Speaker 1: It's nice eyes, Dan Ray.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you easy Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Madison. I wan to wish all
Speaker 1: of you a very happy moon Day. I like to
Speaker 1: put that vowel in between the oh with the N
Speaker 1: on Monday and basically it's Monday anyway. Welcome. We started
Speaker 1: another week. You know they had TGI Friday. Well this
Speaker 1: isn't Friday. This is Monday. Good evening, everybody. Welcome on,
Speaker 1: and my name's Dan Ray, im the host of the program.
Speaker 1: We are wrapping up, getting pretty close to wrapping up
Speaker 1: year eighteen here on Nightside. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being loyal listeners. If you happen to be finding us
Speaker 1: tonight for the first time, that's okay. Welcome aboard, better
Speaker 1: late than ever, simple as that. Rob Brooks is back
Speaker 1: in the control room. My name is Dan Ray of
Speaker 1: the aforementioned Nightside with Dan Ray, and we're going to
Speaker 1: give you four really interesting interviews this hour. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about subjects that are both in the news
Speaker 1: and out of the news, and we will start off
Speaker 1: with a big subject for those of us here in
Speaker 1: eastern Massachusetts. It is the Newton Weston Bridge replacement project.
Speaker 1: Weekend closures for bridge work, and that certainly I hope
Speaker 1: gets your attention. With us is Jonathan Gulliver. He is
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Highway Administrator. Jonathan has been
Speaker 1: with us before. Jonathan, welcome back. I think, how are
Speaker 1: you tonight?
Speaker 2: Great, Dan, thank you for having me on our pleasure.
Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with that location and you guys have
Speaker 1: been doing a lot of work out there, but it's
Speaker 1: going to be really a lot of work the weekend
Speaker 1: of May thirtieth to June second, not Memorial Day weekend,
Speaker 1: but the weekend after. So let's talk about it. You
Speaker 1: and I know where it is, but it is the
Speaker 1: it's really where the mass pipe kind of crosses one
Speaker 1: twenty eight intersect with one twenty eight. For anyone who
Speaker 1: is unfamiliar with the area we're going to talk about.
Speaker 3: Correct, that's exactly right. So this is the Turnpike one
Speaker 3: to twenty eight interchange. It's you know, this is an
Speaker 3: area that if you've been a regular driver, you've seen
Speaker 3: a lot of construction going on. This is one of
Speaker 3: our biggest active construction jobs. It's just under four hundred million,
Speaker 3: and we are doing a full replacement of all the
Speaker 3: structures in that interchange, they're all original, they've all needed
Speaker 3: a lot of work. This project has been going on
Speaker 3: for a couple of years now, but it's really if
Speaker 3: you've been again a regular commuter, you're seeing over the
Speaker 3: last six months or so a lot going on. All
Speaker 3: that prep work that we've been doing is resulting in
Speaker 3: some of those new bridges being built and some really
Speaker 3: new infrastructure coming out of the ground, and we're quickly
Speaker 3: approaching this stage again. First first part of it is
Speaker 3: right after the weekend after Memorial Day weekend, where we're
Speaker 3: going to be demolishing what's the train tunnel, which is
Speaker 3: the kind of the first structure to the west of
Speaker 3: the project where the Commuter rail cross at Commuter Rail
Speaker 3: and the Amtrak train cross across the turnpike from the
Speaker 3: north side to the south side. So we need to
Speaker 3: replace that train tunnel as part of this project, and
Speaker 3: it's going to be a pretty impactful couple of weekends
Speaker 3: that we have scheduled for this YEW.
Speaker 1: So the first closure is May thirtieth to June second
Speaker 1: again the weekend after Memorial Day. Memorial Day is early
Speaker 1: this year. And then the second one, which we can
Speaker 1: talk about later on in June. Is going to run
Speaker 1: from June twentieth to June twenty third, So just a
Speaker 1: couple of help people better understand this. The structures that
Speaker 1: you are changing, how long had they been serving the public?
Speaker 1: Are we talking about seventy years or so?
Speaker 3: Yeah, they are original to the turnpike and so yeah,
Speaker 3: that's somewhere around sixty five seventy years now old. And
Speaker 3: the you know, basically what we're doing here, this is
Speaker 3: this for any you've heard us talk about this kind
Speaker 3: of construction before. This is accelerated bridge construction. And what
Speaker 3: we will be doing exactly is we're going to be
Speaker 3: directing all the traffic onto one barrel of the turnpike.
