Justice Potter Stewart was not a pornographer but an ordinary human being (okay, being a US Justice may be a little bit more than ordinary) on the front lines of free speech, and he knews where to draw the line. And we've all heard his opinion on hard-core pornography. "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."

Like Justice Stewart knows porn, I know water. I'm not a scientist, but I'm on the front lines of our fight for potable water, and let me tell you, Stewart had it easy. It is easier to define porn is than it is to define clean water. It takes a scientist to define clean in terms of parts per million (ppm), parts per billion (ppb), and parts-per-trillion (ppt) 10^-12.

The contemporary standards for water quality need updating. That will take research. And that research is going to be expensive, will take a long time, and industry is going to try to chew our leg off while we're doing it.

The question is where to draw the line of what constitutes danger. And there's not just one line to draw. A whole lot of chemicals mean a whole lot of lines. And one chemical is not consistently dangerous to everyone; a toxin may affect children or the elderly or those with weakened immune systems differently. What if the chemical bioaccumulates over decades? What if a chemical does nothing by itself, but it reacts with a chemical that a population has already bioaccumulated in their systems?

Our scientists have their work cut out for them.

Part of the water problem is that we must be prepared for defense. No matter where the line is drawn, someone somewhere will be disagreeing with it. This is because so much of everything in nature and (and frankly, a good bit of what is outside of nature) dissolves in water. And you don't drink the same water twice. Test tap water on several different days, and you're going to find different concentrations of different chemicals.

Even if we don't talk about waterborne diseases related to sewage disposal (which is a whole other area of concern I'm not talking about here), even if we only look specifically at chemicals piggybacked into the water supply...someone is going to say that everything cannot be regulated because chemicals that occur in nature dissolve in water.

On a molecular level, if a chemical is in the ecosystem and dissolves, some of it will be in the water (whatever "IT" is.) Deciding how much is dangerous is a bit of a sticky wicket because the number is going to be different for every chemical. And how do we decide how much is too much?

It's a lot like salt and slugs. Pretty much everyone in this country has heard of putting salt on slugs. If you haven't done it yourself, you've been the one standing there with arms crossed, guarding icky little slugs from the mind-boggling ghoulish cruelty of little boys with salt shakers.

I know it is bizarre, but slugs would die without salt. Even they have a certain minimum daily requirement of salt. Granted, it is not very much, but those trace amounts are crucial for slugs to survive. But we all know what happens to slugs when they're exposed to too much salt.

So for the slug, the happy medium is somewhere more than none at all, and less than enough to dissolve the slug. As we look at the lower levels of extreme dangerous concentrations (from the slug's perspective), very slightly salinated water, over time, would certainly cause problems. We would have to keep downsizing the concentration until there is no detrimental discernable effect on snail life. (This reminds me of an old peanut butter recall I heard about years ago, regarding a certain brand having an unacceptable amount of rat hair. My first thought was that ANY rat hair is too much. But that is not the way percentages work in the real world or in science.) Remember, these scientists are sometimes measuring quantities too small to see. The scientific and political worlds have their jargon for the happy medium; they have to decide and reconcile the Maximum Contaminate Levels (MCL) and Public Health Goals (PHG). The Maximum Contaminate Level is the level below which there is no (known) health risk. And the phrase "Public Health Goal" is a term written into California law SB 1307, quoted here:

"In accordance with Health and Safety Code, Section 1165365 (California Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996, SB 1307, Calderon/Sher), the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) has adopted 27 Public Health Goals (PHGs). PHGs represent non-mandatory goals based solely on public health considerations, and are developed based on the best available data in the scientific literature. "

Of course we're not really talking abut one single element like salt and a simple creature like a slug. We're really talking about the host of chemicals dissolved in water and US. And our problems are not so simple, because some chemicals bioaccumulate; and some chemicals are not biodegradable.

The original 20 chemicals monitored in the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act have been increased to 91.

But there are a lot more than 91 contaminants out there. That's not even counting the 19 pharmaceuticals recently found in soil irrigated with water reclaimed from sewage. It's inevitable. What goes in, must come out...and that's sourced from the sewage I wasn't going to talk about.

