Motel Rooms Research Articles

“Plaster solutions” – Providing support for children residing in emergency housing motels in Hamilton, Aotearoa New Zealand

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, motels have become increasingly used as sites for emergency accommodation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Consequently, children now reside in motel rooms intended for seven day emergency stays for much longer periods of time. Ten key-informant interviews were conducted with service providers supporting children residing in motels in the Waikato region. Thematic analysis generated five themes relating to child wellbeing: 1.) Living conditions, 2.) Physical and psychological safety, 3.) Inappropriateness of existing service models, 4.) Disjointed collaboration between service providers, and 5.) Imagining emergency motels as a “site to build strengths”. The findings suggest the motel environment restricted children’s access to nutrition, safe physical activity and health care. In addition, proximity to adult residents could increase exposure to adverse experiences. Participants suggested creative ways to collaborate and use motel facilities to build family strengths. However ultimately, long stays in emergency housing motels create an environment where systemic barriers to child health, development and education are likely to be entrenched rather than alleviated. Initiatives that significantly reduce the time children spend in motels, and appropriate support for children in these contexts are urgently required to prevent widening health inequities for the “motel generation”.

Front Porch

Front Porch Tom Rankin Click for larger view View full resolution Illustrations by Phil Blank. [End Page 1] Click for larger view View full resolution Dinner in the motel room with Maggie Lee Sayre, Danville, Kentucky, 1995. Photographs by Tom Rankin. A SOUTHERN CULTURES ISSUE on the Sonic South is especially welcome in this moment, so necessary as we continue to listen for what is hidden within the culture and history of the region. And while we listen for these rhythms, the muffled and shuttered sounds that deserve amplification, we also strive to locate the silences. Sonic boom–level thanks go to Regina N. Bradley for her amazing vision and for gathering this medley of contributors on essential ideas of the American South. In thinking of the sonic, I begin with ideas of listening. So much of what is calling to us in the South remains yet unheard, unacknowledged in any full and understandable way. Not because these stories, places, lives, and truths are inaudible, but because of a collective turn away from their sounds. When I think—and talk—about the fundamental methods of documenting oral histories, life stories, and personal memory, I land early on ideas of sympathetic listening, on the wonders of letting the teller and the story wander and emerge in its own delicate and distinct way. Embracing the nonlinear nature of recall, memory, and life is where meaning often rests, where we find yet unheard revelation. We discover indispensible new truths in the pauses and gaps, between the static and the unsaid. Leaning closer to a speaker on a radio or phone to hear more clearly through the scrambled fuzzy connection—a sonic friction that exists in the moment and later in memory—makes what we understood all the more consequential because of the effort to hear. To understand [End Page 2] the sonic South requires moving our ears—and with that all our senses—a bit closer to the source, to the ground, to more fully comprehend the resonant truths. Some years ago, I did documentary fieldwork along the Tennessee River, working for the Tennessee Department of Conservation. I was photographing and interviewing commercial fishermen and others who make their living from the river, trying to better understand and document the intersections of the natural river world and the residents who lived there. During that time, I was lucky to meet Maggie Lee Sayre, then a resident in a nearby nursing home who had grown up on a houseboat on the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers. Born deaf, she had become a photographer as a child and continued to photograph her family life on their houseboat as they made their living catching fish, residing on the boat her father built. Maggie Lee Sayre's deafness and her life among mostly hearing people who didn't know sign language defined her photographic vision. In our first meeting she brought out her photographs. As she turned page after page of her carefully edited and sequenced photo albums, it became powerfully clear that she was sharing her pictorial life story, a visual narrative seasoned with caring descriptions and the mystery of meaning inherent in the best of stories. Because initially I had no experience with sign language, Maggie and I communicated through handwritten notes, gestures, and of course the photographs themselves. We collaborated on a book of her photographs that was published in 1995, taking the title from the way Maggie signed her name the first time she wrote me—Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre: Photographs of a River Life. We traveled together to promote the book at bookstores, schools, and on television and radio. As Maggie and I drove around the South, I always booked connecting motel rooms. I wanted to make sure that if she needed something while we were staying overnight she could easily find me; and I also wanted the reassurance that a joining room provided that I could check on her, make sure all was just fine. Maggie only wanted fried fish for dinner, preferably catfish, a special treat that nursing home food didn't provide. Our pattern was that we would check into our motel and get settled, and I would go look...