Speaker 3: In this case, we're going to be pushing all the
Speaker 3: traffic over the westbound side. We're reducing it down to
Speaker 3: two lanes, one in each direction, and then we're going
Speaker 3: to be going in and demolishing the eastbound side of
Speaker 3: the turnpike for that portion of it over the train tunnel,
Speaker 3: completely demolishing it, getting that old concrete out of there,
Speaker 3: bringing in brand new, pre prefabricated concrete pieces, dropping them
Speaker 3: into place, and then doing a closure poor with some
Speaker 3: special kind of high strength concrete, letting that set, and
Speaker 3: then reopening the whole thing by Monday morning. So it's
Speaker 3: a very rapid construction technique. We've used this in a
Speaker 3: lot of different places over the last decade now, very
Speaker 3: very effective. A lot of time and planning goes into
Speaker 3: doing a movement like this, like one of these short
Speaker 3: term very intense pain for people who need to use
Speaker 3: that that portion of the roadway over the weekend, But
Speaker 3: the long term is that we get open very very quickly.
Speaker 3: Again that you have these really high intense impacts, and
Speaker 3: then it's back back in a full service by Monday morning.
Speaker 1: Just to put it again in perspective for people, how
Speaker 1: many personnel are going to be on the ground throughout
Speaker 1: that weekend, Mass Highway or or subcontractors. How big a
Speaker 1: project We know how big it is financially four hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars, but we have a couple of hundred people
Speaker 1: working there that weekend.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't quite be a couple hundred, but it's it's
Speaker 3: in over one hundred people, and that's between mass DOT
Speaker 3: staff and the contractors staff, and it's all different trades.
Speaker 2: You know you're gonna have you're gonna have.
Speaker 3: The demolition contractor coming in and out, so that it's
Speaker 3: basically at any given time you're gonna have somewhere between
Speaker 3: seventy five and one hundred people is the expectation. But
Speaker 3: there's a lot of different people, a bunch of different
Speaker 3: trades over that course of the weekend that are there.
Speaker 1: So people will cycle in, do their thing, and get out,
Speaker 1: so you could eventually at the end of the way,
Speaker 1: we can have a couple of one hundred people who may
Speaker 1: have participated in some form of fashion. That's what I
Speaker 1: was asking. So here's here's my question. I know the
Speaker 1: best advice will be from nine pm on May thirtieth
Speaker 1: to five am on June second, avoid this area at
Speaker 1: all cost, at all costs, which of course won't happen
Speaker 1: because a lot of people aren't going to hear us tonight.
Speaker 1: If you have to use that area of our western
Speaker 1: suburbs one twenty eight Master and Pike in some form
Speaker 1: of fashion, there are ways to get around that, okay,
Speaker 1: which are going to probably be slow. I get that.
Speaker 1: I mean I can get from one twenty eight to
Speaker 1: the Pike to buy and head into Boston by getting
Speaker 1: off at Route sixteen going past Newton Wellesley Hospital drop
Speaker 1: down to the pike. You know, halfway between one twenty
Speaker 1: eight and Newton Corner there were workarounds. There are ways
Speaker 1: to work around, and obviously if you have ways, hopefully
Speaker 1: this is going to be up on ways's boards for everyone.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if you do have to go there, let's
Speaker 1: assume some way someone has to go there. How big
Speaker 1: a delay are they looking at realistically?
Speaker 3: So these are never easy to predict. The so even
Speaker 3: on weekends, the turnpike is one of our busiest roads.
Speaker 3: During weekdays, it's one hundred thousand vehicles a day. During
Speaker 3: weekends it drops off, but you're still talking about seventy
Speaker 3: seventy five thousand vehicles, So it gets very, very heavily traveled.
Speaker 2: And you're exactly right.
Speaker 3: What we're asking people is, if you don't need to
Speaker 3: be in that area, find another alternate route.
Speaker 2: Don't don't be around there.
Speaker 3: We don't If you have just a discretionary trip to
Speaker 3: be out and about, don't go check out the construction.
Speaker 3: Watch for it on the news. If you have to
Speaker 3: go through, there's a couple of different ways. If you're
Speaker 3: going to be in traffic, it's it could get. If
Speaker 3: that whole seventy five thousand people that usually travel that
Speaker 3: roadway on the weekend come, you could be in for
Speaker 3: two or three hour delay. If they don't, it gets
Speaker 3: a lot more manageable. It gets back to delayed, but
Speaker 3: not not as far as not as.
Speaker 1: Long a word to the why should be sufficient. Stay
Speaker 1: away from media, stay.
Speaker 2: Away if you can. There's going now.
Speaker 3: The train is also going to be impacted, but there
Speaker 3: are shuttle buses in places. They have alternative routes that
Speaker 3: they're using, so we'll be running full service, but it
Speaker 3: will be on buses, not on the train. That's a
Speaker 3: you know, so if you have to take public transportation,
Speaker 3: you'll be available to you. It'll be slower than usual.
Speaker 3: We're asking you to please leave an extra you know,
Speaker 3: give yourself a lot of extra time to get around.