The Toxic Substances Hydrology Program (The pdf of their 5 year plan is here.)is a research project studying emerging contaminants in the environment--from chemicals like arsenic which causes multiple system failure to perchlorate which causes tumors, kidney damage and cancer to bromates (a suspected carcinogen) etc. So at least there is work going on studying emerging contaminants.

Back to the EPA....
Like most convoluted government documents, even monitoring the EPA's Safe Water Act list of chemicals is not straightforward. For example, bromides are only required to be measured when water leaves a treatment plant. What about the unhealthy concentrations of bromides that develop as combined chemicals are exposed to sunlight? Why is the law so careful? Because industry is worried about being held accountable for natural processes of chemical recombination and degradation for which industry may have been a catalyst--but we consumers are worried about our lives.

Do we need to expedite the process of adding the toxins they are discovering to the list of monitored punishable toxins on the EPA list? But even if we do so, in this impoverished economy, how can we keep bleeding money to pay for essential research and to clean up after ourselves? If only business would clean up for itself, then there would be no need of fines.

Is the water clean? You'll get different answers to these questions depending on whether you ask someone whose big business pollutes--or if you ask someone who drinks, washes and bathes in the industry-contaminated water out of their tap.

Clean water?
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it."

Move over men, it's baby time.

There's another march on the way, only it's not for a million men. It's not a march either--it's the Million Baby Crawl.

Seventh Generation has invited me to be a spokeswoman for the Million Baby Crawl, a movement to focus public attention on toxins in household products.

Currently the government only tests 200 of the more than 80,000 chemicals on the market. Who knows how many dangerous ingredients are sitting on our own shelves?
This movement is around to focus attention on protecting our families from toxins secreted in products on the shelves in every American home.

Yes, under our kitchen cabinets, there's a hotbed of toxic chemical soups marketed as cleansers, polishes, insecticides, etc.

The national dialogue about 'Kid Safe Chemicals ' is designed to focus national attention on chemicals used in everyday products, including those used in baby bottles and children's toys. With some attention from the public, we're hoping that Washington will amending the weakness of the current law known as the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), one of the reasons for the lack of safety and consumer protection.

You can join the crawl at the website:
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/million-baby-crawl/

You can visit a "crawl to action" event in in person in:
Boston,
Burlington,
Denver,
Minneapolis,
New York,
Portland, or
Seattle.
I hope many of you out there will join us on the Million Baby Crawl. The live events will include picture and sign-making opportunities, a computer station where you can join, entertainment, public appearances, a children's Crawl to the Capital area, a substance Control Act rally, free giveaways and more...

Maybe I'll see you there.

Recently there's one situation that one keeps me up at night because of the children affected. There's a small quaint Missouri town, a quiet, peaceful, safe, tree lined haven sung to sleep with the night music of the locust. The shadow in this Norman Rockwellian picture is contamination from a lead mine.

The mining company that is contaminating the town is no small time business. This is a big business with big counsel who should know better. Their pockets are deep enough to clean the mess up or buy out the entire town if they so choose. To give credit where credit is due, they are making efforts to clean up. But it is not fast enough—one of those little too late efforts. They pick and chose which property they will clean up, while others equally afflicted wait and watch and wonder what will happen to them.

In this town, children run and laugh and play in lead dust. Lead dust covers their yards, their streets, the formerly pristine woods where they ride their bikes.

We have tested and have confirmed levels of lead in people’s yards in the thousands of parts per million. Blood tests reveal that one third have lead poisoning.

The entire time I was there, I had a metallic taste in my mouth. I could feel swelling in my ears and sinuses. No wonder I came home from this particular trip sick. What I was doing there without some kind of protection? But how could I wear a mask and protective gear? This wasn't Love Canal. It's a neighborhood. How would neighbors feel if I walked around with a mask, or hazmat suit?

People who live there are worried. They tell me they want to protect their kids but who are they supposed to believe? Industry tells them one thing (Don't worry, they're fixing it), EPA says another (off-roading on the mine waste piles is within harmless recreational exposure though we want to phase it out in a five-to-seven year period.) Then we say yet something else--just what the test results tell us. It's dangerous.

