GBH Daily: Tartan Army rides again

☂️A rainy and chilly Friday the 13th, with highs in the 40s. Sunset is at 4:23 p.m.

What are you up to this weekend? Hundreds of members of the Tartan Army, the Scottish soccer fans who made Boston a home base during the World Cup last summer, have exciting international football plans: seeing the New England Patriots play the Detroit Lions in Munich, Germany. 

“Most of us have never been to an NFL game before,” Tartan Army organizer Mike Teevan told GBH’s Jeremy Siegel. “I’ve never really watched an NFL game, if I’m being honest. But we’re excited.” They will, “of course,” be rooting for the Patriots, he said.

The Patriots organization invited the Tartan Army to the game as the team tries to get more Europeans to follow American football.

“On the whole, there’s not a whole amount of interest in the NFL [among the Tartan Army],” Teevan said. “But any opportunity to come out and have a beer is welcome.” You can read more about their plans here.

Four Things to Know

1. Kraft-backed Sutton data center: Residents and neighbors of Sutton who came to this week’s town Select Board meeting had strong words about a proposed $16 billion data center. “I don’t want to see this town sell its soul and get stuck as kind of the dumping ground of the AI industry,” Sutton resident Michael Galli said. The Kraft Group, which also owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, is behind the data center campus plans. They cannot build without getting local approval from the town.

The town of Sutton said residents may have lower tax bills in return for approving the data center. “I would be more than happy to continue paying my taxes in the community where I chose to invest and raise my family, so I can see the stars at night,” said Sheila Brady-Savard, a Millbury resident who lives less than half a mile from the proposed campus.

2. Boston City Council challenge brewing: Rachel Pearson, a nonprofit leader and substitute teacher, announced she will run against Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn in the fall of 2027 for the seat representing South Boston, Chinatown and parts of the South End and Dorchester.

“I’m not seeing the opportunity for all of our residents to come to the table and to be heard and included,” Pearson said. “I’m not seeing that in conversations with other city officials nor the administration. And I was raised that sometimes you have to work with people you don’t get along with. And that is where the good work happens.” Flynn did not respond to a request for comment.

3. Walpole native wins Cy Young Award: Congratulations to Cam Schlittler, one of two Major League Baseball players unanimously voted Cy Young Award winners this week. Schlittler grew up a Red Sox fan in Walpole, played baseball at Northeastern University and now plays for a pinstriped MLB team in a big city four hours southwest of Boston. You know which team — don’t make us say it.

“Realistically, when you come into your first full season of the year, do you think you’re going to do that? Maybe not,” Schlittler said. “But you also have the confidence that you can do that. I definitely had conversations with guys in spring training, and that’s kind of a minor goal you put for yourself. I’m just glad to live up to the expectations.”

4. Swimming upstream: An ocean research vessel called the Neil Armstrong has made its way from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to the shores of Duluth, Minnesota. It traveled up to Canada through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, through the St. Lawrence River, then on into the Great Lakes and a collection of locks.

The ship is carrying detector arrays, 30-foot tall frames that researchers hope can help scientists at the University of Minnesota Duluth detect subatomic particles called neutrinos in Lake Superior. Neutrinos are hard to detect because they don’t carry an electrical charge.

Averted strike at Brigham and Women’s highlights ongoing tension around travel nurses

One of the points of contention in contract negotiation between management at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the union representing its 4,000 nurses — currently paused as the nurses review and vote on a contract proposal — was the use of temporary travel nurses.

First, a quick primer on what travel nurses are: When hospital officials don’t have enough nurses to staff a shift, they can call on agencies that send travel nurses to work for them temporarily. The Massachusetts Nurses Association, the union representing Brigham nurses, says it wants to see the hospital hire more permanent staff nurses instead of relying on travel nurses.

“Sometimes, on paper, it may be less expensive to have a travel nurse come in instead of a full-time nurse because there are other costs embedded in the full-time nurses,” Diana Bowser, a health economist and professor of nursing at Boston College, told GBH’s Diane Adame.

Hospitals had to rely on travel nurses more at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, when their staff nurses were stretched too thin. A spokesperson for Mass General Brigham said the hospital system has since reduced its use of them, from 147 in the last quarter of fiscal year 2023 to 67 a few weeks ago.

Brigham oncology nurse Michelle Hassler said she isn’t always happy with the work she sees from travel nurses.

“They show up, and they are not necessarily trained correctly for the area they go into, or trained the same way that we are … because that hospital has many areas with very specialized care that people come all over the world for,” she said. “They do not take care of our patients the way that we do, and sometimes the lack of their care has definitely led to detrimental circumstances.”

The new contract nurses are voting on requires the hospital to track and report the number of travel nurses working, and to hire a group of staff nurses whose job is to fill in when a department is short-staffed.

You can read Adame’s full story for a deeper look here. 

Dig deeper: 

-Brigham and Women’s nurses reach tentative agreement with hospital, averting strike

-Seven days of chaos in the ER: How this country’s healthcare system is unraveling

-A promising new medicine against heart disease fails unexpectedly