The Brockovich Report

If we had a crystal ball and could see a 60 foot wall of water coming right at us, or an F-5 tornado ready to rip our house off its foundation, would we do something to stop it? Of course we would—unless it is an environmental disaster of our own making. Those we tend to ignore. Environmental disasters need no gypsy fortune-tellers or wizards to reveal ominous portent. All it takes is a little common sense, and people who pay attention. We all need to pay attention because that 60 foot wall of water is on its way. Only in some places it is arsenic, or benzene, or hexavalent chromium, or lead.

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.

With subjects like Gardasil, it's not just that law and science aren't on the same level. It's also that we're all blind mice running in a maze with no idea what path is going to lead us to health, and which path is going to take us toward the farmer's wife with that knife children have been singing about ever since nursery rhymes were put to music.

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.

Whenever I go out of the country, as exciting as it is to experience new cultures and see the sights, it is always good to be home. There are drawbacks of course--pedestrian chores pile up while you're away. Phone calls, bills, old mail, a pile of pending work that expands a little daily until you finally attack it: that prosaic stuff is gradually taken care of. Of course jet lag strikes like a ton of bricks so while you're playing catch-up, you're perky while everyone else is winding down, and lurching around like a zombie during normal active time. Or maybe--depending on how laggy that lag is--it's zombiehood fulltime, until normalcy creeps back. But after the long trip to Mumbai India, and Istanbul Turkey, well, there's no place like home.

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.

Today I watched the hope and dreams of America come to life again. I am referring to the inauguration. How much it means. The words spoken and how they apply to the work I do.

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."

As familiar to us as the backs of our own hands, the little main street square lives in our minds as concretely as if we walked those streets, and jumped over the actual cracks not to break our mother's backs; you know, that cozy town square and all the homey penny candy dispensing shopkeepers who know our names--straight out of the collective unconscious--or some James Stewart/Frank Capra common mythos. But that's not really main street these days. Main street has gone the way of wall street--lost to power mongers who follow the path of corruption, otherwise know as corporate sleight of hand. All around us, the big packagers, the huge corporations are shutting down branches, laying off people, and the empty buildings stare at us through their empty-window eyes, making a mockery of yesterday's affluence. In many areas of the country, formerly thriving economic retail centers are starting to look like the abandoned tenements of Urban blight. And it is spreading.

How many power brokers are like Fred Smith of Federal Express, taking a personal 20 percent pay cut and freezing wages rather than putting hundreds--perhaps thousands--out of jobs?

No, it looks like most power brokers these days take multi-million dollar bonuses seconds before their corporations are liquidated, tossing millions of people out of work, out of savings, out of pensions.

What is happening to wall street and main street is happening to the environment.

Abandoned by the corporations who caused them, abandoned environmental hot spots are collected under the Superfundumbrella, with the optimistic mission "to clean up the nation's uncontrolled hazardous waste sites. . . . ensuring that remaining National Priorities list of hazardous waste sites are cleaned up to protect the environment and the health of all Americans."

It looks like Obama has plans to make a few changes. Obama named Harvard physicist John Holden as Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology policy, and Marine Biologist Jane Lubchenco as National Oceanic Atmospheric Administrator. And also he's engaged other scientific leaders like Nobel Prize-winning scientist Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health; and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Eric Lander. These are leading thinkers of the green movement. Let's hope they can live up to their reputations.

It's a start.

I hope when Obama met with Al Gore and talked about global warming that they talked about how to clean up all the contamination. We are committing our own genocide and don't even seem to care. Does anyone care? How do I get someone's attention here? How do we get these sites cleaned up?

I don't really mind that the old town square is fondly remembered anachronism. There's a long history: the Roman Forum; the Italian Piazza; the French Grand-Place. Somewhere, sometime, towns and their squares will be rebuilt and be vital and live again. And if not, well, town gathering places are bound to grow and evolve just as people grow and evolve. I only hope that other things that we hold dear--like clean water, clean air, unimproved land in its natural state--will not become fondly remembered relics of the past.

I'm going out on a limb to make an analogy here. It's not going out on a limb because it's dangerous. It's going out on a limb because I'm not a lawyer, and only lawyers can make official "pronouncements" about law. But we're all entitled to our opinions.

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.

Fellow citizens of the US, you can not believe all of the current environmental issues that have been coming to my attention. It is scary to see just how much environmental pollution is out there. I don't know if people realize that while it is wonderful to progress into the future and look for green energy, if we don't stop to look behind us and learn from history, we are doomed to repeat our mistakes in the future.

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.

I want to clarify a few things. To those of you who say I am endorsing Palin...

Where does it say that I endorse Sarah Palin?

Nowhere.

At no point in the September 8th blog did I say I endorse Palin. I said she is a strong women.

What is wrong with that?

Nothing.

If you pay attention to the words, you would see that the blog says nothing about endorsements. This isn't political. The blog says, "Whether or not we stand on the same side of the fence, she gives off the aura of being a strong woman...."

Let's face it. No matter what people read, sometimes they only hear what they want to hear.

Let's give Sarah Palin credit for what she has done to date in a hard and difficult world: Raising kids. Being a mayor. Being a governor. I admire that when she didn't like how things were getting done in Alaska, instead of griping, she did something about it. She had the courage to run for office. Good for her or anyone else that can do it.

I don't agree with everything Palin says. I don't agree with everything anyone says. I think for myself. Guess what? I think that Hillary Clinton is a strong woman too. To paraphrase something Maya Angelo once said, "I admire Hillary on the basis of her having the authority to be herself, a mother, and a politician. When a woman stands up for herself, she stands for all women."

We can all choose for whom we vote. We choose what we think and what we do. That is the beauty of America. The freedom of choice.

For those of you who disagree with me, I respect your right to your opinion. Just don't misquote me, or quote me out of context to make what you want out of what I said.

I don't agree with everything Sarah Palin does. I don't agree with everything
corporate America does. I don't agree with all candidates on all issues. I don't always agree with my husband or kids or friends but that doesn't mean that I don't give them credit where credit is due.

Just because someone is a Republican, Democrat or Independent doesn't mean
that I do or don't, will or won't look at their positives and their negatives. I make up my mind after I see and hear everything the candidates have to say.

Besides, how many times have we voted someone into office and they turned out to be different from what they promised?

As long as we're talking about endorsements, I am endorsing a local Senate candidate named Tony Strickland.

Tony Strickland is a friend of mine and a Republican. He is also for green energy and would make a great Senator.

The idea that we can't cross party lines is ridiculous.

I could sit here and say I am Republican, I live in this box. I could sit here and say I am a Democrat, I live in that box. I could refuse to extend my hand across the aisle for a common goal and cause. Then I could sit side by side--or back to back--with my fellow Americans, forever at a stalemate. Nothing would ever get done.

But I don't live in a box. I want what I think we all want--which is to help people over all.

Rather than only being one sided and part of the problem and getting nothing done, let's work to be a part of a solution. Let's reach our hands across the aisle to help negotiate so we can get to work and get this country moving again.

I was born and raised in a Republican family in Kansas. My father worked for industry and the government. He is a mechanical engineer. He is the very person who taught me the value of our land, air, water, health. And that the greatest gift we have is our family. Funny, he is a Republican yet taught me very fundamental Democratic ideals.

As an adult I have been a registered Republican and a registered Democrat.

Neither party has a patent on caring.

Neither party has a patent of caring for the environment, health or anything else. These are not partisan issues; these are Humanist issues. You will never convince me that just because someone is a Republican that they don't care about the environment or that their kids could be poisoned by environmental pollutants. You will never convince me that just because someone is a Democrat, that they don't care about money or the economy. We all care about the environment and our kids, and money and the economy.

I wish there were a "Humanist" party because that IS the party that I would join.

When it comes to politics, I'm not about attacking someone because they are on a Republican ticket or a Democratic ticket. Let’s look at the person, their ideas and what they might represent for us humans. After seeing Sarah Palin's acceptance speech, I came away with several thoughts, one of them that it looks like Palin-speak is going to mean plain-speaking.

Plain speaking is a good thing.

What am I leading up to?

Sarah Palin is being compared to me. I've got four of the quotes right here:

Like this quote:

"Palin is a cross between two archetypes, frontier woman Annie Oakley and muckraker Erin Brockovich. A reformer in a state of cunning politicians, she made her name quitting the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission in outrage over backroom deals and parlayed that into running against a hugely unpopular governor, Frank Murkowski."
Read the complete Bloomberg News article...

and this:

SARAH PALIN IS THE ERIN BROCKOVICH OF ALASKA
Read the complete The Astute Bloggers post...

and this:

Awesome: one part Reagan, one part Erin Brockovich, one part Annie Oakley, one part hockey mom. One part mother of a child with special needs-and soon to be a grandma.
Read the complete The Astute Bloggers post...