Would others accuse me of a publicity stunt if I wore that protection? But since when have I cared about that? More importantly, I was concerned about how the people, especially the children were feeling. Were they sensitized? Have they already been afflicted with growth retardation, speech or language dysfunction, anemia, and attentional or behavioral disorders? How will this affect their future?

This enormous mine yawns open, free standing lead, free to blow through the town, free to sift into yards, doors and windows, into lungs, into blood. I felt as if I were on a third world journey witnessing the despair of the lost and disenfranchised of a country that ignores the plight of its people. Is this the real America?

Yet industry continues the status quo. Industry is free to dabble in reparations, but continue to work at full blast, in close proximity to people. Industry is free to broadcast lead dust indiscriminately, unimpeded. The lead is free to fly where ever the wind blows it. What is people’s freedom? They have no choice, they have no voice. Is this the real America?

While we move forward for cleaner energy, better technology and a new tomorrow, we cannot ignore the damage that continues. We can not leave hazards in place that continually spoil the water, the land, the lives of our children. As we move forward into better technologies, we must clean up yesterday's damage, or all our efforts for tomorrow will be for naught.

We won't know what we should do now...until 50 or more years from now. Hindsight is priceless.

We can look back a few decades and say the polio vaccine was good. Thalidomide was bad. 50 years of medical tracking makes a big difference in the amount of information we have to work with.

And there are thousands of public health issues out there that we have to make decisions about every day.

Clean water is good; but what about polyethylene terephthate (PET) leeching nasty chemicals into bottled water, especially after the bottles have sat in the sun or the trunk of a car for a long time? (Or for that matter, plastics in the microwave?)

Fly ash floating in a Tennessee river is bad. What about fly ash contaminated with sulphur compressed into drywall that makes people's homes unlivable? That's also bad.

So even if I'm concerned about public health issues, NO ONE has the all the answers. We just want the power of choice and full disclosure. It's a matter of logic and personal decision making. If dozens of people in my family had Epstein Barr, I would stay away from Gardasil. But if dozens of the women in both sides of my family had cervical cancer, then maybe Gardasil would look a lot different to me. For that matter, if Gardasil protects against HPV, wouldn't it also help if boys were required to be vaccinated? If it's so great, wouldn't it cause a reduction in the rate of HPV exposure, down the road? So why is it not marketed to boys? Is it a marketing issue or is there some medical reason? NO answers here, just more questions.

If the new drywall in your house smells like rotten eggs, I'm concerned.

If some pharmaceutical giant has secretly been fouling your water table and your drinking water has been contaminated with Chromium 6, I'm concerned.

If your house or park or school is built on a former superfund site and you didn't know it and now you're getting sick, I'm concerned.

I don't have all the answers, but dude, I can sure find all the questions. And I know some powerhouse lawyers who can bring those questions home in a meaningful way.

Not everyone responds in the same way to the same chemical. So of course we need full disclosure regarding good and bad effects so that people can make appropriate decisions based on their individual realities (i.e. allergies, case histories, family histories, lifestyle, personal beliefs, political beliefs). The issue about Gardasil isn't even an issue about Gardasil. It is really an issue of basic freedom. Whether it is toxic drywall, fly ash, hpv vaccines, or even plain old water, we need full disclosure. As Americans, we should have the right to choose and the right to refuse.

It's pretty simple.

We can't go through life with blinders on. There are always two sides to a coin (three if you count the edge.) The fact is that even though I'm not a medical expert and I'm not a lawyer, I always find myself walking some kind of shaky tightrope between the two moving targets of medicine (which is always lagging) and law where the rules are always changing.

I don't want to make some kind of medical declaration because I DON'T KNOW. But I DO know that where issues are concerned, there are a LOT more than just the traditional "two" sides.

I just want to advocate for full disclosure and getting the information out there for the girls who have been impacted or communities that are impacted.