Speaker 1: Though, Jonathan, I appreciate you taking the time. And if
Speaker 1: if if you want to come back next week, some
Speaker 1: night late next week, I don't know even if you
Speaker 1: want to come back the thirty first, or I should
Speaker 1: know it's not the thirty first, to be like the
Speaker 1: twenty ninth or whatever. It would be more than happy
Speaker 1: to have to come back because what will happen, is
Speaker 1: people will will they'll listen to us tonight and they'll
Speaker 1: say wrong with us. I'm going to avoid that at
Speaker 1: all costs. I think they said the fourth of July. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. So if you want to make a return
Speaker 1: appearance on this one, Jonathan, I think it's big enough.
Speaker 1: I think it's important enough. We'd love to have you back, Okay,
Speaker 1: just like i'd.
Speaker 3: Be happy to and and Dan. One of these days
Speaker 3: I'm going to come on with great traffic news. Today
Speaker 3: is not that day, avelot That's.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's okay. Most days it is great traffic news
Speaker 1: because people most days, if they're smart, they kind of
Speaker 1: work around some of the bottlenecks. But that's okay, Jonathan Gulliver,
Speaker 1: you are a great representative of mass Dot Highway administration.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you do a great job. You're great communicator.
Speaker 1: Thank you, my friend. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dan, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Have a good night, you bet you. All right, we
Speaker 1: get back. We're going to talk about President Biden's diagnosis
Speaker 1: of prostate cancer. We're going to talk with a doctor
Speaker 1: chief of urology at the Tofts Medical Center. Coming back
Speaker 1: on night Side and we'll kind of lay it out
Speaker 1: there and it's it's something that everybody should be thinking
Speaker 1: about for sure.
Speaker 2: It's Night Side with Dan Ray, Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 1: Well, I think by now most of us have heard
Speaker 1: the very sad news that former President Joe Biden has
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. We
Speaker 1: of course have a lot of questions in our minds,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure that all of you have questions in
Speaker 1: your minds what this all means. And joining us now
Speaker 1: is doctor j Aswara. He is the chair of the
Speaker 1: urology department at Toughts Medical Center. Doctor y Suarre, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining.
Speaker 4: Us hey day, Thanks so much for having me so.
Speaker 1: Prostate cancer is not a real form of cancer. One
Speaker 1: in eight Americans if the American men, if they live
Speaker 1: long enough, will be diagnosed. Are you surprised at the
Speaker 1: level of this prostate cancer? I mean, you would assume
Speaker 1: that President Biden would have had the best medical care
Speaker 1: and treatment in the world at the White House or
Speaker 1: you know, at whatever medical facility he wanted to go to.
Speaker 1: My understanding is that on what they call the gleas
Speaker 1: and scale from zero to ten, he is a nine,
Speaker 1: which means it's a highly aggressive and also a form
Speaker 1: of prostate cancer that already has probably metastasized.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Dan. You know, it puts them
Speaker 4: in kind of the minority of patients who are diagnosed
Speaker 4: with prostaate cancer. So roughly five to seven or eight
Speaker 4: percent of men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer will
Speaker 4: have metastases at the time of presentation. So you know,
Speaker 4: like you said, it's uncommon, and you know, his prostay
Speaker 4: cancer was sort of diagnosed the most common way by
Speaker 4: a physical exam, which includes a rectal exam. So when
Speaker 4: men are screened for prostate cancer, it typically involves two things,
Speaker 4: getting a blood test, a PSA test, and doing a
Speaker 4: rectal exam to feel for any nodules. And it sounds
Speaker 4: from the news reports as though this or this was
Speaker 4: picked up by by rectal exam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I picked that up. Here's my question. Wouldn't they
Speaker 1: done a PSA on him a year ago? He had
Speaker 1: apparently his last physical a year what's a little over
Speaker 1: a year ago in February of twenty twenty four. P
Speaker 1: SA are part of every physical that I've ever been
Speaker 1: subjected to.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, this is what's tricky about the p
Speaker 4: s A test is that there's no there's no hard
Speaker 4: and fast cut off, and so it's hard to know
Speaker 4: exactly what PSA levels he was dealing with frior to
Speaker 4: this diagnosis, but it can it can sort of lead
Speaker 4: people astray. Some people will have really aggressive forms of
Speaker 4: prosat cancer and have relatively low PSAs, And.
Speaker 1: So what is real important? Yeah, doctor, what's a relatively
Speaker 1: low PSA? My understanding from the medical from the my
Speaker 1: doctor is that they want to make sure it's under five.
Speaker 1: And you know, if all of a sudden it jumps
Speaker 1: up to ten or twelve, alarm bells go off.
Speaker 4: Oh, you're absolutely right, And I think, what's you know,
Speaker 4: what most people use is a PSA cut.
Speaker 2: Off of four.
Speaker 4: In my practice, I use an age a just to
Speaker 4: cut off, and so for men less than fifty, I
Speaker 4: use it. I like a PSA two and a half
Speaker 4: or less men fifty to sixty, I like to see
Speaker 4: it three and a half or less sixty one to seventy.