Of course, not all of the comparisons are so flattering. This last one one equates Sarah with me (in a negative way) and all the Democrats as Stepford Wives.
Read the complete Abbey-Roads post...

Okay, I know she sniped at Obama a little bit, but she did it with an admirable, graceful semi-scary pit-bull/hockey-mom tenacity that is as natural as breathing; and she stood up to all the media pressure without a semi-casual hair out of place. It doesn't matter whether you are Republican or Democrat, or Independent... (which is about the way I am ready to turn because both parties are acting foolish and judgmental and attacking.) Some of the comments about Sarah Palin have been unfair and I don’t say that because blogs say she is “Sarah Brockovich” or "half Ronald Reagan half Erin Brockovich” or “The Erin Brockovich of Alaska.”

More importantly, beaming with pride, she unapologetically brought out her entire family, including her expecting teenage daughter. (And in the history of the presidency, Republican OR Democrat, I don't think there's been a candidate who had the gonads to do that. ) She was so proud of them it was coming off of her in waves--and rightly so. Frankly, I didn't see a waiver or a weak spine in the whole crew. That's an impressive show of family solidarity. I feel certain the best candidates for office never ran because they kept their secrets in their closets. Sarah Palin seems like her closets are all opened up, and she's right out there saying "Here I am. Let's get to work."

How can you not admire what she has done, and appreciate the position she is in? Sure, she may be loud. So am I. Sometimes you've got to scream to get anyone to hear you. So what if her 17 year old is pregnant? Even though I'm proud she didn't stick her in a closet to hide her away, I realize that girl has got to have true grit to be standing out in front of the spiteful media like that. It’s no one’s business. It happens to young girls all over the WORLD. In history, girls use to have babies much earlier.

None of us should judge Sarah Palin for anything but her own actions. We do our best to raise our kids and when they grow up they develop their OWN minds and their own life and their own way of thinking and I am certainly in favor of that.

Sarah Palin is running a State--and mighty well I should add. She has a successful marriage, 5 kids, which HELLO, is a BIG, BIG, JOB! She takes care of herself, she speaks her mind and her heart. Her son is in the War. I would be scared to death if my son were over there.

I think it is a simple thing really. The fact is that Sarah Palin positively emanates strength. Whether or not we stand on the same side of the fence, she gives off the aura of being a strong woman who doesn't back down, and she does it sporting heels and wearing her family like a badge of well-deserved honor. I am sure there are a million other women out there who are doing the same thing.

And the truth is I am proud to be a member of the same Strong Woman's Club that Sarah Palin is in.

An Open Letter to United Airlines.

It was a dark and stormy night. No, really.

It was hot, muggy, and off-and-on stormy.

It had been that way for days in N.Y.

Last Sunday we had been scheduled to take off at 2:00 p.m. but we were held in LA until 4:30 due to bad weather in N.Y.. When we arrived in N.Y at 1:30, they held us on the runway until 2:30--due to heavy traffic. After all that waiting around, when we left on Wednesday, I was relieved to see there were no posted delays and the weather looked fine. We did not board until about 7:45 because the flight had been held on the runway. Once we boarded, we taxied out.

The pilot got on the speaker and told us that there were 45 planes ahead of us but we should be up in about 1 hour. That hour passed, and the pilot got on and said it would be another hour. That hour passed too; the pilot announced that it would be another hour.

In this time, no food had been served and I was in first class. They brought out nuts and we had some water, and booze was available. By the time we had been on the plane for three hours, the pilot got on and said we were going to move to a holding area, and that it shouldn’t be much longer.

Another hour passed.

By now, the problem was that storms had moved into the area. It was raining and lighting. The pilot said we had to wait for the bad weather to pass and not to worry about the lighting.

Oh, sure.

Another hour passed. Still, we had not taken off. People were grumbling, but no one was outraged. I saw many passengers sleeping. Finally, after 6 hours, the pilot got on and said we had to go back to the gate to get fuel, and we would make some decisions.

Once we were at the gate, people started calling,

I was on the phone looking for a hotel and was informed that although I could get off the plane, I could not get any luggage. Hotels were sold out, rental cars were gone and hundreds were down in baggage claim reading themselves to sleep on the ground.

Catering was closed. The food on the plane could no longer be served as it had sat there with no refrigeration and could not be served. Catering put some snack packs on (gross) but there weren't enough for everyone. They had enough water for everyone to have one bottle and needed more water.

Finally, people got on, we taxied out again only to wait another two hours before we took off. At 3:00 a.m. we were cleared to go.

I was so angry and so trapped. There was nothing I could do but use the phone, have a vodka, listen to music and get more and more frustrated.

The airline offered no compensation of any kind. They apologized again when we landed at LAX at 5:15 a.m. We were to arrive at 10:00 p.m. the following night. So, from the time I got to JFK, sat on the plane and flew the 5 hours home, it had been a total 13 hours. I could have made it to Australia.

That would have been a lot more fun.

I understand safety and would be the first to say I don’t want to take off in bad weather or face a head on collision but come on! Don’t you think after so many hours that someone could figure out that there will be longer delays and go back to the gate for God's sake and let us passengers get off?

At the baggage claim in LA my fellow travelers were too exhausted to be pissed.

I am sure just glad to have gotten there.

I will never fly into JFK again. If United can’t compensate for some type of free miles for all of us, I won’t use that airline again. And I am a 100K flyer with them.

I have flown many airlines. Continental is my favorite and I can tell you this has NEVER happened to me on Continental.

No one wants to fly if it isn’t safe, but United, if your flight isn't going, just taxi us back to the gate and let us out. I didn’t bargain for being held against my will for that long when I choose to fly. Something needs to change.

Theoretically, pollutants inflame me. In fact, it occurs to me that the environment itself is tired of being polluted, and it is fighting back. That's one way to look at global warming.

Dirty water inflames me. It's an allergy; I suppose I'm allergic to pollution, or more specifically pollutants. Not just hexavalent chromium, and not just theoretically either. Allergies inflame us all; it's their "job" to rub us the wrong way; and it's no wonder that we're allergic to allergens. No, really, it's what they do. Allergens are substances in the environment which cause some kind of hypersensitive reaction in us. And allergies are what I wanted to talk about, since Spring is allergy season. For centuries nature has been afflicting human sinuses with all the pollen in the air, but it's only since the industrial revolution (I think) that we've been polluting ourselves.

When we were a primitive species living close to the land, the only allergens we had to worry about were natural biologics like pollen and the common food allergens (proteins in cow's milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish and tree nuts.) When we lived off the land, we knew what went into the food. Maybe there wasn't that much of it because this was before fertilizers and pesticides--and maybe the produce from those primitive farms was kind of spindly and bug-bitten-but at least we knew that the primary ingredient of our food was...well...food.

Things have changed some. Now there are so many additives in products, even when it is raw produce, that we have to double rinse off the pesticides with a special solution, or scrub off the wax. And some things don't wash off. Especially if the food we eat may be some weird Franken-fruit or crossbred nouveau veggie hatched in a Monsanto lab by a money-mad scientist. Who knows what the consequences might be to eating this stuff? And then the additives in packaged foods--Disodium EDTA, Nitrates, Formaldehyde, Glutaraldehyde, Ethanol, Methylchloroisothiazolinone . . . just their names are enough to give me hives. Not that I am advocating bacteria infested food. But really, we should be aware of the preservatives lurking in what we consume, and do our best to keep them at a minimum.

The fresher and closer to the earth food is, and the less processing it requires, the healthier it tends to be. I'm sure grocers and canners, and commercial food people would appreciate the benefit in all of our food being as non-perishable as Twinkies. I'm sure it would seem a veritable miracle for a lettuce to last as long in the refrigerator as a preserved cup cake or an Egyptian mummy. But personally speaking as a grocery shopper myself, I'd venture to say that geriatric food does not appeal to the consumer.

This reminds me of a question I just answered in my Ask Brockovich column.

I said it there, and I'll say it here. I prefer organic fruits, vegetables and protein and good clean water. When that's what I eat, my body does great. When I focus on eating the right foods which are preservative, additive and pesticide free, I run like a machine. When I eat right, I don’t have puffy swollen eyes, stuffy sinus, I lose weight, my hair grows, my skin looks good, everything works better, and most of all, I FEEL BETTER. I don't think it is a coincidence.