If we do all we can now to learn and grow from our experience, fifty years from now, we may be looking at Gardasil as a Thalidomide-type disaster or the polio-type miracle of 2010. But that's a conclusion that only time will tell.

Bless you Jenny. Your story is heartbreaking, and we all feel your loss.

And Jenny, we want to find answers. Who knows where to look? Not to the CDC. Maybe to Spain. Why Spain?

A month ago, Spain recalled 76,000 doses of the HPV vaccine when two adolescent girls got seriously sick after getting their shot. We've had more than two girls get sick, and to my knowledge NO doses of the vaccine were ever recalled here. The issue is that two girls got sick and Spain responded immediately.

Has our FDA done anything? Not to my knowledge.

If we came across 50, 40, 30 or even a single dead person in the woods, our agencies would send out alerts; they would investigate. They would search and search and search for the answers until they were found. The VAER Database Gardasil line reports that list more than a dozen deaths among the serious adverse events of otherwise healthy girls should be enough of an alert that someone among us should step up and search and search and search for the answers until they were found. There is a common denominator that we haven't yet exposed. That's my point. We must uncover that lethal factor; we must identify it so that no more girls die needlessly.

But here it is in black and white Spain withdraws cervical cancer shot after illnesses.

Let's let it pass that Gardasil is an HPV vaccine, not a cancer shot. (That's a marketing angle to avoid talking about the percentages. Let's let it pass that while it is marketed as a cancer preventative, it only goes after 4/30 of the HPV strains that cause 70% cervical cancers. Would you use a prophylactic that only guards against a percentage of pregnancies? Should we let people go around thinking they're protected when they're 91% vulnerable?) Let's let all that pass, for now, and think about the human cost of rushing to market.

The two girls in Spain who had the vaccine both went into convulsions. They both went into convulsions within hours of taking the vaccine.

So Spain has decided to recall 76,000 doses of Gardasil after two girls had seizures. But the FDA has not --after more than two girls have died. Does Spain love its daughters more than the US?

Why hasn't the FDA acted on the incidents which have happened here? Are the FDA and CDC really on top of things? Is the US looking at the VAERS LIST to see how many girls in the US have had adverse reactions after taking Gardasil, let alone those who have died?

But in Spain, 2 girls had seizures--only seizures, they didn't die--and in Spain 76,000 doses of Gardasil were recalled.

VAERS Reports are available online. You can run them yourself here. The results show significantly more than 2 incidents related to Gardasil. All girls had one thing in common; the Gardasil shot.

Spain has recalled 76,000 doses of Gardasil. Meanwhile the US is trying to mandate its use. What is wrong with this picture?

At the very least, the use of Gardasil should be elective. Its use should be a matter of choice. As Americans, our young girls and their parents should have the choice to make their own decisions, good decisions, for the sake of their health. To avoid becoming statistics, to safeguard their health, they should go into making that choice armed with the knowledge of all of the contraindications and negative interactions. Shouldn't the FDA and CDC at least be LOOKING for contraindications and negative interactions?

And of course, we still have the unanswered questions of why so many American girls have had adverse reactions and died after taking Gardasil. They and their families deserve an answer. But for the seven women I know whose daughters have died after taking Gardasil, and for Jenny, no matter how soon the answer is found, it is too late.

A speaking tour can be a really breathless rush with no time to think about anything but what's going on in the moment. So an inevitable part of lag recovery/getting back to speed is catching up on the news. And let me tell you what really floored me after this trip: the negativity that is coming from every news channel I turn on, every paper I pick up, every corner of the world I am in.

All we see, all we hear is negative, negative, negative. I know the business of journalism is to report the news that people read, and because people always read the bad stuff, journalism presents that negative information flow that the market consumes--but this is ridiculous. We are listening-- and the media is ensuring that everything that we hear is negative. How about something positive? Come on journalism people. After all this time presenting Obama as the poster child of hope, don't just staple him on the wall and make him your bulls-eye for the next four years.

The press thrives on tearing down, but this is ridiculous. The LA Times leads with "Liberals not pleased with go-slow approach by Obama." And Where's the President Obama who promised to unite us?GOP Senators say Obama Off to a Bad Start This isn't even scratching the surface of the negativity.