Who's ‘Taking’ From Whom? The Supreme Court's Real Target - Farmworkers' Organising Rights

10 | International Union Rights | 28/2 FOCUS | A CHANGING POST-PANDEMIC WORLD FOR LABOUR Who’s ‘Taking’ From Whom? The Supreme Court’s Real Target - Farmworkers’ Organising Rights Most of the media coverage of the recent Supreme Court decision about the farmworker access rule took for granted the way growers, and the court, defined this regulation. Jess Bravin in the Wall Street Journal called it ‘a regulation giving union organisers the right to visit farmworkers’. The first line of the rightwing majority’s opinion1 called it ‘A California regulation [which] grants labour organisations a ‘right to take access’ to an agricultural employer’s property’. The court, and the growers, deliberately confuse the mechanism of the rule with rights, calling it a right of organisers or organisations. It is not. The right the rule implements is simple. When workers are protesting and organising a union in the fields, they have a right to talk to union representatives at work. It’s a right of workers, rather than a right of union representatives. Rolling back this right, and the ability of farmworkers to organise against their endemic poverty, is the main target of the Supreme Court’s attack. At Cedar Point Nursery, the grower that filed the case heard by the court, the stakes were clear. Cedar Point is a nursery growing rootstock for commercial strawberry growers in Dorris, a remote town in northern California near the Oregon border. Hundreds of workers migrate here from their homes in central and southern California every year to harvest, trim and pack the plants. In 2015 Cedar Point labourers walked out to protest conditions that included, according to worker Jessica Rodriguez2, low wages, dirty bathrooms, and harassment from supervisors. They called the United Farm Workers, which sent organisers and implemented the access rule to talk with them on the property. The strike lasted for just a day, and after the strikers returned to their jobs, the organising effort fizzled out. No election was ever held to begin the process of trying to get a contract. What happened at Cedar Point is not unusual. The following spring in McFarland, in the densely farmed San Joaquin Valley, hundreds of workers struck the blueberry fields of Gourmet Trading over similar issues. Support for the organising was overwhelming. They called the UFW after they’d struck. Once they returned to work the union filed for access, and workers held meetings after work at the ranch. They voted for the union a few days later, and today they work under a union contract. In 1996, during a huge campaign to organise the strawberry industry in Watsonville3, UFW organisers visited picking crews in dozens of fields. They taped butcher paper on the walls of the portapotties during lunchtime meetings. Strawberry workers wrote down their demands for raising some of the lowest wages in agriculture, and planned marches to the company offices to announce them. In all these cases the access rule provided a way for workers to understand the organising process and get help with it. Farmworkers need this because of the nature of the work. They are often migrants, working in a harvest in one area of California although they live in another. Cedar Point’s workers lived hundreds of miles from Dorris, and during the work season slept in motel rooms and temporary housing. At Gourmet Trading some pickers travelled an hour or more to get to the field every day. Those distances make it hard—and sometimes impossible— for people to meet with union organisers at home. According to the Handbook4 of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which administers California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act, ‘The access regulations ... are meant to insure that farm workers, who often may be contacted only at their work place, have an opportunity to be informed with minimal interruption of working activities’. Organising a union is a collective process. Workers need to talk with each other about it. When the Pacific Legal Foundation argued the Cedar Point case in 20175 before the Ninth District of the U.S. Court of Appeals, and lost, its attorney Wen Fa asserted, ‘All the workers live in houses or hotels. Many have cellphones’. Even if this were...