We see consequences of this commercial food-additive mania in allergies. So think about this when you are sneezing and coughing and scratching, when you reach for your allergy meds, your Kleenex and Benadryl--some of your physical discomfort might be traced back to additives in your food. Try eating fresh for a while, and see if it doesn't help.

It's nearly summer time, and the living is easy. Maybe not that easy, considering the mudslides and wildfires--but summer is still on its way. In honor of the season, I am going to digress for a moment from fighting the bigger battles, and mention something which was brought up to me in an email. A reader sent me news that her child had developed diarrhea and otitis media as a result of swimming in a Calabasas pool. Now, bear in mind that public pools are always a great place to exchange germs and bacteria. I don't know how many pool related ear-aches and cases of pink-eye we all had growing up, but it was a lot.

Dirty pools are a haven for waterborne pathogens, bacteria, parasites, protozoa and viruses. A chlorine resistant parasite called Cryptosporidium is a particular problem along with Amoebic meningoencephalitis, Giardia, E. coli O157:H7 (E. coli), and Shigella. This is by no means a comprehensive list of the communicable nasties that can live in pools.

The problem is not just that the pool may be inadequately filtered and/or chlorinated. It is also that each individual who goes into the water brings his or her own collection of bacteria. This is not a new development. Neither is it new that 20 billion disposable diapers are sent to landfills annually. That the two issues converge in a relatively new development: swimmer diapers, is.

It bears thinking about that disposable diapers are not exactly sanitary in aquatic conditions and these new swimmer's diapers are already developing a reputation as a public health issue. Even if they do manage to contain the visible fecal matter (and there's no guarantee that they'll do that) there's no way they can contain all the bacteria that's in the feces, and all of the urine that the diapers contain. The Center for Disease Control publishes warnings about this; and if your public pool hasn't gotten around to banning these diapers, it is only a matter of time before they will.

So, if you're going to be a responsible parent, don't ask for trouble by putting your baby in the public pool. Don't expose other people to your baby's excreta. (Why would you would want to expose a baby to the virulent waterborne pathogens in a public pool anyway?) If you're going to be a responsible adult, do a visible inspection before you get in the water, and determine if the pool at least looks clean. Inspect on your own behalf and for your child. If you're the one responsible for maintaining the pool, remember you're holding public health in your hand.

Acrylamide

Another chemical has been pointed out by the media. Acrylamide is not exactly the phrase on everyone's lips, but it is nothing new; it's something the EPA set water regulations for in 1974.

FYI, it's an organic white, odorless, flake-like crystal used as a coagulant in water treatment, in making chemicals and dyes, sizing paper and textiles and in ore processing. For the short term, exposure causes damage to the nervous system, weakness and lack of leg coordination; long term, it causes damage to the nervous system, paralysis; cancer.

It's something to learn about.

As far as I know, it's not something adds like a spice or even as a preservative. But if you fry food at high temperatures, it is created in the process.

It's time to eating it and stop feeding it to your kids.

Wake up America. Another reason not to eat fried foods.

I'm not surprised that the chemical acrylamide found in fries, cakes and snacks. I don't think this would be something to sue about, but it is something to know about and to avoid.

I've had my experience with foods that hurt. For the past two years my health has not been good. I attributed it to my exposures to chemicals and my severe allergy to sulfur, After finding no help through modern medicine except more antibiotics, steroids to reduce inflammation, nose sprays, eye drops and more antibiotics, I finally sought help.

It had to be something I was exposed to everyday that was causing all my fatigue, sinus problems, watery eyes, depression.

The culprit seems to have been foods allergies. I got off sugar, processed foods, frozen foods, and yes, by coincidence, french fries. This really started making me aware of what chemicals are in our food. I can absolutely say after several months of watching what I eat, that food can make you sick. Bad food choices can be poison to our bodies.

Fortunately good food choices can make us feel better.

So now, if God didn't make it, I don't eat it, and my health is fantastic. I have energy, no bags under my eyes, no headaches, no sinus problems, I take NO medicine, my vision is no longer blurred.

I'm not trying to set myself up as the poster child for organic eating. I've cheated--I recently had a chocolate chip cookie--even if it didn't stay down very long. It's just that fast food french fries show high levels of acrylamide--from 39 to 72 micrograms. Since it forms in fries during high-temperature frying, realistically, it just means that we can eat our potatoes cooked another way. Besides, who needs all those starchy carbs anyway?

So let's say no to acrylamide. We don't need fries--and other processed fried or baked goods containing acrylamide-- to survive. They aren't so evil they need to be illegal. But we will probably live a little longer and feel a little better without them.

I have said before that being Green has philosophical meaning. Of course philosophy is purely theoretical, and our approach to living Green can not be limited to the philosophical. It has to be purely realistic. We don't live in a philosophical world. We live in a real world. Being Green, Living Green, and making Green choices are not some theoretical thought processes which only affect our minds. These are choices that affect life. Not just our life, but life around us, and the life that is to come after us.

I get a lot of mail from people who share my concerns about how our increasingly contaminated environment increasingly threatens our health.

Just imagine we if we all addressed the issues, we would probably have lower health insurance rates, but who wants that?

Recently I got an email from Mike Cushman, a Canadian who is a prime example of someone who is getting involved. He too has become alarmed by the connection between toxic environment and illness. He read a book by Dr. Devra Davis Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology. Combined with Davis's book, Mike's research and his own family history, Mike had a wake-up call:

• Illness and the contaminated environment are connected.
• Greening the environment should be top priority for us all.

Being Green is not and should not be just another trend for people to make money. It can not be a cause of the week for us to make a so so effort and then move on to the next fad.

Being Green is an imperative.

We must look at all contamination in all its facets. Air. Water. Earth.
We must clean up the contamination in all its facets. Air. Water. Earth.

There is no magic reality. A clean-up won't just happen spontaneously. It won't ever happen if we look the other way. We can not close our eyes. There is only one option for us, and that is to face the issue: we have runaway contamination. It is killing us.

How can we clean it all up?

We must heal the dysfunction of the EPA. We must inform the our public agencies who daily, yearly look the other way and make them do their jobs.

I see the power of Industry; Industry has the funds to clean up after itself. But it does not.
Therefore it is the EPA's job--it is my job--your job--everyone's job--to hold industry accountable.

Thirty years ago, the federal government funded 75% of the costs of maintaining a clean water infrastructure and now its support is down to 5%. One possible solution could be a Clean Water Enforcement Trust Fund. What about a dedicated trust fund that would be used exclusively to keep Industry accountable for cleaning up its own mess? This backed with a two-sided accountability: Industry Accountability AND Administrative Accountability. Americans will NOT tolerate waste, fraud or abuse. There MUST be an effective firewall for this trust fund. Funding must be held to its original intent.

We must all become active participants in Greening the world. Our future generations deserves a greater legacy from us than a ruined planet.

I hate to say "I told you so." But it keeps happening.

Scientific Panel Says Erin Brockovich Was Right. "Sixteen years after activist Erin Brockovich first suggested that hexavalent chromium in drinking water might be a health hazard, a federal scientific panel has agreed with her. " That's a direct quote. And to be accurate, you have to add on a year or two more to get to the day I first started looking into and talking about the undocumented underestimated dangers of hexavalent chromium.

Now there's another batch of scientists who are verifying what I've been talking about. Again. There's an article titled AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water which says "A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows."

I won't say I told you so. It only means that it takes science a little while to catch up with what people observe. (Wait...haven't I been saying that too?)

I won't say I told you so. Though I have been talking about the importance of clean water all along. The importance of having clean water should be apparent to everyone who drinks water. (That includes all of us, right?) Where else do all the groundwater contamination lawsuits come from? There is contamination out there. Water contamination is more widespread than any of us would like to believe.

Other people are saying "I told you so" too. Even Environmental Sociologists like Michael R. Meuser, M.A. Take a look at this website that maps 179 groundwater contamination sites in Santa Clara County alone. 179 contaminated sites in a single county. Why isn't everyone up in arms over the contaminated state of our most essential resource?

But I shouldn't say "I told you so." It's not just industrial solvents, like trichloroethylene, or TCE, a potentially potent carcinogen typical of what industry allows to leach into the water table. This latest probe reveals unexpected findings like prescription drugs dissolved into our drinking water. After all, it makes sense. People take pills; pills dissolve and that water eventually re-enters the water system. The probe talks about pharmaceuticals like medications for pain, infection, high cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy, mental illness and heart problems, anti-epileptic and anti-anxiety medications, mood-stabilizers, even sex hormones. Adding chlorine, which kills biotic toxic agents, makes it worse. Reverse osmosis--a water purification method--does remove even pharmaceuticals that we don't test for but it is prohibitavely expensive, and it can't be done at every source of contamination, like leaky private septic tanks.