Good God. Can we expect the man to cut taxes for 95% of Americans, cure the energy crisis, heal the economy, raise education standards, change bankruptcy law, end the war, and restore our standing in the world (etc...) overnight ?

I would like to remind everyone that we just elected someone who gives us the promise of hope. Remember, he said "It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today."

Remember, we put him in the hot seat. It took a lot of us to vote him in. And he can't do this alone. It's going to take us all.

I look at my own personal backlog of work in front of me. It looks insurmountable; but I know I can do it. And that applies to the country, too. We didn't get here overnight, and our recovery will take time. Let's give our president breathing room. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was the economy. Government wheels have always grinded slowly, in a cumbersome, clanky, make-shift sort of way--but they do turn. Let's at least give President Obama a little time to let his political WD-40 to sink in.

What or who is behind this negativity?

If I could draw cartoons, this is what I would draw:

A few fat cat CEOs walking up a steep hill. Those CEOs who don't have the forethought or vision to look on the other side, where, on that easy downhill slope they expect, where unexpectedly all the rest of us--millions and millions of us--wait in anger at being robbed, disenfranchised, victimized.

Those who have skimmed immense profit packages while millions of people in their financial custodianship have lost their homes, Home Depot's Chief Executive Robert Nardelli who retired with a $210 million package, and the Madoffs of the world, are happy that the spotlight is now on President Obama. But if we look at who stands to profit from all the negativity, is it industry? But what would there be to gain? Who gains but the media--who simply is looking for something to fill their pages. Regardless of where the blame is placed, it is the media who can help light the way with a little change of attitude.

Remember Pandora's box? You know, that mythological box of evils, all of which escaped when Pandora opened it to satisfy her curiosity--leaving trapped in the box one last entity: hope. We should never forget that trapped inside the box of all the evils that inflict the world, there is always that germinal seed of hope. I do believe that if our media is going to talk about the ills and evils of government, let's not leave hope in the box, but put her on the page too, and keep her in our hearts. Because always, in addition to the belief in better time to come, and the work and plans it will take to get there, we all need that ray of hope that lights our way.

America is a place where all things are possible.

Like most Americans and much of the world, I was glued to the TV; chills coursing up and down my spine, I watched my own young daughter as she watched the historic moment in history. I saw and shared the sense of pride and inspiration at the commencement of a new era.

I was spellbound by the inauguratory address of the forty-fourth president of the United States, and entranced as well by the enthusiasm of the diverse crowd as our President Barack Obama was sworn to office.

We are about to roll up our sleeves and get down to hard business of the price and the promise of citizenship.

I heard the words of our new president about where we could go. He promises to deliver better schools, renewed science, improved and more economical health care, solar and green energy. He promises that government will "spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do business in the light of day."

I hope Industry is listening to that message.

Especially, I hope Industry was listening when our president said "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history."

Those words ring true for me because of the line of work that I am in. I face the silencing of dissent all the time. The corruption and the deceit perpetuated by industry. Deceit is the root cause of so many of our problems. Deceit robs us of information. Deceit robs us of choice. Deceit eats away at our freedom. Deceit undermines our value system and our intrinsic worth as human beings. For what is the value of a deceitful man?

So how do we stop the deceit? How do we educate those whose reckless pursuit of profit cheats us out of our money, our homes, our health, our lives?

One truth at a time. One step at a time.

I am inspired to continue in my avocation, shining the light on deceit.

I am inspired to continue working toward sharing awareness. Most of the cases I deal with begin with revealing deceit--in seeing that the light of day is shined on those dark secrets--just as it was in Hinkley, California and perhaps now in Kingston Tennessee. When these malevolent and unhealthy secrets are uncovered, then changes can be made. Once the truth is known, the problem no longer festers and escalates; no, that is when healing and remediation begins, Sometimes it means we do have to roll up our sleeves and pitch in to get it all cleaned up--but we will clean it up. And perhaps like our president promises, we “will not falter. Perhaps with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, you and I too will carry forth a gift--one of a clean and healthy country--safely to future generations."