Speaker 4: I like to see it four and a half and
Speaker 4: over seventy, I like to see it less than six
Speaker 4: and a half. So I use sort of an age
Speaker 4: adjust to cut off, but they're kind of varying thresholds
Speaker 4: that people use. But you point to an important an
Speaker 4: important fact about the PSA test is that it doesn't
Speaker 4: really tell us whether you have prostate cancer or not.
Speaker 4: It just helps us to figure out whom we should
Speaker 4: screen more closely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So coming back to this, I mean, we've seen
Speaker 1: the pictures that the president former president released tonight. Other
Speaker 1: than the PSA tests, which again a part of a
Speaker 1: blood test. If I'm am, I correct.
Speaker 4: On that, that's absolutely correct.
Speaker 1: Right, or a digital examination for someone his age. I've
Speaker 1: heard that a lot of times they stop testing people
Speaker 1: over the age of eighty because the theory is that
Speaker 1: if you get to eighty and you're in pretty good health,
Speaker 1: and it appeared he was physically in pretty good health,
Speaker 1: that many there's a point of view in the medical
Speaker 1: community that, well, there'll be another cause of death, that
Speaker 1: you won't die from prostate cancer. But now I'm thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, maybe that's just a bad philosophy. Is that
Speaker 1: something that now, in this particular case, eighty two year
Speaker 1: old guy who all of a sudden goes from apparently
Speaker 1: no one had noticed anything to a nine on the
Speaker 1: gleas and scale. Is that is this going to make
Speaker 1: us change, men change and doctors change how they how
Speaker 1: they screen.
Speaker 4: You know, it's a great question, and I think what
Speaker 4: many of us do is we sort of look at
Speaker 4: the patient in front of us, and it's kind of
Speaker 4: a shared decision between the patient and the doctor. And
Speaker 4: I'd say, you know, from my standpoint, if if I
Speaker 4: suspect that a patient's going to live longer than ten years,
Speaker 4: then I think it's very reasonable to continue to screen
Speaker 4: for prostate cancer regardless of how old he is. So
Speaker 4: a gentleman who's fit and you know, in his eighties,
Speaker 4: I would continue to screen. Similarly, you know, if you
Speaker 4: have patients who are unwell, you know, have a lot
Speaker 4: of other illnesses, but they're you know, seventy years, so
Speaker 4: I might counsel them that screening for prostate cancer may
Speaker 4: not make a lot of sense. They might succumb to
Speaker 4: other illnesses.
Speaker 1: Tell you, people don't realize the decision that doctors, that
Speaker 1: doctors are faced with. Do you think that this is
Speaker 1: going to change the protocol that most doctors use. Is
Speaker 1: this one of those you know, you know instances, those
Speaker 1: medical instances that is going to be almost an earthquake
Speaker 1: like impact across the country. I know that, you know,
Speaker 1: the digital exam is not something that most men look
Speaker 1: forward to. It's it's not a fun procedure. It's quick,
Speaker 1: but it's not a fun procedure. But now I think
Speaker 1: a lot of men are going to probably say, okay, doc,
Speaker 1: do your thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I kind of agree with you. So I think
Speaker 4: I think patients are going to be a lot more
Speaker 4: curious about prostate cancer, talking to their primary care of
Speaker 4: doctors about prostate cancer, seeing other specialists to talk about it.
Speaker 4: And I think that, you know, we we should be
Speaker 4: employing these techniques that we've known are effective for a
Speaker 4: long time, including doing a digital rectal exam, including checking
Speaker 4: the p s A, and some of that stuff has
Speaker 4: fallen by the wayside in some realms of the medical
Speaker 4: community for urologists and medical oncologists and radiational oncologists. We
Speaker 4: still believe firmly that these are really useful tools for us,
Speaker 4: and so I completely agree. I'm you know, we're already
Speaker 4: getting an increasing number of calls for for appointments for
Speaker 4: prostate cancer patient to be screened for prostate.
Speaker 2: Cancer because of this news.
Speaker 4: So I do think this could this could change things.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's unfortunate that it took this event
Speaker 4: to UH to trigger this response, but I'm glad that
Speaker 4: people are starting to pay attention to this because this
Speaker 4: is the number two cancer killer among men in the US.
Speaker 1: Doctor one last question, is there any other sign that
Speaker 1: men should be aware of? You know, you know UH,
Speaker 1: in terms of urination, you've got to go more often
Speaker 1: than you thought that and you have a change in that.
Speaker 1: Is there any other sign that could be indicative of
Speaker 1: a prostate problem, an early warning sign, if you will.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is a really critical point, Dan. I'm glad
Speaker 4: you brought it up, because a lot of guys think that,
Speaker 4: you know what, my stream's flowing down. I don't feel
Speaker 4: like I'm emptying as well. You know, is it possible
Speaker 4: to have prostate cancer? And the truth is, prostate cancer
Speaker 4: is almost always asymptomatic. People don't typically have symptoms from
Speaker 4: proday cancer until it's widely spread, which is pretty uncommon.
