Everyday, we rise, we breathe in air for our brain and muscle function, air that enables each and every tissue of our body to thrive, yet we tolerate people and corporations among us who flood the air with hazardous substances. I fully accept the fact that I am growing old, but I will not go down without putting every ounce of my being into the fight for our right to clean air. Breathing is something we all take for granted, just as the quality of the air is most of the time, but facts do not support our complacency. Many household products contain hazardous substances and some of the most pervasive are coming directly out of our packaging, or released when products are used according to the labeled instructions.
I must admit that I am growing old, because sometimes I mall walk, rather than face the elements, especially during the winter. This is where I became aware of some of the hazardous conditions which we let slide, for the sake of commercial interests. When the doors open to Hobby Lobby, an overtly Christian store which has effectively put several locally owned craft stores out of business, We avoid the area near the entrance because fugitive emissions are offensive and highly suspect. These same people give their employees Sundays off, which I respect, but come Monday morning, when they open the doors, the stench pours out into the mall for fifty feet or more, on these days, we turn around long before we get to their end of the building. Likewise, just down the concourse, is a nail salon. We try to go to the mall early, so we can avoid their noxious toxic emissions, but they occasionally open their doors early, wafting carcinogenic compounds into the whole wing of the mall. Situated across from the movie theater, I wonder how many folks know that there is even a source of toxic vapor just a hundred feet from their theater seat. When the doors to their space are opened, we stop over 100 feet before, swinging around center court rather than encounter the stench.
Each morning we slake our thirst and try to rehydrate with water. This too, allows our bodies to maintain homeostasis and function properly. This essential part of life has also come under threat from commercial interests and although harder to point fingers at, we all have our suspicions when we see it being impacted negatively. The recent craze to "frack", or hydraulically fracture underground shale, liberating natural gas that has been held there for aeons, involved pumping vast quantities of a toxic mix of chemicals and water to great depths. We are told that these depths are so deep in fact that they are not supposed to ever contaminate our aquifers. Remember that nuclear power was supposed to be generated so cheaply as to not need electric meters. It seems that most of the supposing that gets printed up in the media these days are Halcion dreams of the ultra-wealthy, micro-minority. Please pardon my stretching the English language to try to cover the obscene truth that we are all living with, but in trying times, we must all try to grasp the full picture as much as possible.
I was working on these issues before I was permitted to drive a car. In fact, I worked on these issues before we celebrated the Bi-centennial in 1976. Patriots were not the ones with "America, Love It Or Leave It!" stickers on their trucks, or the business men who thought that nuclear weapons were a "necessary evil", no. It was the under-funded troupes of mothers and children, physicists and nerdy science geeks who did the math, understood the hazards and were willing to share what they knew with every day people, just like themselves about the rat hole that the nuclear age represented. I'm sure that our FBI files expanded greatly with the work we did to stop the inevitable coming of the next generation of the nuclear age. Now, we are at a time in our history that allows depleted uranium rounds to be fired into the landscape without provocation. I have lived through the time when there was a mediation between what science told us was safe as far as nuclear contamination and exposure and what the nuclear industry wanted the limits to be...fortunately, some of those limits were in place for nearly half my life. Now, the exposure rate considered "safe" has been doubled, to stay within the range of our current exposure. This results in an ignorantly and arbitrarily arrived at number that runs counter to what we have learned about radiation from the scientific data. Now four times the exposure that was considered safe is the new standard.
Many people are still unaware of the fact that anhydrous ammonia, used on millions of acres of farmland each year is the toxic by-product of manufacturing explosives. The military industrial complex sucks money from our society through both destruction and the corporate food production systems. Harbingers of death on both the homefront and far afield as well. This highly concentrated form "nutrient" can cause blue baby syndrome and brain damage or death in infants who drink baby formula mixed with water contaminated with it. Levels of only ten parts per million are considered dangerous. We are in a new landscape. Corporations are currently considered people. They have had their right to "speech" (meaning, for them, money) guaranteed by the Supreme Court. They have cleared the way for their continued participation in politics, most especially funding political campaigns, in ways that we could not have imagined thirty years ago. I happen to live in a state which has been bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. Like a giant gourd, our state, the rich seeds that are our children, the state's water resources, the air and ultimately the land itself have been gutted, poisoned and denuded without thought of the future. The next quarter's profits have been such a distraction that virtually no thought has been given to the sort of land we are leaving behind for our children to inherit.
Turning the tables on the ultra-wealthy is the sort of thing that probably will not happen overnight. An illness that develops over thirty or fifty years cannot be reversed overnight. No matter what a heart surgeon might tell you, the process of recovery is slow and requires commitment, steadfast resolution to change in significant ways and tenacity in the face of nearly constant messages that could tempt you back into unhealthy habits. What we must live for and consciously strive toward is the desired future state in which nothing is grown that is devoid of nutrient, nothing is put on fields that is not conducive to life. We must choose consumer goods and products based on the very real possibility that some of what appears on shelves has negative consequences that far outweigh the cost. We must each make thousands of discreet decisions about what to eat, what to wear, how to move about the surface of the planet and ultimately how we will relate to one another, not as human resources or consumers, but as human beings, aware of one another and ultimately, we need to decide if we are going to be part of a solution or remain complicit with continued problems. As you lie down to sleep, consider well, where your next breath is coming from, where the water that sustains you has come from and where it will go as well, then as you drift off to sleep make a resolution to reward those who consider the Earth sacred and who have made commitments to heal some of the horrific injuries that we have foisted upon the planet. For all of our sake, I hope we can make the change come sooner than later. We are entitled to a clean environment, it is what sane patriots have been saying for generations.