I know the question on everyone's lips. What is coal fly ash, and why does it need to be contained? The folks around Knoxville are getting to know a lot more about coal fly ash than they ever wanted to learn.

Coal fly ash. It sounds like someone has been burning fly poop or airborne coal. But seriously, it is akin to the creosote that coated those chimneys and chimneysweep boys of Charles Dickens ancient London.

Fly ash comes from chimneys, specifically the chimneys of power plants. The collection point determines exactly what kind of ash it is. Fly ash apparently contains silicon dioxide and calcium oxide as well as trace concentrations of heavy metals. In other words, coal ash is nasty stuff to have floating around in your river, air, and drinking water.

Anyway, thanks to the failure of a containment retention wall at TVA's Kingston Fossil Plant that's where it is. In the river. Spread out on the land.

The Clinch and Tennessee Rivers are affected. So the TVA is out there collecting "cenospheres." Cenospheres are apparently little floating balls of residue which according to this TVA publication "are useful in bowling balls, paint, concrete and epoxy" --just a partial list of ways fly ash in general is used. There are 3000 feet of skimmers in place to vacuum up this stuff and some other collection devices in the water. I don't think the sludge is only made up of cenospheres, so I wonder what they're doing to control the rest of it.

The TVA publishes data on Kingston's Fossil Emissions and water data .

The TVA does NOT publish data about that retention wall. (Or maybe they do, and I just don't know where it is. The TVA is welcome to let me know that information.) So I'd like to know why they were using retention ponds to store this stuff. (You may remember I have a history with retention ponds. Don't like 'em. Never will.)

Why does it need to be contained? Well, that's a moot point, isn't it? Since it is composed of heavy metals, and other nasty things. It is better contained than it is spread out over 300 acres thirty some-odd miles away from Knoxville. Truth is, I should speculate on some other questions. Like...

Why was that fly ash sitting around a retention pond rather than being immediately ported to some Portland Cement factory, or bowling ball maker? Was there some earthquake we don't know about? Why did the retention wall give way? How much trace metal is realistically dangerous, and how much trace metal and toxin is really there? Is it truly inert?

AP has already released an article talking about how the TVA won't have retention ponds on TVA property any longer. Better late than never, I suppose. (Does that mean It's moving to private property, that it's going to be sold or that they're shooting it to trash cans on Jupiter or Pluto?) We'll have to see what their actual solution is, and if it really is an improvement over what they're doing now.

A dozen families have lost their homes to 2.6 million cubic yards of fly ash. OR a Billion cubic yards. (The numbers change depending on whose saying them.) Three hundred acres are destroyed. In fact, that number has grown to four hundred acres six feet deep.

Why is it that it takes a disaster to find the better way to do things? When are we ever going to learn to use forethought instead of hindsight?

So here is one more opinion. (Believe me, I have a lot of them. ) There are a couple of ways that building a lawsuit is like building a house. I'm just going to mention two: it has to rest on a solid foundation and it takes lots of hands.

The foundation part makes basic sense. You have to have a case. There has to be some tangible thing that happened. If something might have happened, or it is just hearsay or gossip, there's no case. If you heard it happened, or your friend said it happened to him, there's no case. Or--you won't believe what happened to my cousin's niece's next door neighbor's roommates in-laws. Plenty of those come thru my mailbox--where something might have happened, but we're not exactly sure what.

Let me invent an imaginary case here: The sun rose, and you got out in it and got a sunburn--you can't sue the sun. Now, if you slathered yourself with a sunscreen and the person next to you didn't use a sunscreen, and you're burned worse and now you have malignant melanomas...then maybe you've got something. In either case, you're not suing the sun. Your suing the ones at fault--maybe some crook down the road who sold the sunscreen maker baby oil but claimed it was paba. It's still going to be hard to prove because that melanoma could have had a gazillion other causes. And you still have to prove it and look for the deceit, to connect the dots. But if it is an event that clearly happened to you, that's a foundation.

You can't build a case if the foundation is jello.