Hotel smoking policies and their implementation: a survey of California hotel managers

BackgroundMost states in the U.S. permit hotels to allow smoking in some guest rooms, and only five (Indiana, Michigan, North Dakota, Vermont, and Wisconsin) require that all hotel and motel rooms be 100% smoke-free (State and local 100% smokefree hotel and motel guest room laws enacted as of July 3, 2017). Little is known, however, about how hotels’ smoking policies have been implemented. This study examined hotels’ smoking policies and their implementation.MethodsA telephone survey of a random sample of 383 California hotel managers was conducted.ResultsOverall, 60.6% of hotels reported that smoking was prohibited in all guest rooms, and 4.7% reported that smoking was prohibited everywhere on their property. While California law permitted smoking in up to 65% of guest rooms, only 6.9% of rooms were reported as smoking-permitted. Over 90% of hotels had smoking rooms scattered among nonsmoking rooms, and about half of the smoking hotels reported that guests requesting either smoking or nonsmoking rooms were sometimes assigned to the other room type. When guests smoked in nonsmoking rooms fees could be substantial, but were often uncollected.ConclusionsHotel smoking policies and their implementation fall short of protecting nonsmoking guests and workers from exposure to secondhand and thirdhand smoke. Complete indoor smoking bans for all hotels are needed to close existing loopholes. Nonsmokers who wish to protect themselves from exposure to tobacco smoke should avoid hotels that permit smoking and instead stay in completely smoke-free hotels.

Field notes. The light that endures. Remembering John Arras.

AbstractI met John Arras under unpromising circumstances. Awaiting my ride to The Hastings Center from the Ardsley Acres motel (rooms by the hour), I discovered that, contrary to what I'd been told, a competitor for the Center's coveted National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship was also there—a philosopher from California with wild hair and a ready smile. A grueling day of interviews followed. Eventually, we learned that we'd both have the opportunity to spend a year at Hastings, along with Nancy Rhoden, a brilliant young legal scholar. It was a wonderful, life‐altering experience.

My Father's Shoes

My Father's Shoes

Use of Direct Reading Surface Sampling Methods for Site Characterization and Remediation of Methamphetamine Contaminated Properties

Abstract Residual methamphetamine contamination in Clandestine laboratories represents a hazard to emergency response personnel, remediation workers and the general public. To address this threat, two rapid, sensitive surface sampling techniques to assess the location and level of methamphetamine contamination were developed. Both methods employ established industrial hygiene surface sampling materials (wipes and swabs) but differ in their sensitivity and detection technology. One method, based on colorimetric disclosure, detects and confirms a collected sample or visible residues. The second method uses a lateral flow immunochemical assay (LFIA) for semi-quantitative detection of trace contamination. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) partnered with public health agencies to develop applications of the methods for assessment of methamphetamine contamination of suspected properties. These applications focused on safe strategies for site assessment, hazard characterization, and remediation effectiveness. To conduct the field studies, NIOSH researchers and their partners visited more than a dozen suspected laboratories including mobile labs, abandoned properties, occupied residences, and motel rooms. NIOSH found greater than 95% agreement between positive identification of the presence of methamphetamine by LFIA and laboratory-based, liquid chromatography mass spectroscopy (LC–MS) methods. Test results were used to develop site assessments and make personal protective equipment recommendations. Results were also used to conduct process-based decontamination of properties and to make health-based decisions on remediation, re-occupancy of residences, as well as determine the degree of contamination of personal property in an inactive clandestine laboratory. By partnering with stakeholders, NIOSH was able to achieve two primary goals: (1) to develop a level of awareness in health department sanitarians, law enforcement personnel and other first responders that methamphetamine surface contamination was a potentially significant route of exposure; (2) to validate our methods in the field and to develop protocols for proper use and interpretation of the results.

