Worried your taking too many medicines? A presentation on Wednesday may help you advocate for yourself and keep medications in check throughout the aging process.
The Rockport Council on Aging will host Donna Bartlett, author of âMedStrong,â at a special luncheon presentation Wednesday, Feb. 21, at noon.
The lunch and presentation topic âShed Your Medsâ is free thanks to sponsorship from Addison Gilbert Hospital and the Friends of the Rockport Council on Aging. The event will take place at the Rockport Community House, 58 Broadway, where seats are limited and advance reservations are required.
A board-certified geriatric pharmacist based in Worcester, Bartlett is engaged in community outreach programming specializing in older adult medication needs, affordability and prescription coverage. Bartlett has seen first-hand the effects of staying on medication longer than necessary and the impact of âover medication.â
Those in attendance can expect to come away with a better understanding of âde-prescribingâ from an expert who has been practicing, teaching and speaking on the subject for more than 15 years. Copies of Bartlettâs book âMedStrongâ will be available for purchase at the event.
Seats may be reserved by contacting the Rockport Council on Aging at 978-546-2573.
Career Day
The DECA chapter at Rockport High School is sponsoring Career Day on Wednesday, April 3, at the school, 24 Jerden’s Lane, from 8 to 10:30 a.m., and the chapter is seeking for volunteers for presentations. Rockport High alumni are encouraged to present. Anyone interested in participating should email DECA advisor Scott Larsen at slarsen@rpk12.org.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — The co-leader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced Wednesday to 16 years in prison for conspiring to abduct the Democrat and blow up a bridge to ease an escape.
Adam Fox returned to federal court Tuesday, four months after he and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of conspiracy charges at a second trial in Grand Rapids, Mich.
They were accused of being at the helm of a wild plot to whip up anti-government extremists just before the 2020 presidential election. Their arrest, as well as the capture of 12 others, was a stunning coda to a tumultuous year of racial strife and political turmoil in the U.S.
The government had pushed for a life sentence, saying Croft offered bomb-making skills and ideology while Fox was the “driving force urging their recruits to take up arms, kidnap the governor and kill those who stood in their way.”
But Judge Robert J. Jonker said that while Fox’s sentence was needed as a punishment and deterrent to future similar acts, the government’s request for life in prison is “not necessary to achieve those purposes.”
“It’s too much. Something less than life gets the job done in this case,” Jonker said, later adding that 16 years in prison “is still in my mind a very long time.”
In addition to the 16-year prison sentence, Fox will have to serve five years of supervised release.
Fox and Croft were convicted at a second trial in August, months after a different jury in Grand Rapids couldn’t reach a verdict but acquitted two other men. Croft, a trucker from Bear, Del., will be sentenced Wednesday.
Fox and Croft in 2020 met with like-minded provocateurs at a summit in Ohio, trained with weapons in Michigan and Wisconsin and took a ride to “put eyes” on Whitmer’s vacation home with night-vision goggles, according to evidence.
“People need to stop with the misplaced anger and place the anger where it should go, and that’s against our tyrannical … government,” Fox declared that spring, boiling over COVID-19 restrictions and perceived threats to gun ownership.
Whitmer wasn’t physically harmed. The FBI, which was secretly embedded in the group, broke things up by fall.
“They had no real plan for what to do with the governor if they actually seized her. Paradoxically, this made them more dangerous, not less,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said in a court filing ahead of the hearing.
In 2020, Fox, 39, was living in the basement of a Grand Rapids–area vacuum shop, the site of clandestine meetings with members of a paramilitary group and an undercover FBI agent. His lawyer said he was depressed, anxious and smoking marijuana daily.
Christopher Gibbons said a life sentence would be extreme.
Fox was regularly exposed to “inflammatory rhetoric” by FBI informants, especially Army veteran Dan Chappel, who “manipulated not only Fox’s sense of ‘patriotism’ but also his need for friendship, acceptance and male approval,” Gibbons said in a court filing.
He said prosecutors had exaggerated Fox’s capabilities, saying he was poor and lacked the capability to obtain a bomb and carry out the plan.
Two men who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin already is free after a 2½-year prison term, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the media after signing a state budget bill in July.
AP/Carlos Osorio/File
In state court, three men recently were given lengthy sentences for assisting Fox earlier in the summer of 2020. Five more are awaiting trial in Antrim County, where Whitmer’s vacation home is located.
When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer, a Democrat, blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”