Speaker 4: And so when people start to have urinary symptoms, that's
Speaker 4: almost always due to normal, non cancerous growth of their prostate.
Speaker 4: That doesn't mean that they shouldn't come in and get checked.
Speaker 4: We absolutely should be screening those folks. But just to
Speaker 4: allay some fears out there that if you're having difficulty
Speaker 4: with yourination that's almost always due to normal prosta prostate
Speaker 4: growth and not prostate cancer.
Speaker 1: Well that's health factor. I'm sure there's some people who
Speaker 1: you know, you know, went to the head Alfanirago listening
Speaker 1: to us and are saying thank you. Okay, look, I
Speaker 1: really appreciate uh, you're you're great. You must be a
Speaker 1: great doctor because you've explained it so well. I just
Speaker 1: want to say thank you very much, doctor Jay as
Speaker 1: the Cheap, the chair of urology at Toughts Medical Center.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're a great doctor, but you're a great communicator.
Speaker 1: I just on a very sensitive subject. You did a
Speaker 1: fabulous job tonight.
Speaker 4: Thanks doctors, Well, I really appreciate appreciate it. Dan, thanks
Speaker 4: so much for the opportunity and uh, and have a
Speaker 4: great night.
Speaker 1: Thank you and we'll get you back at some point too.
Speaker 1: This is when we should do periodically because.
Speaker 4: You know, happy to be with you any time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when the story fades from the headlines, people won't
Speaker 1: be thinking about this, and that's when when we got
Speaker 1: to keep it in the forefront of some people's minds.
Speaker 1: We'll talk again. Have a great, great early summer and
Speaker 1: enjoy the weekend and the rest of the week is
Speaker 1: supposed to be a little chilly, but enjoy whatever. This
Speaker 1: is what we call spring in New England. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thanks so much. All right, thank you very much. As
Speaker 1: doctor Vesuara, thank you very very much. When we get back,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about black bear hunting. Now, I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you I'm a big Second Amendment KaiA, and
Speaker 1: I believe in the right of bears to have arms.
Speaker 1: Let's make this even this sounds tough of the bears.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk with Dave Wattles, the black bear and
Speaker 1: fur bearer biologist at the Massachusett Division of Fisheries and Wildlife.
Speaker 1: The good news for the bears is that their population
Speaker 1: is growing, is growing better than the population here in America.
Speaker 1: But the bad news is that they're gonna cull the
Speaker 1: call the cull the bears a little bit. We'll get
Speaker 1: to all of that with Dave Wattles right after the break.
Speaker 2: It's nice Boston's News Radio.
Speaker 1: Well, Massachusetts has a problem. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: black bears here in Massachusetts and they're coming east with
Speaker 1: us as Dave wattles Black Bear and for a Bear,
Speaker 1: A biologist at Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, Dave Wattles,
Speaker 1: I'm sure this is necessary, but I feel sympathy for
Speaker 1: the bears here. I mean, they're sitting ducks as it were.
Speaker 1: How are you tonight? Good?
Speaker 2: How are you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. As I said, I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in the rights of bears to have arms, but only
Speaker 1: choking when I say that, how many of these beers
Speaker 1: are going to bite the dust. It doesn't begin this
Speaker 1: year or next year.
Speaker 2: So we currently have a bear hunting season in Massachusetts,
Speaker 2: and what this would be doing would be to increase
Speaker 2: the length of the season. We don't anticipate that it
Speaker 2: would happen until next year. It's the proposed regulation has
Speaker 2: been approved by the Fisheries and Wildlife Board and they
Speaker 2: voted to move it forward for promulgation. But that can
Speaker 2: take some amount of time, so probably the earliest it
Speaker 2: would go into effect would be the fall of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious. I'm not a hunter, to be really
Speaker 1: honest with you, how tough is it to hunt black
Speaker 1: bear in Massachusett I guess we're about five thousand of them,
Speaker 1: is the figure that I think is quoted.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's correct, and it's pretty hard. So we sell
Speaker 2: twelve thousand, twelve thousand, five hundred bear black bear permits
Speaker 2: hunting permits. Anyone who wants to hunt a bear has
Speaker 2: to purchase a bear permit. But we've only been taking
Speaker 2: around two hundred and fifty to two hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: five bears per year, so we don't take an enormous
Speaker 2: amount of bears from our population. And the reason that
Speaker 2: this is necessary, this regulatory change, the numbers that we're
Speaker 2: taking aren't sufficient to stabilize the growth of our population.
Speaker 2: Our bear population is growing rapidly. It's expanding into eastern Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: So all these bears that we've seen over the past
Speaker 2: couple of years that are wandering through some portions of
Speaker 2: southeast northeast Massachusetts inside four ninety five are bears that
Speaker 2: are dispersing out of our established range, and that's the
Speaker 2: precursor to bears becoming fully established in the four ninety
Speaker 2: five quarter, which is what we're.