Alamo Plaza

212 fiction The road to the coast was a long, steamy corridor of leaves. Nar‑ row bridges over brush‑choked creeks. Our father drove, the windows down, wind whipping his thick black hair. Our mother’s hair, abun‑ dant and auburn and long and wavy, she’d tried to tame beneath a pretty blue scarf. He wore a pair of black Ray-Bans. She wore prescrip‑ tion shades with the swept and pointed ends of the day. He whistled crooner songs and smoked Winstons, and early as it was, no one really talked. My older brother, Hal, slept sitting up, his mouth open as if he were singing silently in a dream. This was before things changed, before Hurricane Camille, the ca‑ sinos. Long before Hal’s death in a car wreck at the age of twenty-one, my father’s heart attacks and fatal stroke, the aneurism that took our mom, my younger brother Ray’s drug addiction and long-term illness. On this trip Ray, too young to bring along, too much trouble most of the time, had been left with our grandmother. He was just two, yet already his sharp, hawkish eyes constantly sought their prey, which was insufficient attention, which he would rip to shreds with tantrums, Brad Watson 213 devour in small bloody satisfying chunks until he received either pun‑ ishment or, better, mollification. I was so very glad that he was not along, not only because of his querulous nature, but also because his absence made it more possible—or so I imagined—for me to get more of Hal’s and my parents’ attention myself. By noon we smelled the brine-and-fish stink of the bays. The land flattened into hazy vista, so flat you could see the curve of the earth. Downtown Gulfport steamed an old Floridian vapor from cracked side‑ walks and filigreed railings, shaded storefronts—not a soul out, every‑ one and everything stalled in the heat, distilling. The beach highway stretched out to the east, white and hot in the sun. Our tires made slap‑ ping sounds on the melting tar dividers and the wind in the car win‑ dows was warm and salty. We passed old beach mansions with green shutters, hundred-year-old oaks in the yards. A scattering of cheap red‑ brick motels, slat-board restaurants, bait shops. The beach, to our right, was flat and white and the lank brown surf lapped at the sand. East of Gulfport, the Alamo Plaza Motel Court, with its fort-like fa‑ cade of white stucco, stood flanked by low regular motel rooms around a concrete courtyard. The swimming pool lay oddly naked and exposed in the middle of the motel’s broad front lawn, one low diving board jut‑ ting over the deep end like a pirates’ plank. No one was out. We stopped in the breezeway beside the office and went inside, where the floor was cool Mexican tile. Lush green plants sprouted from large clay pots in the corners, and there was a color television on which we could watch programs unavailable back home. I have a vivid mem‑ ory of seeing a Tarzan movie there in which Tarzan, standing in the crook of a large tree, is shot right between the eyes by a safari hunter’s rifle, and doesn’t even flinch. Is it possible this is a true memory, not invented or stretched? Would Hollywood in the thirties—for this was an old movie even then—have allowed Tarzan to be shot directly in the forehead with a high-power rifle, the bloody spot at the point of entry jumping out on his skin, without so much as blinking his eyes? I was, I am, as incredulous as the safari men on the jungle trail below, holding their high-power rifles and gaping at this jungle god, who just stared coolly back at them with the bullet hole in the center of his forehead. It seemed very real and possible, however, in the moment. ✶ 214 ecotone We rented a bungalow in the rear of the Alamo Plaza. In the morn‑ ings we went to the beach, joining hands to cross the white...

Lethal Locations: An Application of Opportunity Theory to Motel Suicide, a Research Note

Location of suicide is a neglected area in suicidology, but is important because location is related to the presence of motivated rescuers who can prevent suicides. The present study analyzes the predictors of suicide in a location that is apt to be free of motivated rescuers: the motel room. Data from the files of a medical examiner in a Midwestern city included 1457 suicides, of which 27 took place in motel rooms. Predictor variables include demographic characteristics and psychosocial stressors associated with the suicides. An exploratory multivariate logistic regression model found four independent predictors of motel suicide. Conditions elevating the odds of motel room suicide were divorce (odds ratio = 6.0), out of county residence (OR = 14.4), hanging as a suicide method (OR = 3.0), and substance abuse (OR = 2.6). The model explained 24% of the variance in location of suicide. Opportunity theory is utilized to explain why location influences the probability of a suicide.

RNA silencing in surgical disease.