I must admit that I am growing old, because sometimes I mall walk, rather than face the elements, especially during the winter. This is where I became aware of some of the hazardous conditions which we let slide, for the sake of commercial interests. When the doors open to Hobby Lobby, an overtly Christian store which has effectively put several locally owned craft stores out of business, We avoid the area near the entrance because fugitive emissions are offensive and highly suspect. These same people give their employees Sundays off, which I respect, but come Monday morning, when they open the doors, the stench pours out into the mall for fifty feet or more, on these days, we turn around long before we get to their end of the building. Likewise, just down the concourse, is a nail salon. We try to go to the mall early, so we can avoid their noxious toxic emissions, but they occasionally open their doors early, wafting carcinogenic compounds into the whole wing of the mall. Situated across from the movie theater, I wonder how many folks know that there is even a source of toxic vapor just a hundred feet from their theater seat. When the doors to their space are opened, we stop over 100 feet before, swinging around center court rather than encounter the stench.
Each morning we slake our thirst and try to rehydrate with water. This too, allows our bodies to maintain homeostasis and function properly. This essential part of life has also come under threat from commercial interests and although harder to point fingers at, we all have our suspicions when we see it being impacted negatively. The recent craze to "frack", or hydraulically fracture underground shale, liberating natural gas that has been held there for aeons, involved pumping vast quantities of a toxic mix of chemicals and water to great depths. We are told that these depths are so deep in fact that they are not supposed to ever contaminate our aquifers. Remember that nuclear power was supposed to be generated so cheaply as to not need electric meters. It seems that most of the supposing that gets printed up in the media these days are Halcion dreams of the ultra-wealthy, micro-minority. Please pardon my stretching the English language to try to cover the obscene truth that we are all living with, but in trying times, we must all try to grasp the full picture as much as possible.
I was working on these issues before I was permitted to drive a car. In fact, I worked on these issues before we celebrated the Bi-centennial in 1976. Patriots were not the ones with "America, Love It Or Leave It!" stickers on their trucks, or the business men who thought that nuclear weapons were a "necessary evil", no. It was the under-funded troupes of mothers and children, physicists and nerdy science geeks who did the math, understood the hazards and were willing to share what they knew with every day people, just like themselves about the rat hole that the nuclear age represented. I'm sure that our FBI files expanded greatly with the work we did to stop the inevitable coming of the next generation of the nuclear age. Now, we are at a time in our history that allows depleted uranium rounds to be fired into the landscape without provocation. I have lived through the time when there was a mediation between what science told us was safe as far as nuclear contamination and exposure and what the nuclear industry wanted the limits to be...fortunately, some of those limits were in place for nearly half my life. Now, the exposure rate considered "safe" has been doubled, to stay within the range of our current exposure. This results in an ignorantly and arbitrarily arrived at number that runs counter to what we have learned about radiation from the scientific data. Now four times the exposure that was considered safe is the new standard.
Many people are still unaware of the fact that anhydrous ammonia, used on millions of acres of farmland each year is the toxic by-product of manufacturing explosives. The military industrial complex sucks money from our society through both destruction and the corporate food production systems. Harbingers of death on both the homefront and far afield as well. This highly concentrated form "nutrient" can cause blue baby syndrome and brain damage or death in infants who drink baby formula mixed with water contaminated with it. Levels of only ten parts per million are considered dangerous. We are in a new landscape. Corporations are currently considered people. They have had their right to "speech" (meaning, for them, money) guaranteed by the Supreme Court. They have cleared the way for their continued participation in politics, most especially funding political campaigns, in ways that we could not have imagined thirty years ago. I happen to live in a state which has been bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. Like a giant gourd, our state, the rich seeds that are our children, the state's water resources, the air and ultimately the land itself have been gutted, poisoned and denuded without thought of the future. The next quarter's profits have been such a distraction that virtually no thought has been given to the sort of land we are leaving behind for our children to inherit.
Turning the tables on the ultra-wealthy is the sort of thing that probably will not happen overnight. An illness that develops over thirty or fifty years cannot be reversed overnight. No matter what a heart surgeon might tell you, the process of recovery is slow and requires commitment, steadfast resolution to change in significant ways and tenacity in the face of nearly constant messages that could tempt you back into unhealthy habits. What we must live for and consciously strive toward is the desired future state in which nothing is grown that is devoid of nutrient, nothing is put on fields that is not conducive to life. We must choose consumer goods and products based on the very real possibility that some of what appears on shelves has negative consequences that far outweigh the cost. We must each make thousands of discreet decisions about what to eat, what to wear, how to move about the surface of the planet and ultimately how we will relate to one another, not as human resources or consumers, but as human beings, aware of one another and ultimately, we need to decide if we are going to be part of a solution or remain complicit with continued problems. As you lie down to sleep, consider well, where your next breath is coming from, where the water that sustains you has come from and where it will go as well, then as you drift off to sleep make a resolution to reward those who consider the Earth sacred and who have made commitments to heal some of the horrific injuries that we have foisted upon the planet. For all of our sake, I hope we can make the change come sooner than later. We are entitled to a clean environment, it is what sane patriots have been saying for generations.
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