Speaker 1: I think I read some materials today from you folks.
Speaker 1: Even though the bears are going to suffer the consequences.
Speaker 1: So some bears are going to suffer the consequences. It's
Speaker 1: really the fault of people here in Massachusetts who are
Speaker 1: leaving food out unattended, who are leaving you know, bird
Speaker 1: seeds out at night. Correct, I mean, we're we're bringing
Speaker 1: we're bringing it on ourselves onto the bears.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so it's kind of two things. It's
Speaker 2: so that the people putting out bird feeders, in providing
Speaker 2: food to bears around their homes is what drives the
Speaker 2: conflict with bears. But even you know, if we could
Speaker 2: really clean up our acts and get people to remove
Speaker 2: their bird feeders, get them to use electric fencing to
Speaker 2: protect their livestock, we'd still have conflict with bears. So
Speaker 2: there is a need to control the growth of the population.
Speaker 2: We've seen. An other place is in the country where
Speaker 2: bears have become established in highly developed areas like Connecticut,
Speaker 2: New Jersey, Florida, where there's restrictions on hunting, and they
Speaker 2: see very serious levels of conflict, bears breaking into homes
Speaker 2: to try to find food, people being mauled by bears,
Speaker 2: and these are things that we aren't experiencing now, and
Speaker 2: we want to try to prevent from happening in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't even mention the problem in Chicago with
Speaker 1: the bears.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure we can help with that any done too,
Speaker 2: they've been it's been pretty bad for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I got it. Okay, you got a
Speaker 1: sense of humor. I like that. Look, here's my question.
Speaker 1: I know people who have hunted deer, but I don't
Speaker 1: know I've ever known a bear hunter. I mean deer.
Speaker 1: You sit quietly and the deer will eventually stumble by
Speaker 1: and take your shot. How do they hunt bear? Are
Speaker 1: they a difficult praise? Does that complicate the the situation
Speaker 1: you're facing because of the difficulty of actually hunting that
Speaker 1: particular animal? Are they pretty cagy?
Speaker 2: It's in reality, it's the same type of hunting someone
Speaker 2: goes out in the woods. You're basically waiting for that
Speaker 2: animal to come by, in this case a bear. But
Speaker 2: you're also dealing with very different population levels for deer
Speaker 2: and bear. So deer exists on the landscape at much
Speaker 2: much higher densities, and so the chances of a deer
Speaker 2: coming by happen much more often than bears. So you
Speaker 2: know your success rate for deer hunters is much higher
Speaker 2: than it is for bear hunters. Part of this regulatory
Speaker 2: proposal is so that we have bear hunting at times
Speaker 2: where we have deer hunters out in the woods, because
Speaker 2: that's a time when we have lots of hunters and
Speaker 2: we need to take advantage of those deer hunters to
Speaker 2: take some bear off the landscape as well.
Speaker 1: And is it a different type of AMMO that will
Speaker 1: take down a bear than a deer? I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: has to be a bigger You want to make sure
Speaker 1: that the beer is taken care of if you just
Speaker 1: don't want to, as they say, don't wove the bear right.
Speaker 2: No, there are restrictions as to what people are allowed
Speaker 2: to utilize in our current hunting season, and those would
Speaker 2: be extended to the same hunting season. Yes, to exactly that,
Speaker 2: to make sure that you know, these animals that are
Speaker 2: being taken are being done with something that actually has
Speaker 2: the power to kill them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, you're not gonna be shooting a bear
Speaker 1: with the.
Speaker 2: Twenty two I assume exactly.
Speaker 1: I understand. And is there any other state in America
Speaker 1: who has dealt with a similar problem and dealt with
Speaker 1: it effectively? Are you following a pattern or a practice
Speaker 1: that's been successful somewhere else, or is this really the
Speaker 1: first time in Massachusetts?
Speaker 2: Go ahead, go ahead, No, you know, our bear hunting seasons,
Speaker 2: you know, you start off by saying there's a problem.
Speaker 2: Growth in the recovery of our bear population was something
Speaker 2: that we actually planned. Hunting seasons were set very restrictively
Speaker 2: to allow for the growth and recovery of our population
Speaker 2: because our bear population had been driven back to just
Speaker 2: a tiny number of bears in the northern Berkshires, and
Speaker 2: so we allowed that population to grow and slowly hunting
Speaker 2: seasons were increased over time as the population grew. We've
Speaker 2: just now reached a point where, you know, the hunting
Speaker 2: isn't enough to stabilize the population, and that's what we're
Speaker 2: trying to achieve. The hunting season that we would be
Speaker 2: implementing would be similar in length to what there is
Speaker 2: in Vermont, New Hampshire in other states to in order
Speaker 2: to try to achieve this.