Each of our cells contains a complete copy of the genes required to create a whole organism. Thus, it was possible to clone Dolly from a single sheep epidermal cell, and we should be able to reconstruct a dinosaur from the genetic material buried in the mud of Jurassic Park. However, it is hard to believe that by adding water to the $5 worth of chemicals in a human, it is possible to create a human being. Although 30000 instructions, or genes, sounds like a lot, the creation of a hand or a heart or a mind is still a daunting task. Our current genetic code is a lot like the King James Bible-both have evolved. The travails of Moses or Noah were initially transcribed by clerics into huge books safely stored in cathedral vaults. With frightening frequency, these imaginative priests improved the story as they wrote. The testaments were then translated into many languages to enhance access by many peoples. These translations were found, and the data enjoyed further incremental evolution. In eukaryotes, the functional DNA rarely leaves the safety of the nuclear cathedral vault. Traditionally, we have envisioned the Gideon messengers as transcribing reliable molecular copies and distributing them out to motel rooms. While chromosomes are made of double-stranded DNA comprising millions of nucleotide pairs, single-strand messenger RNA (mRNA) carries only single verses, requiring a nucleotide code of only 50 to several thousand nucleotides. Ribosomal RNA synthesizes protein from the mRNA script, while transfer RNA serves an adaptor role in converting the message to protein.

From the Feds: Research, programs, and products

From the Feds: Research, programs, and products

Explosive burns during abusive inhalation of butane gas

Explosion burns during abusive inhalation of butane gas rarely occurred in the past, but recently it has become a social problem among groups of teenagers. This cause constitutes 1.6% of admissions due to flame burn at the burn unit of Hallym Medical Center. A retrospective review during a five-year period identified 48 patients. The male to female ratio was 3:1. The mean age of patients was 16 years and 8 months. The places where the accidents occurred were commonly bedrooms or motel rooms. There were nine group settings of 27 patients at the time of the accident. Inhalation injury ( n=12) was noted on admission. The average burn size was 28.5 percent of the total body surface area. All patients sustained burn injury on the face, arms and hands and 24 patients among them had extended burn areas on the trunk and/or lower extremity. 22 patients (mean hospital stay; 51.6 d) required skin grafting and 12 patients (mean hospital stay; 22.3 d) were treated with conservative management. The mortality rate was 10.4 percent. Explosion burns during abusive inhalation of butane gas can result in mortality as well as major burn injuries.

Memorial Agon: An interpretive tour of the national civil rights museum

In 1991, the Lorraine Motel—infamous site of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination—reopened to the public under a refurbished name and identity: the National Civil Rights Museum. Although the remodeled interior looks nothing like it did in 1968, the balcony and motel rooms where the assassination took place have been preserved as a shrine to Dr. King. This essay explores the symbolic tension between the museum and Jacqueline Smith, a former resident of the Lorraine Motel who has protested the museums appropriation of King's memory since her eviction in 1988. Although Smith disrupts the community constituted in the museum, this disruption opens a space that encourages a more critical approach to King's memory and the museum's discourse. As a representation of African American heritage and identity, the National Civil Rights Museum underscores the rhetorical complexity of public memorializing when the distinction between official and vernacular cultural expression is obscured.

The last sexual encounter: the contextualization of sexual risk behaviour

We aim to apply critical incident methodology to details of respondents' last sexual encounter to provide contextualized data on sexual behaviour and alleviate the problem of recall bias. In areas of Houston, Texas, registering high prevalence rates of syphilis, we elicited information from 400 men and women about the last time they had sex. Details of time, place, partner, activities, and situational circumstances were collected in street intercept interviews. Nearly 50% of men and 30% of women were drunk or high the last time they had sex, and more than one-quarter of last encounters occurred in hotel or motel rooms. Drug use was not related to condom use. Both men and women were more likely to use condoms with new than with more familiar sex partners; however, women were less likely than men to report condom use across all types of sexual activity, and particularly for anal sex. The findings are being used to design a syphilis prevention intervention in the study communities.