But I won't say "I told you so."

We live in a country that proudly announces we have freedom of speech and free enterprise. Certainly at it's zenith, these freedoms can produce the most sublime art. At the other end of the spectrum we find night-time television flooded with infomercials, and daytime television flooded with commercials that tweak the imagination and regularly imply more utopian product satisfaction than any materialistic thing could realistically deliver. We live in a society where radio ads tease us; newspaper clipper coupons lure us to shop here or there, and full color magazine ads tantalize us into buying expensive brand name products simply for the prestige of wearing the label, even if it is only to the nearest Walmart, Publix, Costco, Kroger or 7/11.

Is it any wonder that the internet abounds with a plethora of advertisement? It's important to remember any time you go on the internet, especially if you're looking for "truth, justice and the American way," you always have to do something that your great great great horse-trading grandfather would have advised you to do.

"Consider the source."

Someone showed me this Washington Times article with the following quote:

"Because for every noble, heartstring-pulling Erin Brockovich fantasy, there are countless real-life personal-injury lawyers who erode public confidence in our civil justice system, undermine America's economic competitiveness and contribute to health care inflation with frequently meritless lawsuits."

First, I'd like to say that there are personal injury lawyers out there in the world because there are people who get injured due to negligence of one kind or another, and they need someone to advocate for them. That said, their worst internet advertising is probably no worse than nighttime infomercials; and one's experience with them is bound to be not far off from one's experience with nighttime infomercials too. Remember that night you stayed up late and after thirty minutes of tele-shopper-hypnotism, ended up purchasing some get rich quick real estate program; or some make a million building websites program; or some extreme diet or exercise plan; or some peculiar kitchen device that looked really amazing in the tele demonstration, but is going to spend the next seventeen years gathering dust in your appliance garage. Hopefully the worst thing that can happen is a brief waste of time, or coming out of the experience like Marion the Librarian, sadder but wiser.

Accessibility of information is one of the great benefits of our age; of course it is a shame thee is so much useless rubbish to sort thru. There are always going to be best case scenarios and worst case scenarios. But somewhere between the sublime and the ridiculous, amid that topography of internet verbiage is the path for a victim to find just recourse. And I wonder--is that such a very bad thing?

There's been a public advisory about eating toxic fish. Those of you who have been eating fish because it's healthier, but you've been walking around achy and fatigued, listen up.

" Consumption of smallmouth bass caught in Chartiers Creek from the PA Route 980 Bridge in Canonsburg to the mouth in Washington and Allegheny Counties, and in Little Chartiers Creek from Canonsburg Lake Dam to the mouth in Washington County, should be limited to six meals per year, due to polychlorinated biphenyl, or PCB, contamination."

I see things like this and it really makes me wonder at the thinking. Do I need fish so much that I want a 1/6th portion of poison with it?

So what is PCB and why is it in my fish?

Polychlorinated biphenyl is an organic compound of benzene, carbon and chlorine that used to be used in coolant, electronics, sealants, adhesives, caulking, pesticides, carbon paper, and various other industrial uses. Production has been banned since the 1970s. It is especially dangerous because it is odorless and tasteless, and so stable that it hangs around a long time.

Clean water is always a concern for me. The EPA has set a limit of 0.0005 milligrams of PCBs per liter of drinking water (0.0005 mg/L). Unfortunately, industry released up to 1,300,000 pounds of PCBs into the Hudson river alone between approximately 1947 and 1977. It's seems that it is still there. And PCBs are bad for people.

PCB consumption is bad for pregnant and nursing woman, and harms the neonatal and natal immune system. It is linked to long term immune and autoimmune disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, dermatitis, bacterial infections, and various cancer.

If you want to know more about PCBs, you can contact the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

Division of Toxicology and Environmental Medicine
1600 Clifton Road NE, Mailstop F-32
Atlanta, GA 30333
Phone: 1-800-CDC-INFO • 888-232-6348 (TTY)
FAX: 770-488-4178
Email: cdcinfo@cdc.gov

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Licensing the Right to a Healthy Environment in New York City:
What Will Happen Next?

Raise your hand if you've seen the 1984 movie Ghostbusters. It's a cult hit that has Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson ghost hunting with the use of imaginary technology that attracts the attention of overbearing EPA agent Walter Peck (William Atherton.) Outraged at being ignored, there's a moment in the movie when this reckless EPA agent shuts down the unlicensed "protection grid," subsequently releasing a horde of wonky ghosts to ravage New York City. They should have gotten that license....

I've been pondering the concept of licenses. For the most part, they're a good thing. People should be licensed to do things which require expertise and which could cause harm. It makes sense to license drivers, because driving a car is not a right, it is a privilege earned by proving the ability to control a car and obey traffic laws. Construction permits make sense, because this protects the consumer from shoddy work. Service providers-like REALTORS-get licensed, because licensing confers respectability, high standards and accountability.

Should individuals be required to get a license to test the quality of their personal environment?

I think not.

New York's City Council is considering Proposed Int. No. 650-A. There's one of those two-step double-speak terms in this bill, which concedes the need for "certain instruments designed to detect the presence of certain chemicals, biological agents, and radiation in the environment."

I agree. We need reliable instruments that detect those environmental nasties.

But then the bill moves on to an assertion that isn't so straightforward.

"Such instruments should be deployed and operated only with the knowledge of the Police Department and other appropriate City agencies. "

Isn't this like having to report to the health department every time you take a birth control test? Is it really necessary that individuals pay to get a license to test the quality of their own air and water?

However, I'm not entirely throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There's another section that says "the City has an interest in the reliability and effectiveness of these instruments so that their deployment will not cause excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety that a large-scale public emergency is occurring. "

I partially agree with this statement, but not for the reason they state. The city DOES have an interest in the reliability and effectiveness of instruments and devices available to the public. The city should set, affirm and maintain standards for the testing devices; we all want to be able to rely on the quality of environmental testing devices the same way we can rely on the quality of that pregnancy test.

But it veers into a whole other realm of duplicity when the city claims the purpose of licensing is to control anxiety.

If there is no problem with the environment, then testing should not cause anxiety; testing will relieve anxiety by proving there is no cause for concern. If the tests indicate something bad, then concern is warranted, and the government needs to do something to control the problem, not the reaction of the victims.

Unlike the Ghostbusters, we don't have a protection grid.

But we do have reliable environmental testing.

So I say this to the New York City Council.

Develop standards for the testing devices. Make them available to all. If you license those who test, then don't use the license to prohibit testing; use it to promote testing, and acquisition of test results; then make the test results part of the public record so that environmental quality can be mapped. Problem areas can be found, and fixed. Rather than swooning in fear at the mere possibility of public concern, let's have the government make heroic efforts to be proactive and prevent the problem.

Control the problem and you won't have to deal with the reaction of the victims. Because if you do the right thing and keep it clean, there won't be any victims.

If the technology is available and dependable, everyone should have the right to test their immediate environment for safety.

I'm in the same boat as Mark Twain. "The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Well, not precisely the same boat since Mark Twain actually IS quite dead now; and I wasn't quite accused of being dead. However, it just so happens that someone emailed me a note about a blog that talked about something Erin Brockovich would have been interested in. "Would have been?" Excuse me? My statute of limitations has not run out yet.

I would just like the world to know that there are plenty of things that I AM STILL interested in. I haven't given up the ghost. I'm still live and kicking. In fact, I'm so interested in so many things that if I were the McCaughey septuplets, I would still barely have time for a private life.

To give you a little idea of the things that are interesting me right now...(I'm sure you're perched on the edge of your chair...)

First there IS that pollution map someone said I might be interested in.
The map is here. -- an air quality map sponsored by the Air Now website. In fact, the map is provided officially via "AIRNow, EPA, NOAA, NPS, news media, tribal, state, and local agencies (who) work together to report conditions for ozone and particle pollution." It's a good place to check to see if outdoor exercise is going to be a problem, or if planning a car trip is a bad idea on a particular day.

I've known an awful lot of people who have become sick because of their environmental situation. So it is well known that I have an active interest in a number of conditions like Aplastic Anemia and Mesothelioma . In fact I have a website and forum just for the purpose of discussing topics of interest.

Anyone who reads my blog knows I'm following the activities of Alcoa Australia who is facing a class action lawsuit over pollution. The people of Yarloop, a small community south of Perth, suffer from a range of health problems we believe are tied to emissions from an Alcoa bauxite refinery. Yes, I have been there, and lectured.