Now...about a case needing about a lot of hands. There is usually a lot of people involved in a case. Sometimes there are lots of people to interview. Sometimes there are intermediaries. Even the intermediaries have intermediaries. Sometimes a lot of people have been affected, and they all need to be heard. Sometimes there is some kind of cover-up and it doesn't show up until you've talked to a couple hundred--or a couple thousand--people. (If it's a corporate cover up, there can be a lot of payrolled people aware that something fishy is going on.) Every single person who helps ferret out the deceit is part of the solution. And with all of these people involved, you really do need people skills. It helps to genuinely like people.

Ever since it came out, I've gotten mail from law professors and students who use "Erin Brockovich" the movie as part of some legal learning experience. In fact, right now I have an email from the Deputy General Counsel for the Office of the Comptroller in Massachusetts who also teaches 1st year legal research, who is saying that "I use the movie Erin Brockovich as a teaching tool, to demonstrate that being able to connect with people is more effective than legal skills."

I am flattered that the movie is being used that way. And maybe it is a good thing.

In the course of getting justice done, there are lots of people involved. The law is all about people. Sometimes the legal system and lawyers seem to forget that. The law is not just a bunch of rules. The law is rules whose intent (is supposed to be) helping civilization be fair and reasonable. It's not a civilization of Martians we're talking about, nor robots; it's people.

Lawyers tend to get very compulsive and nit-picky when it comes down to looking at details in legal gobbledygook which is what they do. They're very good at arguing the fine points or putting on their close-up glasses and decoding all that fine print the rest of us skip over. But a lot of the time, lawyers don't deal well one-on-one with the people they have to interview, or the very people who have hired them. They have to take off those close-up and impersonal glasses to deal with the people.

Maybe being a lawyer is just one of those professions where the meat of the job gets in the way of the meaning. Like when you go to a doctor's office, and the doctor--who may be quite excellent at medicine--is terse and rushed and you're in and out the door with a diagnosis without feeling you've ever actually been doctored.

Now, I'm not chewing out doctors here, I've had some very kind doctors who relate well. I've had some who don't. I've known some really fine lawyers who relate well. I've known some who don't.

I'm just glad that someone engaged in the profession of teaching lawyers how to be lawyers is taking the time to remind them that they need to be people too.

I am feeling increasing frustration that nothing is being done about all of the problems. Who knows where the candidates truly stand on the issues? (Everyone knows that campaign promises must be taken with a pillar of salt.) We will die holding our breath waiting for Industry to do something on it's own. Sometimes I wonder if everything is going to be up to us--if we the people are going to have to deal with the issues, hands on.

I've been thinking about the amazing feats of Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity--in case you're not familiar with it--has built and rehabilitated more than 250,000 houses. According to their website, the organization started out "financed by a revolving Fund for Humanity. The fund's money comes from the new homeowners' house payments, donations and no-interest loans provided by supporters and money earned by fund-raising activities. The monies in the Fund for Humanity are used to build more houses." Habitat for Humanity funds housing, and is manned by volunteers, donations and by individuals who do their share to contribute sweat equity to earn their piece of the pie. All of this because Clarence Jordon and Millard and Linda Fuller saw the need, and a way to do something about it.

Well, I see a need. We need to clean up the contamination. And I'd like to figure out a way to do something about it. I have wondered about the possibility of starting a foundation--Let's call it Environment for Humanity, a self-sustaining foundation to provide support for communities with environmental problems. Imagine a foundation where people can go when they see their local pollution issues. Somewhere people can band together, to organize with like-minded volunteers, both individual and corporate, all of whom do their share to contribute whatever they can--whether it is organizational talent, cash or sweat equity, all with one purpose in mind: to clean things up. I would be thrilled if the Habitat for Humanity people would like to get in touch with me and we can talk about putting something together.

In the meantime, I have been caught up on working on the problems in Cameron, Missouri, where there's a cluster of brain tumors; and if you're following the news, there's also the Hexavalent Chromium problem in Davenport, California. But that is just a drop in the bucket. I am constantly inundated with emails from people who live near industry have acquired cancers and illness.