Speaker 1: All right, well, Dave, very much appreciate you taking the
Speaker 1: time to talk with us tonight. Again. I got to
Speaker 1: tell you I'm still rooting for the bears because it
Speaker 1: just seems so unfair, But anyway, thanks very much. Maybe
Speaker 1: some night, if you're interested, we might come on and
Speaker 1: do an hour and talk to some of my listeners
Speaker 1: and maybe some hunters about this. If you'd be willing
Speaker 1: to do that, I think it might be instructive if
Speaker 1: we could get some phone callers. We have to do that,
Speaker 1: like the nine of the ten o'clock hour. If you
Speaker 1: if you might be gained for that, as it would,
Speaker 1: as it would, we could we could spread the word
Speaker 1: a second time.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, we can see if we said that.
Speaker 1: All right, thanks very much. Dave Wattles, black Bear and
Speaker 1: fur Bear are biologists at the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries
Speaker 1: and Wildlife. Dave Wattles, thank you very much. When we
Speaker 1: get back here, we're going to talk about a very
Speaker 1: interesting dilemma that a lot of people have faced. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk with a guest. Her name is
Speaker 1: Guest any guest. She's an author, attorney and a mental
Speaker 1: health therapist about renovating her family homestead, if you will,
Speaker 1: her parents' home, to recharge her own life. And if
Speaker 1: this didn't break the bank, we'll be talking with eighty
Speaker 1: guests on the other side of the break. By the way,
Speaker 1: remind you the new and improved iHeart app is available.
Speaker 1: Just go to your app store, pull down the iHeart app.
Speaker 1: You can make WBZ your first preset, which would be
Speaker 1: a great idea because that way will only be a
Speaker 1: figuretip away from you wherever you are in this great
Speaker 1: wide world of ours, because you can hear US three
Speaker 1: sixty five twenty four seven anywhere in the world on
Speaker 1: the iHeart app, so we encourage you to do that.
Speaker 1: My name's Dan Ray. This is Nightside. We'll be right
Speaker 1: back with my next guest, aptly named any Guest, an author,
Speaker 1: an attorney, and mental health therapist.
Speaker 2: You're on Night Side with Dan Ray. I'm WBZ, Boston's
Speaker 2: news Radio.
Speaker 1: My next guest is aptly named Your name is any Guest.
Speaker 1: She's an author, an attorney, and a mental health therapist,
Speaker 1: and she has written a book, Design for Your Mind,
Speaker 1: How a family caregiver and mental health therapist renovated her
Speaker 1: home to recharge her life and didn't break the bank.
Speaker 2: Annie.
Speaker 1: I read a lot of your book today. I normally
Speaker 1: don't have an opportunity to, but I did, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of an amazing book. And I just want to
Speaker 1: get to the to the core of it here, because
Speaker 1: we only have about nine minutes for each of these segments.
Speaker 1: I wish I had more time. You grew up in
Speaker 1: a home, and then we're living next to your parents
Speaker 1: as they got on in years. Is that correct?
Speaker 2: Yes? Okay, that's correct.
Speaker 1: And then, as often happens in every family, sadly, mom
Speaker 1: and dad aged and the home in which they lived
Speaker 1: pretty much stayed the same. And then eventually, despite all
Speaker 1: of the efforts of you and your siblings to help
Speaker 1: them transition here, they both passed and the home I'm
Speaker 1: calling it the family homestead. Is that a fear characterization?
Speaker 5: Well, the family, the entire family had never lived in
Speaker 5: this home. My parents moved into it close to their retirement.
Speaker 1: Okay, so your parents home, and were you living next
Speaker 1: door in order to be of assistance to them or
Speaker 1: were it just a happy coincidence that they found the
Speaker 1: home next to you. I mean, there must have been
Speaker 1: something that put you in that in that proximity, right.
Speaker 5: It's the former. I moved there with the prospect of
Speaker 5: being there in their old age.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now they leave the home to you. And
Speaker 1: this is what I want to hear from you, because
Speaker 1: you know the story, and my audience doesn't it. I
Speaker 1: certainly don't. You were able to save part of it,
Speaker 1: to renovate part of it, and you did it, you know, tastefully.
Speaker 1: And that's the book designed for your mind, how a
Speaker 1: family caregiver and mental health therapist renovated her home to
Speaker 1: recharge your life. So this then became your home. Tell
Speaker 1: us you know a little bit of the approach, of
Speaker 1: the different approach that you had. Obviously, you move in
Speaker 1: and then there must have been a lot of memories there.
Speaker 1: Your parents, their entire lives probably were tied up in
Speaker 1: that home.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, and much of our lives. But Dan, before
Speaker 5: I could even move into the home, my sister and
Speaker 5: I had to clean it out of these years of
Speaker 5: accumulated things that my parents, of course couldn't purge as
Speaker 5: they got older because they were losing their physical ability
Speaker 5: to do that. Neither of them was a hoarder, so
Speaker 5: it took quite a while before we were able to
Speaker 5: wade through all those things and get the auctioneer out
Speaker 5: and after the appraisal and distribute these things among the siblings.