Anyone who reads my blog also knows I'm standing with the people to help clean up the heavily polluted Asopos River in central Greece, where industry has been blatantly dumping pollutants and toxic waste in the river and lately into deep wells that may be polluting the local aquifer. Yes, been there too.

I just came back from participating in the First Congress of Modernization of the Public Service of Punta Umbria, where for three days 3000 attendees participated in three conferences and six round tables, setting out an action plan to modernize administration and improve the quality of life in Spain.

Because one of my active concerns is to ensure environmental sustainability I was a keynote speaker at the Annual Global Problems, Global Solutions Conference: Saving the Earth and its People, which featured workshops on a variety of social issues.

Constantly things of interest are being thrown in my path. Some are the same things that everyone sees, like toxic toy recalls.

Sometimes I hear of positive things too. Like the Las Vegas Radio station where one of the disc jockeys was living on a platform in the parking lot on a toys for tots drive. They are accepting new and unused toys, (obviously non-toxic ones) or cash, but you can visit the website to participate. Go for it KLUC. We should all do more of the same kind of project, but why wait for the holidays?

I just wanted you all to remember that I am still here, still fiesty, still working toward a cleaner world. I hope you are too.

Think of how it would be if life came with a crystal ball.

There would never be any surprises. We wouldn't have accidents, because we'd know they were going to happen. In fact, we'd have to get rid of the word accident, because we'd know ahead of time that mishap was coming.

Back in 1948 when my father was a football star at Kansas University, if he'd had a crystal ball, he'd have known ahead of time that he would have to turn down the 2008 Orange bowl tickets offered to the KU living legends, because he had prior commitments: taking care of his wife who suffers from dementia. But then, if he knew she was going to suffer from dementia, he might have chosen other insurance.

In fact, we'd all know ahead of time what kind of old age we'd have, and we'd be able to plan accordingly for the type of care we need.

There is no doubt that my father could have used a crystal ball back in the day when he signed up for that health insurance policy. He would not have had to spend decades paying premiums to MetLife for health insurance that would let him down when he needed it the most.

His problem right now is a whole lot bigger than missing that landmark football game. He's just at the end of his rope, since he stoically took care of our mother for as long as he could before he filed his Met Life Insurance claim. This is just the way he is: always acting above and beyond the call of duty. So after he filed his claim for help with her care, he found that there was a 100 day waiting period before the insurance policy will pay.

Legally, Met-Life is acting within their rights. But I ask you, when an agency fails to perform a morally significant action, what should we do? Because it would be morally significant for Met-Life to come to the plate on this, but if they do not, then the consequences of their inaction will be to cause harm to their very own client who has paid premiums for not days, not weeks, not months, not years, but decades.

This kind of omission of responsibility reflects on our entire culture. What kind of people are we? What kind of society do we live in when corporations can hide behind the legal "bottom line," get tangled in picayune issues and ignore the human consequence?

Where is our moral compass?

This is purely a philosophical question and it is not one that I can really answer for myself, much less anyone else. I was just thinking about Christmas trees.

There's something about having a real tree that is just Christmasy. There's just no other way to put it. The way the scent of pine fills the house, the colors, even sweeping up the needles that are left behind, particularly those elusive ones that you find long after the fact--all part of the ambiance of the season.

But.

We kill the tree to have that bit of festivity in the house just like you have to kill a bloom to have flowers in a vase. Because the big difference is, of course, that the bloom is only losing a matter of days of it's life anyway. When I was little, I always wondered if there could be some kind of giant glass of water to stick the Christmas tree in on December 26th, where it could root and we could stick it back in the ground to finish off it's life. Or perhaps some rooting powder where the tree could somehow be grafted back onto its roots. Unlike that short-lived rosebud, a tree--well, it can live for hundreds of years. How many years of life are we taking from that tree; or to be less sentimental and more scientific, how many years of CO2 consumption and oxygen production are we depriving the world of?

Okay, then, we can entirely avoid that issue with having a live tree--one that's in a pot, and after you decorate it, you can always plant it. Plant it in the back yard, plant it in someone else's tree deprived yard, plant it in a forest somewhere...

But what about the plastic tree? What about those aluminum trees that you have to screw together, and then you can take them apart and put them in a box until next year. There are thousands, maybe millions of these permanent trees that are already in existence; nevermind the "carbon footprint" of all the new ones being churned out of factories. Surely the green thing to do is to keep using them. After all, over the span of its usable existence, each of these fake trees saves how many tree-lives? What is the environmental cost of making that plastic or aluminum tree? Especially when, no matter how well made it is, it falls a far second behind the festive ambiance of a live green tree,

Which brings me back to the question of how green Christmas trees really are.

Evergreens are grown specifically to grace your house for the Christmas season. Evergreens--seasonal tree farms--are a sustainable industry, whether the trees are cut before you buy them, or sitting in a dirt ball ready to plant at the end of the day. Even if you have a cut tree, it will eventually end up as mulch somewhere, sustaining the next plant generation.

Is this a blog demanding that everyone use live trees? Not really. Maybe it's just because somewhere in the back of my mind, the Christmas tree reminds me of the Giving Tree.

IF you don't know The Giving Tree, it is a book worthy of exploration; it is a deceptively simple Shel Silverstein tale that many of us read to our children or in our own childhoods. It's a story about unconditional love, about the gifts of nature. It is a story about the relationship between a boy and his tree; and if you think it is a silly and sappy concept, then read it yourself–(don't be surprised when it makes you cry)–and look at the broader view. Here is a tree who gives and gives until she has no more to give; and the boy who takes and takes until there is no more to take. In the end, the boy is an old man, sitting on the stump of what remains of the tree who gave her life to him, and even then she is happy in her giving.

Is this what we are going to do to the earth? Is this earth our Giving Tree? Is it our destiny to dominate the earth to its destruction or to tend the garden to its fruition?

Could we not each choose to give a little back? Take a little less? Could we not honor our own Giving Trees and instead of using them up entirely, learn to cohabitate, to share our lives without using each other up?

Ultimately, the choice is not between a live green, or dead aluminum tree. It's all about the little choices we make every day.

But whatever choices you make, I'm wishing for you and yours, the Merriest, Greenest Christmas, ever.

Revisiting the Spill
Remember Exxon Valdez?

Who? Exxon Valdez, now called Sea River Mediterranean, oil tanker built by National Steel and Shipbuilding of San Diego, runs aground.

What? 11 million gallons of crude oil escapes into the Gulf of Alaska

Where? Prince William Sound, fouling 790 miles of shoreline within Prince William Sound oiled, 200 miles of which is classified as heavily oiled and in the Kenai Peninsula-Kodiak region, more than 2,400 miles of shoreline are found to be oiled. Block Island, Green Island, Sawmill Bay, Smith Island, *(EVOS Restoration Website)

When? March 24 1989

Why? 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 250 bald eagles, two dozen Orcas, billions of salmon, loons, three species of cormorants, harlequin ducks, harbor seals, herring and a partridge in a pear tree.

Exxon's scientists point to the recovery of "bald eagles, black oystercatchers, murres, pink and sockeye salmon, and river otters" and claim that the ecosystem has recovered.

The rest of the world (i.e. all of the scientists, environmentalists and study groups which are not paid by Exxon) feel the area has not yet recovered. Of course, there's no really optimal way to clean up the thin sheet of oil and the mousse (emulsified mixture of oil and sea water). Burning pollutes the air; using the boom to corral and contain is laborious. only marginally effective, and terribly inefficient; dispersants contaminate the water and food supply of indigenous species; and skimming is an equipment and manpower intensive process which is only successful under optimum conditions of calm seas, fresh, fluid oil and well-orchestrated teamwork. The NOAA's National Ocean Service study suggests "incomplete recovery (as of 1998) include species differences in infaunal populations, different grain size structures and lower population abundances at oiled sites..." (I had to look up infaunal. It means species that live on the ocean floor.)

Why am I bringing this up 18 years later?

It's the one month anniversary of the San Francisco Bay Oil spill. Call it a celebration of sorts, not that it's celebratory. Not with today's news of 66,043-110,000 barrels leaking from the Hong Kong-registered tanker in South Korean waters.

At least the cold weather froze the South Korean spill, making recovery and reclamation easier.

Some things are looking better. All those scientific minds pointed toward oil spill clean up have resulted in a improved technology--a mechanical skimmer whose surface is grooved to pick up more oil–and is scraped completely clean on each rotation. Activated carbon plays a part. It's a good thing technology is improving because the potential of the San Francisco Oil spill is just as bad as ever. Bad for the harbor seals. Bad for the sea lions. Bad for the herring, steelhead and Chinook salmon, and innumerable species. Bad for San Francisco. Bad for all of us.