Government is absent--and even if it weren't, it's all but bankrupt and an inefficient use of human and financial resources.

We the people have to find some way clean up the mess. Maybe we have to create the programs ourselves. After all, we made the mess; maybe our Public Health and Safety will depend on our cleaning it up.

We are all responsible for our own sphere of influence.

I would like to address the "green" movement going on in the world today. What does that really mean to each of us as individuals? Even those who perceive themselves as being green or living green manifest their greenness in different ways.

Some people see green as a way to make money. That is okay as long as we progress and don’t jeopardize more of the environment.

Some people see it as recycling.

Others see being green in terms of carbon credits.

Being green means more than just being aware that the ice caps are melting and that global warming is upon us.

It means acting upon that knowledge in an infinity of small ways.

Being green is about fighting air pollution, and cleaning up the contamination that exists today. Being green is about changing to efficient light bulbs and being generally more energy efficient in our daily lives.

Being green is about finding other energy sources to use besides oil.

Being green means saving our oceans, our wildlife, our air, water and soil.

Being green means bypassing the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, or other artificial agents in order to choose organics.

Being green is both a state of mind and activist issue because being green is something that is not merely spoken; it is a thing that is done. Thinking about it is the first step. Doing something about it is the next piece of the puzzle. If one doesn’t happen, the other won’t and the continuum of life will be broken.

Green is not a fad. It is a matter of survival--that’s how crucial every individual contribution and commitment is. We all caused the problem, and it will take all of us to clean up after ourselves.

Green is the natural state. It is what we come from and where we must return if we want to survive. We can only do that by working together. We must join in this commitment to this our common cause. After all, nothing is more common among us than our need for the air we breathe and the water we drink. Our very lives are contingent upon these elements.

We have got to take our places on the front lines of our battle for the environment--each and every one of us--to keep the continuum going. This is the daily battle and the long term movement inching us towards a better environment and a better life for us all.

I know I've talked before about politicians and heroes, but now I am speaking of the power and reach each of us as individuals. In this sense, we do not need politicians standing on the stump. We are all Oprahs. We are all Al Gores. We are all--if you will pardon sharing my name--Erin Brockovich--up on the big HD screen of life, fighting the fight for the environment.
Nothing in nature stands still. We need to remember if we simply do nothing, we will get pushed back. In order to have progress, in order to maintain progress we have got to keep fighting forward together.

The time has come to stop feeling that we have no hand in our own fate. We do have a hand in our fate; it is our choice to do or to do nothing.

This being nearly election time, I must also add that the best expression of freedom that I know of is the freedom to think for oneself and to act in our own defense. So with that in mind, may we always choose truth over deception, whatever political face it wears. May we always see clear enough to know which is which. And may we always choose green.

"America is in love--again. Remember how we loved Vivian Ward, the pretty woman in Pretty Woman? And who could forget Maggie Carpenter, the runaway bride in Runaway Bride? Or Tess Ocean, the twelfth ocean in Ocean's Twelve? But then there's my personal favorite: Erin Brockovich, who was Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich." Read the full post...

People keep confusing Julia/Erin. That's the first time I've ever seen "Erin who was Erin in Erin..." Excuse me, but there IS an actress in there somewhere. Doesn't an actor have to play a character for 30 years (like Captain Kangaroo) to become such an icon that they become their character?

And--Excuse me!--I'm not fiction. I exist. Julia can't be me because I am me.

"America is in love--again. Remember how we loved.....But then there's my personal favorite: Erin Brockovich, who was Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich." What is that sentence even supposed to mean?

I had to look up all of those roles...

Vivian Ward, (Pretty Woman)
Maggie Carpenter, (Runaway Bride)
Tess Ocean, (Ocean's Twelve)
Erin Brockovich, (Erin Brockovich)

... to figure out that ALL of them are Julia Roberts.

Maybe they can do a movie about Julia Roberts's life and I can play Julia. Then someone can write an erroneous blog ostensibly about me, that says "Julia Roberts, who was Julia Roberts in Julia Roberts."

That would really confuse them.