Speaker 1: So you said, I just want to make sure I
Speaker 1: heard you right. Andy, You said, neither were a hoarder.
Speaker 1: But obviously they had accumulated, and all of us do.
Speaker 1: We accumulate things and we don't think of what's going
Speaker 1: to happen to those things when we pass on. And
Speaker 1: my wife is always reminding me of that. To be
Speaker 1: honest with you, I'm not going to let her see
Speaker 1: this book. But go ahead, tell us what. I'm not
Speaker 1: a holder either, but I'm a sentimental sentimentalist. There are
Speaker 1: things that you hold on to well you know, okay,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: And particularly if you've loved to collect things, it see
Speaker 5: a lot of things as material that you can use
Speaker 5: for writing, you do tend to accumulated. But hoarding is
Speaker 5: a whole different thinking.
Speaker 1: Oh oh absolutely, there are people who you know, you
Speaker 1: can't get in the house because there's newspapers piled everywhere
Speaker 1: in old television sets. I get that, Oh trust me. Hey,
Speaker 1: the other day I took upart an old grill myself
Speaker 1: physically and took it to the dump. Oh so you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm once it's done, it's done, so so so
Speaker 1: tell us about. We only got about three or four
Speaker 1: minutes left here, so I want to just give the
Speaker 1: microphone to you. And tell us that's what people will
Speaker 1: learn from your book. This would be the best way
Speaker 1: to end the interview.
Speaker 5: Yes, I did not approach this redesign with the object
Speaker 5: of tearing down walls or eradicating traces of my parents
Speaker 5: or building a new house, which actually made the process
Speaker 5: far more economical.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 5: I wanted to address what the house was and figure
Speaker 5: out what it needed from me. That meant that I
Speaker 5: would walk into a room and see some immutable characteristics,
Speaker 5: say the black marble shower in the guest bathroom, and
Speaker 5: rather than try to play against it, I would enhance
Speaker 5: that by turning it into using European features like a
Speaker 5: black and white floor with a classic pattern. Very smart,
Speaker 5: but it also was saved me a lot of money. Also,
Speaker 5: when when I was making the big expenses that I
Speaker 5: couldn't avoid, I would choose classic patterns or classic designs
Speaker 5: that I wouldn't grow tired of in a few years.
Speaker 5: And if I wanted to go bold and quirky, I
Speaker 5: would do it with something that it was less expensive,
Speaker 5: that I could move around as my tastes evolved, like
Speaker 5: accent pillows.
Speaker 1: So how long have you lived by?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: You in this home that you inherited. So it's been
Speaker 1: it's been done. It it's wasn't done just yesterday.
Speaker 5: No, it took about two years to pull this off, Okay,
Speaker 5: and and it'll never be completely finished, but that's part
Speaker 5: of the fun of it.
Speaker 1: Good for you. And then I got to ask you
Speaker 1: this the home that you lived in next door as
Speaker 1: has another family member moved in or have you sold
Speaker 1: that or are you keeping that a renting? And I'm
Speaker 1: just kind of curious.
Speaker 5: Well, because I'm looking towards my prospects of aging in
Speaker 5: place and my old age whenever that comes, I would
Speaker 5: like to have that house and could shape some that
Speaker 5: somebody could move in and help care for the property,
Speaker 5: or maybe even me. But having seen my parents go
Speaker 5: through this process and having seen what it takes to
Speaker 5: clean after house, Yeah, I really am always looking towards
Speaker 5: the prospects of extending my healthy life and what I
Speaker 5: can do to spare the person who comes after me
Speaker 5: the burden of some of some of these transitional burdens.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just say this, that's a great gift
Speaker 1: that you have left for your family. The book is
Speaker 1: designed for your mind how a family caregiver and mental
Speaker 1: health therapist, renovated her home to recharge your life and
Speaker 1: didn't break the bank. My guest, any guest, Annie have
Speaker 1: been a great guest. I thank you very much for
Speaker 1: your time. She's an author and attorney and mental health expert.
Speaker 1: I assume this book is available Amazon all sorts of different.
Speaker 5: Places, Amazon, barnsondoplebookshop dot org, and my website and Dan,
Speaker 5: thank you for having me and thank you for reading
Speaker 5: the book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my pleasure was it was fun. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go back and finish it, but I'm not going to
Speaker 1: tell my wife. Thanks Annie, have a great nine what's
Speaker 1: your website any guest dot com? Or what's the website.
Speaker 5: Annie guest Designed for your mind dot com?
Speaker 1: Perfect? Any guest design for your mind dot com? Thank
Speaker 1: you so much. We'll talk again. Bye bye, have a
Speaker 1: great Thank you. Okay, nine o'clock awaits or we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a piece of legislation that I think
Speaker 1: the Massachusetts legislature should adopt. It's called the Halo Act.
Speaker 1: I will explain coming up on nightside