58000 gallons were spilled from the Cosco Busan out of Port of Oakland. How much oil was recovered is not known. What is known is that it will take a long time for the ecosystem to recover, but optimists hope that the ecosystem can absorb the damage.

There's the rub.

Certainly the world has a balance. Certainly there have been instances of oil in the ecosystem in a natural situation, and the world wagged on. But the world is different now from any other time in history. Humans put an added stress on the ecosystem, and there's only so much natural absorption any ecosystem can sustain before homeostasis can no longer be maintained.

So come on scientists and nautical engineers It's time to put your thinking caps on and help us clean up. Find new ways, better ways. Boat designers, it's time to engineer ships which won't leak. If we can self-seal a tire, why not a ship's hold? Come on alternative fuel developers. Let's find a way to float our boats and run our cars which does not require massive oil transportation and consumption.

Come on purveyors of the new technologies. We believe in you. We have to. You're all we have.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the little dutch boy, sticking my finger in a hole in the dike. Except that the dike is like a piece of cheese, and the more fingers I use, the more leaks the dike sprouts.

I was recently in Greece talking about the Asopos River. Now their government is at least starting to work on handling the problem--porting in water for the locals to use instead of the contaminated river water, prosecuting some of the industries who were guilty of dumping, looking for disposal pipes. Only now I am getting letters that tell me how the remaining industries aren't piping their contamination toward the river; they're drilling and dumping it into local wells, so it gets into the groundwater. I hear that Greek Minister for the Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works, Georgios Souflias is resisting the creation of an independent Environmental Ministry. The people of Oinofita are still screaming for justice. The Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) leader Alekos Alavanos has toured the river and says the local drinking water grid should be hooked up to that of the greater Athens' water utility (EYDAP)--of course that is supposed to already be in the works. By the time the infrastructure is built to support it, he may be in office.

I came home to a mailbox full of things going on here at home.

Letters about TexCom Gulf Disposal who wants to inject supposedly nonhazardous wastewater into wells that run into the local groundwater. I'd always like to take these experts who swear the groundwater is safe and see them drink a couple of gallons of it.

Letters from fema trailer residents, who have come up with sick building syndrome from the high formaldehyde levels. The symptoms include nosebleeds, headaches and assorted respiratory illnesses.

A letter from an Americana Apartment resident having to deal with asbestos dust from improperly removed roofing. A similar letter to a similar situation--in the UK.

And here at home, the untreated local water supply of Woodland and Davis is so full of magnesium, sodium and calcium (and chromium 6) that engineers want to daily pipe in 52 million gallons of the purer softer water from the Sacramento river. This is mostly water from very deep fifty year old wells, but that is augmented by newer shallower wells that tap into a much purer local aquifer.

There's so much salt in the wastewater that salinity is also a problem, and the mayor would prefer to rebuild the wastewater facility. What is being projected is an intake river running from "West Sacramento north of Interstate 5, a central treatment plant near Woodland and a pipeline system supplying water to Woodland, Davis and UC Davis." Local water rates would double and the project would not be completed until 2016.

I'm not an engineer, but this looks like it might be staring at the greener grass across the fence. Would it cost that much and take that long to set up a system to filter the local water? What are the alternatives here?

Because unlike the little dutch boy, I don't think sticking my fingers in the holes in the dike is going to be enough.

My daughter used to bring home artwork made of little beads from school .

Such innocent little pellets.

Who knew that if ingested, they would degrade in the digestive system into gamma hydroxy butyrate, otherwise known as the date rape drug? Over the years, how many children have ingested those little tablets?

Not that it was ever marketed to young children--but there are an awful lot of households with older and younger children. And what younger sibling ever really kept his hands off of big brother's or big sister's toys?

This is the kind of recall that really makes you wonder how such inappropriate toys come to market to begin with. Aren't toys automatically supposed to be safe out of the box? But they are obviously not. With all the different types of benign medically safe plastics out there, how did it happen that some chemist or industrial "suit" chose to make a toy of the particular formation that would happen to degrade into gamma hydroxy butyrate when ingested?

It is a shame that we have to be so vigilant, hunting out unsafe toys thru strip malls, department stores and dollar stores the way our ancestors used to watch the forest for bears. How has it come to this, in this contemporary cornucopia of plenty that it is our very prosperity and ingenuity that holds one of the greatest threats to our children? Were Laura Ingalls Wilder's corn husk dolls this dangerous?

I wonder if the danger is a symptom of our high functioning society or if we're moving backwards.

Just look at the problem in the context of Maslow's hierarchy of need. Maslow analyzed society and need, and came up with a hierarchy of how people handle their most pressing issues in a certain order. First is food, shelter, all the physiological needs. That makes sense. First cavemen came in from the rain. After they had shelter, then they could worry about other stuff. Etc... Then comes safety, and after that is love and belonging, followed by esteem; and up at the very top, when all other needs are satisfied, is self-actualization. Most societies in centuries before this one were so busy surviving, they didn't worry about actualization, except for fifteen minutes or so, during the Renaissance.

But back to toys.

Back in day when we were cave dwellers, Wilma Flintstone didn't go to the department store. Maybe she handed little Bam Bam a rock, and just hoped he wouldn't brain his little brother. (Maybe he did, sometimes. Maybe that's why we now have the song "little bunny foo foo." But I digress.) Probably little Bam Bam and his little paleolithic brethren considered themselves lucky if they found anything to play with beyond the bones of yesterday's dinner. But as we developed society, the idea of toys for children developed. As society became more complex, toys themselves became more complicated, to help children learn to exist in their contemporary world.

So, in terms of watching the quality of toys, we've moved beyond the initial stages of basic "toyhood" and we're looking at toys closer, toward the top of the hierarchy, dissecting them under the sophisticated eye of "actualization." (Because, after all, each generation of children is the actualization of the last generation of adults--or at least that's what I'm theorizing. )

Now that as a society, we are looking at toys in terms of safety, it takes us back developmentally several steps, to safety. Ironically, the only reason that we can do this is because we've actually moved to the top of the ladder, to actualization. We have the time to analyze the quality of children's toys because we've got all of those other bases covered. In other words, Fred Flintstone was too worried keeping the saber-toothed whatsit from the door to worry whether or not Bam Bam's toy had lead paint on it.

But unlike hunting and gathering cultures, we contemporary people have tons of leisure time. We don't search for food from dawn to dusk; we come home from work and have long hours free. Free for self actualization. Free for entertainment. Free for nitpicking the quality of our children's toys.

Don't get me wrong. We SHOULD have high standards for the safety of children's toys. There's no excuse for marketing a toy that's dangerous to its target audience. It's really just that the miracle of our inventive genius--and the commercial market--that is so driven to keep producing ever newer, ever more wonderful gadgets...that keep finding new ways to be dangerous.

With the toy buying season upon us, we should be careful consumers. Specifically, careful toy consumers--for those of us who will be buying for children. Even with safe toys, there's no substitute for supervision or...wait, what is that thing called, I know I've heard of it. Oh yeah. Parenting. There's no substitute for parenting.

Take a look at the consumer group "WATCH."

World Against Toys Causing Harm (Watch) is a Massachusetts charitable non-profit corporation founded by Edward M. Swartz, a nationally known trial lawyer and child safety consumer advocate. I know how often lawyers form consumer groups like this just to be able to draw a pool of clients within an unofficial "area of expertise" but the concept behind this group is a pretty good one. Anyway, this group has compiled a list of toys. I can't say that I agree with all of these items on the list, because some problems, such as Jack Sparrow's Spinning Dagger have more to do with age appropriateness than intrinsic lack of safety. Look at the list. Then judge for yourself.

That said...don't tell my kids, but, when I was little, we rode bikes without bicycle helmets. We skated without padding. We got "Mattel" thingmakers where you'd pour weird colorful goop into metal molds and then put the molds into hot little ovens to make flowers or creepy crawlies; we'd play with clackers and accidentally hit ourselves on the head; paint model sets that came with Toluene paint thinner and throw lethal lawn darts. Neighborhood boys horrified girls by shooting at crows with their pump action air rifles; and the light bulbs in our easy bake ovens actually got hot enough to burn us.

Are parents of today too careful? I don't think so. Our world gets less dangerous and more dangerous every day, and as long as we parents have the free time, we should spend it making certain sure that our children have room to grow in an environment that is as safe as we can make it.

I've seen the One Less commercial. The one for Gardasil. I guess you know it too, If you're in the US and have a television, you can't help having seen it. The one that talks about being one One Less

One less what? I wondered, until I finally sat down and made myself pay attention.

