job was it to warn you about a pending X-ray? And why would anyone warn you? A hospital patient's time is less valuable by far than the time of a radiographer or a wardsman. Two simple acts of kindness stood out. One male nurse, seeing how uncomfortable I was, positioned a ‘monkey bar’ hoist above my bed, which transformed my nights from miserable discomfort to being able to change my own position. I was back in control of my own comfort. A physiotherapist took the time to talk about recuperation and, when she found out I have a backyard pool, advised me that swimming using flippers was excellent physiotherapy to strengthen muscles. This revolutionised my recovery and improved my mood dramatically. Neither was aware of the power of their action, although I made a point of feeding back to them how grateful I was. Thoughtfulness and humanity are so important. When I left the hospital, it felt like being out on parole, as I escaped after 5 days of air-conditioned sterility. The lessons I will try to put into practice are to be more generous with my time, to take more interest in people and to keep patients and their families as fully informed as possible about simple day-to-day procedures. We all feel pressed for time, but time is the currency of humanity, and demonstrating humanity is a powerful way to help patients and relatives preserve their dignity and their sense of worth. The Children's Hospital at Westmead.

Can Indoor Swimming Alter Hormones in Boys?

Can Indoor Swimming Alter Hormones in Boys?

Sudden Death Due to Ruptured Three-Vessel Giant Coronary Artery Aneurysm in a 28 Year Old Woman with Trisomy 21

We report a case of sudden death due to rupture of a giant right coronary artery aneurysm, likely a sequela of remote Kawasaki disease, in a young woman with Down syndrome. The decedent was a 28 year old female with trisomy 21 who was found deceased in the backyard pool. An autopsy disclosed an enlarged heart with 400 ml of clotted blood in the pericardial sac and undiagnosed giant coronary artery aneurysms involving the left anterior descending, left circumflex, and right coronary artery, with rupture of the latter artery. The histologic findings were consistent with remote Kawasaki disease. Giant coronary artery aneurysms are a rare complication of Kawasaki disease, infectious vasculitis, and atherosclerosis, among other causes. While Kawasaki disease is typically considered a disease of children, late-onset complications should be considered in the differential diagnosis of young adults with myocardial infarction, coronary aneurysm, or sudden death.

The frontier of leisure: Southern California and the shaping of modern America

Southern California has long been promoted as the playground of the world, the home of resort-style living, backyard swimming pools, and year-round suntans. Tracing the history of Southern California from the late nineteenth century through the late twentieth century, The Frontier of Leisure reveals how this region did much more than just create lavish resorts like Santa Catalina Island and Palm Springs-it literally remade American attitudes towards leisure. Lawrence Culver shows how this culture of gradually took hold with an increasingly broad group of Americans, and ultimately manifested itself in suburban developments throughout the Sunbelt and across the United States. He further shows that as Southern Californians promoted resort-style living, they also encouraged people to turn inward, away from public spaces and toward their private homes and communities. Impressively researched, a fascinating and lively read, this finely nuanced history connects Southern Californian recreation and leisure to larger historical themes, including regional development, architecture and urban planning, race relations, Indian policy, politics, suburbanization, and changing perceptions of nature.

Tread with caution: Inflatable pools pose drowning hazard

![][1] What better way to keep cool in summertime than by splashing in a backyard pool? While large inflatable pools can be fun, they also can be hazardous— especially to children ages 5 years and younger. Newer models of inflatable pools come in all shapes and sizes, from 2 feet

Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America

To pose Atlantic City as a case study of urban decline in the United States may appear ambitious for a noted but small seaside resort. A larger or more industrial city such as Detroit or Trenton would seem more typical and appropriate. But, as Bryant Simon observes, the changes in commerce and technology that undermined the cities of the rust belt were also at work in Atlantic City. Here these forces took the form of cheap air travel, Disneyland, and even air conditioning and backyard pools, all of which created alternatives to a city that by 1960 had lost its appeal to middle- and working-class whites. A more basic common thread lies at the heart of the author's thesis: the “middle class notions of space, race, and democracy” (pp. 11–12) that sustained Atlantic City's boom times also fueled its sharp decline and molded its awkward comeback in the casino era.

Swimming pool fencing in New South Wales: who is checking compliance?

Issue addressed: Lack of appropriate swimming pool fencing is often found to be a causal factor contributing to the drowning of young children. Local councils are responsible for the enforcement of the Swimming Pools Act 1992 in New South Wales (NSW), yet no consistent approach to enforcement exists. Methods: A survey of local councils in NSW was conducted during June-August 2002. The survey included questions that aimed to identify what information was collected regarding backyard swimming pools, the form in which this information was stored, and barriers to the enforcement of pool fencing legislation in NSW. Results: Just over two-thirds of local councils responded to the survey. The type and format of information available regarding backyard swimming pools varied considerably between local government areas. Regular pool fencing inspections were not often conducted and minimal information was kept regarding the compliance status of backyard pool fencing with the Act. Conclusions: While the vast majority of local councils conduct educational initiatives aimed at improving pool owners’ familiarity with the requirements of the NSW Swimming Pools Act 1992, ambiguities exist in the Act that can make compliance confusing. The effectiveness of the Act is further undermined by the low levels of compliance to its specifications. So what? Recent evidence suggests that swimming pool fencing legislation in NSW should be reviewed. Barriers identified by local councils in relation to enforcement of pool fencing legislation in NSW should be addressed. Key words: Swimming pool fencing, compliance, drowning.

Water safety

When you hear the term “water safety,” what comes to mind? Do you think of swimming in lakes, quarries, or backyard pools? Do toilets, even buckets, come to mind? Safety measures are required in any situation involving water to keep people—especially children—safe.