"Storm of the Century": Hurricane Hugo and its Impact on South Carolina

Southeastern Geographer Vol. 30, No. 1, May 90, pp. 63-67 THE CHANGING SOUTH "STORM OF THE CENTURY": HURRICANE HUGO AND ITS IMPACT ON SOUTH CAROLINA Robert L.Janiskee In 1989 South Carolina was long overdue for a major hurricane; it had been 30 years since the last serious storm (Gracie)—the longest such respite in three centuries—and the three decades had seen a tremendous construction boom along the coast. When Hugo roared ashore the night of September 21-22, 1989, its eye passing about 20 mi north of Charleston, it was a Category 4 hurricane with a 20-ft storm surge and sustained winds of 135 mph or more. It battered the South Carolina shoreline from just south of Charleston northward into the heart of the Grand Strand tourism region (Fig. 1), leaving the beaches lower and narrower, stripped of dunes, and littered with debris from houses, motels, apartments, fishing piers, and other structures. Destructive winds penetrated 200 mi inland from the coast, toppling trees and ripping away roofs with 90-mph gusts. The resulting losses were devastating : 35 people dead, more than 17,000 dwelling units destroyed or temporarily uninhabitable, enough toppled pine trees to build 660,000 homes, almost 18,000 mi of roads and highways littered with storm debris, power outages affecting more than 755,000 homes and businesses , and 270,000 people temporarily out of work. (J) The federally declared disaster area eventually encompassed 36 counties with $6.9 billion in property damage. Hugo's impact, however, will also be long term, especially its effect on tourism, forestry, and the management of wildlife and coastal resources. This paper considers some ofthese issues and especially looks at the implications for beachfront management policies and practices in the state. South Carolina will experience some immediate financial hardships resulting from the diversion of both public and private resources, erosion of the tax base in many municipalities, and losses of productivity and income in several important industries; but it is unlikely that Hugo Dr. Janiskee is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC 29208. 64Southeastern Geographer will cause long-term economic problems. Experience has shown that coastal economies tend to recover quickly from major hurricanes. The Biloxi/Gulfport area, for example, is thriving economically despite destruction caused by three major hurricanes in two decades, including Camille in 1969. Despite the cautious optimism about the state's economy, several important industries and resource management programs will be affected for years to come. One major concern is Hugo's effect on tourism, the state's #2 industry; coastal tourism alone accounted for 52% of the state's $4.6 billion in travel-tourism spending in 1988. Infrastructure damage along the coast, however, was moderate: Hilton Head Island was unscathed; Charleston's historic district escaped serious damage; and, within three weeks of the storm, 62 golf courses were open and 11,000 motel rooms were available on the Grand Strand. Major advertising campaigns were mounted to counter the media-fed public image Fig. 1. Path of Hurricane Hugo and extent of damage in South Carolina. Source: The State, September 27, 1989. Vol. XXX, No. 1 65 of a Hugo-ravaged coast, but 1990 tourism revenues still may be $400 million to $1 billion below pre-Hugo forecasts. (2) Hugo destroyed more than three times as much timber as the Mt. St. Helens eruption: nearly 10 billion board feet of sawtimber and 27 million cords of pulpwood. Most of the damage, $1.04 billion worth, occurred on about 4.3 million acres in South Carolina (36% of the state's forested land), especially in a nine-county "blow down area" that lost 70-90% of its older, taller trees. Only 10-25% of the trees will be salvaged during the 6—12 month race against rot, insect infestation, fire, and moisture loss, and in the face of a market glut and depressed prices for logs. One serious repercussion of these fallen trees is a five-year heightened risk of serious wildfires. (3) Return to normality for the industry will entail a $100—200 million reforestation effort and a wait of 25—50 years for the growth...

Reduction of aircraft noise measured in several school, motel and residential rooms.

Field noise reduction measurements in 21 school, motel, and residential rooms during flyovers of jet and propeller aircraft are described. The measured noise reduction for most rooms was found to lie within or near the range of moderate noise-reduction values observed in previous measurements of houses and wood-frame air-base buildings. Sizeable differences in room noise reduction values were observed during successive aircraft flyovers. For jet-aircraft flyovers, the root-mean-square value of the standard deviations for noise-reduction measurements in school and motel rooms was 2.7 PNdB. For the four residential rooms studied, a root mean-square value for the standard deviations of 3.4 PNdB was observed.