Then what struck me most when I actually heard this commercial was how indefinite it was.

It begins aggressively, with strong girls who have definite opinions. They are very certain they want to be One Less. (One less woman to battle cervical cancer.) Well, okay. No one WANTS to have cervical cancer.

But the commercial gets very indefinite when it starts talking about this miracle drug.

Gardasil. The commercial says "It is the only vaccine that MAY guard..(it doesn't say that it DOES guard, just that it may) ...

May what? eliminate the disease? No, nothing so solid. It MAY help protect. You see, it doesn't actually protect, eliminate or prevent. It just MIGHT help.

What might it protect from? It might help protect your daughters from the 4 types of hpv. Ok, that should be a good thing. And this is especially good because hpv causes 70% of cervical cancer. And then, the ad goes on to say, it might not fully protect everyone from 70%. I won't get started on talking about the side affects that are mentioned in the commercial. I'm more worried about the side affects that come afterwards for a drug that "might protect some girls against some of the causes" of cervical cancer.

And now we hear how some people have died after taking it.

Is this a drug that we should be requiring ALL girls to take?

I would understand if it were a vaccine that works across the board like some of the others. Like the vaccine against polio that actually DOES work to make everyone's (uncompromised) immune systems able to resist polio. But this is something else...a vaccine against a virus which might protect some girls against a percentage of some viruses that cause some cancer.

I really don't know how smart this is to require all girls to take this drug, especially when there's some interaction that has caused several deaths related to Gardasil test cases and it only protects a percentage of some girls against some of the virus that causes some of the cancer.

What if Gardasil causes some unknown thing down the road? The way that there already seems to be some unknown thing--some drug, or food, or additive, or who knows what?-that causes some children to develop autism?

Shouldn't we know more about what this drug is going to do to our precious daughters ten years down the road?

Girls have died from taking this drug. Girls have been found with Guillain-Barre Syndrome that showed up after vaccination. The highest incidence of GBS is when the drug was administered in conjunction with more than one type of vaccine - i.e., Gardasil with menactra, or other combinations.

Okay, statistically, the numbers sound like scare tactics. Three deaths out of how many? More importantly--since those deaths seem to have been related to pre-existing conditions like heart disease, what about girls who have undiagnosed heart disease? Is this drug going to kill off all girls with undiagnosed heart disease? Or was it an interaction with something they were taking? And how is this vaccine going to affect girls in ten years? Can the drug developer's scientific research guarantee that--for example--that a percentage won't develop Guillain-Barre Syndrome as the result of some interaction? Or a percentage bear autistic children as a result? or some other unknown consequence?

A note: Boys don't have cervixes but they get HPV too. Don't some of them deserve protection from some HPV also? If not, why not? This is a disease that is spread thru sexual contact. If this drug is safe enough for girls to take, why is it ok for boys to be carriers?

People. Let the scientists work on this one until it's ripe before we start requiring it across the board. Do we have to fall for a drug company's lobby to make their product mandatory?

I want to be one less.
One less parent feeding my daughter an incompletely researched drug in the hopes of finding a magic bullet.

At least leave the decision in my hands. Does everything have to be a government mandate?

*Note: Want to discuss this topic?

Visit the forum I host here:
http://forum.townsquareforums.com/index.php

No spam please.

The AP had a story today talking about the FDA looking into lead levels in lipstick.

Lead is a known carcinogen that is absorbed through the skin, and accumulates in the bones, causes neurological damage, behavior abnormalities, leg cramps, muscle weakness, numbness and depression. Among other things.

Lead in lipstick. Does anyone else find this as disturbing as I do?

This is especially troubling when compounded with this comment from John Bailey, an executive vice president at the Cosmetic, Toiletry and Fragrance Association.

"Consumers are exposed daily to lead when they eat, drink water and breathe the air....The average amount of lead a woman would be exposed to when using cosmetics is 1,000 times less than the amount she would get from eating, breathing, and drinking water that meets Environmental Protection Agency drinking water standards."

I would like to say to John Bailey that he needs a serious attitude adjustment.

Frankly, it is irrelevant how much lead consumers are exposed to when they eat, drink and live. Because some of that exposure is out of our control. In fact, if so much lead is in the environment, it is even more crucial that companies which produce consumables become ever more diligent about NOT contributing to the problem of lead intake since it accumulates in our bones.

There are some things we cannot control. We cannot control death and taxes. We cannot control evil things other people say. We cannot control how much lead happens to occur naturally. We cannot control our immediate exposure when in transit, when in areas contaminated by pollutants, or exposure when we don't even know the contaminant is around.

Ingestion and dermal absorption are primary ways we take in lead. (I don't think inhalation applies here. I don't know anyone who snorts lipstick.)

Ingestion matters--because we do apply lipstick to our mouths. If we didn't ingest lipstick, why are lipstick and lip gloss available in flavors?

And dermal absorption. Science has recognized the skin's ability to absorb lead compounds since the 1940's. I looked it up. If you want to learn more about it, google this phrase: "The ability of the skin to absorb certain organic lead compounds." You will find an EPA document that talks about "How Lead Gets Into People."

Oh, and I don't want to leave out in utero exposure. It's not one I thought about, but it's mentioned in that EPA document. And it is important, since, I suspect pregnant women do wear lipstick.

Now I'm not saying I believe makeup companies are handing us sticks of pure lead to color our lips. I'm just saying it is their responsibility to avoid putting poisons into our lipstick. And our foundation. And all our makeup, for that matter. And surely, it is not responsible to make light of it.

And be happy I'm not talking about all of the lethal solvent thingees and other nasties that do go into makeup.

As I started to say a paragraph ago, there are a few things we can control. One element we can control is what we buy. So I politely ask Mr. Bailey not to advocate putting poisonous ingredients into something millions of women rub on to their lips. You may be willing to advocate an allowable lead intake for your wife or your daughter's lipstick, but you do not speak for me. Because, Mr. Bailey, I am not a generic consumer. No one is a generic consumer. We are all daughters, or wives or mothers, and we are perfectly willing to vote with our wallet, and go without makeup.

As far as lipstick goes, if the choice is to go red or lead-free, is there really a choice?

You know the old test for mine safety--sending a
canary down into the tunnels. If the canary died, the
air wasn't safe. The canary is just one indicator
that people have observed to check the habitability of
the environment.

So in the old days, we watched the canaries. Now we
watch the mussels.

I'm not talking about Hollywood muscles like those of
the esteemed governor of California. I'm talking
about the 300 different species of prolific little
freshwater bivalves that live in lakes and streams all
over the USA. At least, not too long ago, they were
prolific. And delicious. Maybe they're still
delicious, but there aren't as many of them.

Not any more.

35 of 300 known species of native mussels are extinct.

Mussels, like frogs, are indicators of environmental
health, because of where they are located on the food
chain, and because they are sensitive to environmental
contamination. Mussels are particularly susceptible
to ammonia, copper and especially to pesticide runoff.
Any presence of these items will reduce or eliminate
the mussel population. And think of all of the other
animals who feed on the mussels. That forces out not
just the mussel population, but those animals higher
on the food chain. As far as those higher animals go,
they either they find an alternate food source or they
die out.

Like mussels, animals which are sensitive to the
environment are environmental indicators, barometers
if you will, of the ecological health of a particular
ecosystem. You do have to look closely at what is
going on; some species which have disappeared are
local populations of established species which exist
elsewhere which may have lost their environment
through development. Some species have been supplanted
in their natural environment by the establishment of
some other non-native (foreign) species. But most of
them were lost because they are sensitive to the
presence of ammonia and copper in their watery
habitat.

It is not merely mussels which are endangered.

You know, there's a saying, "Frogs have it easy. They
eat what bugs them."

It's just a saying. Frogs are also on the serious hit
list. I know about dying frogs; they were dying in
Hinkley, sensitive to the Chromium 6 there. Frogs are
in trouble, but not just in Hinkley, and not just from
Chromium 6.

Across the country, frog populations are becoming
deformed. Scientists have been arguing about more
than one hypothesis for this odd development: whether
the deformities result from a parasite "TREMATODE"
which burrows into frogs when they are tadpoles and
corrupts development; or if the cause is a pesticide
called METHOPRENE.

Methoprene is a biopesticide which prevent insect
larvae from developing. It mimics a hormone that tells
frogs where their limbs should grow. (It's a serious
enough issue that the EPA's literature on this
chemical is continually being overhauled because they
too are very nervous about the science behind it. )
Frogs are also sensitive to environmental changes;
and--like I saw in Hinkley--when they go wrong, they
indicate something bigger. So if you're somewhere,
particularly near farmland, and you see a bunch of
frogs with extra legs, they either have the Trematode
parasite--or they've been exposed to Methoprene.