Drowning prevention

Hardly anyone still believes that a person doesn't drown until “going down for the third time.” But plenty of true and important water-safety advice is misunderstood or not taken into account. Many people don't realize that children are in special danger. Infants and toddlers can drown in as little as an inch or two of water, and backyard pools are a tremendous hazard.

Swimming pool immersion accidents: an analysis from the Brisbane Drowning Study

An analysis of a consecutive series of 66 swimming pool immersion accidents is presented; 74% of these occurred in in-ground swimming pools. The estimated accident rate per pool is fives...

A Community’s Response to Childhood Drownings: A Model for Accident Prevention

The prevention of drowning or any other accidental injury depends primarily on changing the behavior patterns of the families of the children at risk. Many community organizations and individual citizens must be recruited to help convince the public of the risks of young children drowning in backyard pools and to propose appropriate prevention measures. Legally mandated remedies may be necessary and may take years to show any significant effect. Because of the constantly changing population of parents of young children and the high risk of drowning for small children in Arizona, the educational programs must be repeated year after year.

Isolation fencing and drownings in backyard pools

Isolation fencing and drownings in backyard pools

Isolation fencing and drownings in backyard pools

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 154, Issue 10 p. 712-712 Letters to the Editor Isolation fencing and drownings in backyard pools John H Pearn FRACP, John H Pearn FRACP National Medical Adviser, Professor Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia, Department of Child Health, Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, QLD, 4029Search for more papers by this author John H Pearn FRACP, John H Pearn FRACP National Medical Adviser, Professor Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia, Department of Child Health, Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, QLD, 4029Search for more papers by this author First published: 01 May 1991 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1991.tb121299.xAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume154, Issue10May 1991Pages 712-712 RelatedInformation

Isolation fencing and drownings in backyard pools

Isolation fencing and drownings in backyard pools

Loss in the Backyard Pool: The Great Australian Leveller

The advent of the second string to the ‘Great Australian Dream’ — ‘The Backyard Pool’ can be considered a major contributor to drowning: the major cause of death in children over one year of age in Australia. As these children, drowned and near drowned, find their way to our Accident and Emergency Departments and Intensive Care Units in ever increasing numbers, medical social workers must find the compassion and skills to help their families — as they struggle to come to terms with such a tragedy. In this paper I will look at the issues involved: — It's Unnatural, It's Unexpected, It's Unnecessary and It's Unacceptable, that children should die by drowning. I will then share the experiences of four families I have been privileged to work with, and conclude by outlining the social worker's role in this area.

Real Estate in New Jersey

REAL ESTATE IN NEW JERSEY / David R. Schanker IT WAS A FRIDAY NIGHT at the end of August, a mild night without a trace of humidity. There was not a breeze to be felt, and it could almost be said that it was a night without temperature, so still and comfortable was the air. A party was taking place at the house next door to where Irwin Neuman and his father lived. It was a huge, noisy, end-of-summer party; more than a hundred people filled the neighboring house and overflowed onto the second floor terrace and the deck around the backyard pool. Irwin sat observing the party through their den window, which overlooked the strip of grass, no more than ten yards across, that separated the two homes. It was after midnight, yet guests were still arriving. Pressing his cheek against the glass, Irwin watched the cars driving up and down the street looking for a place to park. Every few moments, a group of guests would stroll up the front walk with wine and beer and bakery boxes. No one seemed to be leaving, and as people went in the front door, others came out the back, carrying drinks and paper plates laden with food onto the deck and beyond into the lightly wooded backyard. Irwin recognized only a few of the guests as he watched them cluster and uncluster. On the terrace, leaning their backs against the wrought-iron railing, were the Fitzgeralds—the hosts—and their son, Daniel, a classmate of Irwin's. Sitting at a picnic table on the deck were Dr. Stewart, pediatrician to both Irwin and Daniel, and his wife; they were chatting with the Diamonds, an elderly couple who lived on the other side of the Fitzgeralds. Within the house, in the living room under the brightly gleaming chandelier, Irwin saw Marjorie Fitzgerald, Daniel's older sister, hugging one of the recently arrived. Her face, like the faces of all of those around her, seemed flushed with merriment. Everywhere inside and outside the house were faces in giddy motion. Irwin took off his glasses and wiped his face with a kleenex. Irwin was sweating, and when he sweated his face poured forth an oily veneer that caused his glasses to slip uncomfortably down to the end of his nose. He grimaced at the dirty kleenex, wishing he could open the window, but Irwin was afraid that the noise from next door would rise through the house and awaken his father, who, always a light sleeper, had come to sleep less and less soundly since the death 28 · The Missouri Review of Irwin's mother ten months before. On one occasion Irwin's father woke at the creak of Irwin's bedroom door as Irwin opened it to go to the bathroom; henceforth Irwin left his door open, but then one night his father was awakened by the soft scrunch of Irwin's footsteps in the hall carpet. "Irwin? Is that you?" His voice drifted weakly down from the attic, which he had recently taken as his bedroom. "Yes, Dad," Irwin whispered. "Please try to be more quiet," said his father. "I can't sleep with you moving around." "I will, Dad," said Irwin, and he peed against the side of the bowl, as silently as possible, and left the toilet unflushed so as not to make further noise. His father, however, who always rose at six a.m., reprimanded Irwin so severely for being unhygenic that Irwin tried to solve the problem by drinking nothing after eight p.m. But he awoke in the middle of each night nonetheless, with a terrible thirst. Not daring to move from his bed to use the sink, Irwin lay awake, struggling to stifle the cough that fluttered maddeningly in his throat. Thereafter Irwin placed a glass of water at his bedside before retiring. This worked so well that the glass of water came to be a gratifying ritual for Irwin; he went to bed at eleven, after watching the ten o'clock news with his father, and slept in complete peace until three, when his eyes would open and he would find himself instantly...