Actually, I'm going to talk about one more kind of
habitat endangerment. Up to now I've been talking
about chemicals and metals that intrude into an
ecosystem. But people intrude too. Physically.
Specifically, I am mentioning this because of an email
I received from a reader who is fighting to save
Mountain View Park from Mountain Bikes and two
wheelers.

I'm talking about physical intrusion. We're talking
about riding two/three/four wheelers in a protected
green area. Tire tracks are not green, people. Do
you really think that lobbying to keep a bike path is
protecting the sensitive ecosystem?

NOT.

Four wheeling sounds like fun...but it tears up the
land. Even mountain bikes. Tires cause all kinds of
erosion, and habitat destruction. Why should tires be
allowed in this park area where within a couple of
miles there is private property dedicated exclusively
to bikers? If you've already bought your vehicle of
choice and paid for the gas, and/or schlepped it to
the park, or if you've already carted your bike to the
area, why not pay a couple dollars to ride it in an
area dedicated to riders--instead of tearing up our
frail parklands? After all, we humans are only there
to enjoy nature. But nature itself is struggling to
survive.

Between dwindling undeveloped areas (let's face it,
nothing is untouched), chemicals poisoning our
forests, and outdoor adventurers who probably don't
even realize they're doing harm, how much chance for
survival do our indigenous species have? Isn't it up
to us to better their odds of survival?

This isn't really a blog today, just some comments I'd
like to make in reply to some of the many people who
email me or comment on my blogs in various places-

To all of you who are trying to sell me medicines
online, and dirty movies. Thank you very much, but
no matter how much I wanted or needed either of these
items, I would not get them online from strangers,
especially those who can't spell.

Thank you very much for the offer to give me lots of
Nigerian money in return for cashing your check even
though your father/uncle/husband was deposed. Would
you consider trading this so-called check for a deed
to the Golden Gate bridge? If you want to do so, you
can meet me here:

4700 Ramona Blvd._Monterey Park, CA
(This is the LA County Sheriff's office.)

To the gentleman who wanted to send me the rocket
launcher. No thank you. Furthermore, I don't
particularly trust people who leave email addresses
end in .exe

To Pedro,

I'm sorry I don't speak Portuguese. I appreciate your
cheering for my work; and I didn't even realize that
the movie Erin Brockovich had been translated into
Portuguese.

To Roxanne:
I don't recall if it was Johnson & Johnson who set the
precedent for voluntary recall when that one bottle
had been tampered with in the 80's. I agree it
certainly is an example of "good customer relations."

To Infowars:
The entire public arena is not a dog and pony show. We
are a functioning democracy, still operating on the
principles established by the founding fathers, and we
are still adjusting to the fact that the modern world
has such a highly developed media. Certainly now it is
easier to disseminate candidates points of view than
it was in the 1790's, The government barely manages
to maintain the supervision which is legally
allocated to them. I do not believe that the
government controls everything; and anyone who does
believe that is suffering from paranoia. Listen
infowars, you better watch out. You're being followed,
your phone number is bugged and they are after you.
But, hey, even CIA and FBI employees need a job.

To Frank formerly from Alcoa,
I hope you find some kind of legal and medical
assistance or compensation, especially if your
perforated septum was related to your employment.
Best wishes.

Liam,
I hope sellers will eventually be able to trust
manufacturers; and I hope manufacturers will stop
embedding formaldehyde, lead, and other lethal
chemicals in their garments, not only here, but in New
Zealand. I wish there were easy solutions, but there
never are.

Panos and Sophia,
Hopefully the Greek government and the local
authorities will rethink letting another 300
industries the "privilege" of disposing of their waste
in Asopos. An industry park where they can pollute the
river without problems or checks from the state is a
bad idea, and hopefully it will fall now that the
decision is under supreme court examination

Pam,
Congratulations on your twin grandbabies.
I agree that the contaminated cloth is bad, and I
think with concern of the workers in China who handle
this deadly fabric 12 hours a day. Let's hope the
Chinese government will start caring for their own.

Gagan,
Sadly, Delhi is not the only place in the world where
decisions are influenced by bribes. There are many
countries on the African continent where bribes are
common place. Until doing the right thing becomes more
important than blood money, what can anyone do?

Trudy,
A healthy environment is a precious thing. An
unhealthy environment can--as in your case--affect
future generations. Maybe one day genetic testing will
be able to medically or genetically patch up the
damage in your children and grandchildren that was
committed directly or indirectly by the polluters who
wrecked your parents' health.

Christine,
I'm sorry about the bone problems (and others) that
you have had resulting from ten years residence near
the Santa Susana site.

Kerry,
Who knows why cuts were made. So much money must be
allocated to ensure tomorrow's pensions that today
suffers. Certainly I don't begrudge the government if
some offices move toward telecommuting practices if
that kind of economizing can save jobs, lower expenses
and the savings are used to increase productivity.
But is that what is happening? Cutting costs wisely is
one thing, but if cuts are made purely to keep to the
bottom line, without considering the consequences, the
Consumer Protection Agency will be having the same
kind of disasters as Brazil's aviation industry.

Lee,
All you can do is do your best to inform your head
office of the situation, and suggest ways they can be
proactive.

Janie!
That V-8 commercial is bothering me too! I just know
someone is going to bash someone else and blame it on
the commercial. What were they thinking? Do you think
they'll have a follow-up commercial where these
characters are being followed around by V-8 drinking
lawyers waiting to bring up assault charges?

Broken homes. We have a lot of them.

Do you have any idea how many single mothers leading lives of "quiet desperation" contact me? Single mothers, struggling to put food on the table, struggling to parent well when they also have to work 50 hours a week to survive; struggling with substandard homes, substandard health care, struggling to cope with vaccines, medicines, produce, and goods they don't trust to be healthy.

You mothers out there, keep mothering. Keep doing what you're doing. Mothers don't have to be fathers, you just have to be there. Let your kids know that you wish things were different, but plenty of kids do fine without a father around. Don't go for serial dating while you're looking for a substitute father; surviving serial temporary fathers is harder on your child than having no father at all. Emphasize your child's strengths. Turn to the healthy relationships in your extended family to provide a vision of male role models.

The father's role is to be a support person for the mother, a breadwinner, a role model, and one of the socializers of the children.

Where are the fathers out there?

I know I'll get email about this, but I'm not saying this to the fathers that are already doing their job. If you're there, you know how important you are to your family's survival. I'm sure you look out of your window every day and see all of those unfathered children out there, and your heart bleeds for them too.

I remember a day years ago, when a neighbor's daughter was standing outside of her house. Let's call her Katy, for the sake of anonymity. Katy was wearing a pretty dress, and very excited. So my daughter talked to Katy for a while, then came back home. I found her standing on the porch, facing out toward the street, watching cars go by, seeming hopeful and hopeless at the same time. She'd look closely at each car as if she were waiting for someone, but then the car would drive away, and with each passing, she was that much more disappointed.

I finally asked her what was wrong.

She said, "Katie visited her father for the weekend."

I found ways to distract her, but there were still weekends after that where I would find my daughter waiting in her pretty dress, waiting for her father to come. And he didn't. I can still see her walking back inside, disappointed and somehow gallant, still believing that he would be there for her, not when it was convenient for him, but when she needed him.

There were plenty of days when I passed up serving my family nutritious food for stuff I could afford just so we could make ends meet. When we had too many starches on the table, because they do such a great job of stretching a meal.

To the absentee fathers out there: you already know the obvious, that without your contribution, your kids are more likely to be inadequately housed, and more likely to be going hungry. Do you know that when you are involved in your children's education, your kids are more likely to get "A"s, enjoy school, participate in extracurricular activities and less likely to repeat a grade? Did you know your being there helps make your child more well rounded, more confident, less emotionally unstable? That fathers who acknowledge their children as capable and beautiful individuals, have children who grow up knowing that they are loved for who they are. But children who don't get that kind of attention from their fathers will be insecure, and have low self esteem. For the rest of their lives.

To you fathers out there who don't manage to make time for your children, or provide money for their support: you're doing an evil thing. You are biologically and socially designed to be half of their support. You know what would happen to your house if half of it's foundation was removed? It would collapse. That is what you are doing to your children: collapsing their lives.

Not only are you stealing your child's childhood. Just like that house with half of the foundation gone, you are setting your child up for failure.

Broken homes lead to broken lives.

You absentee fathers, step up to the plate, and be a father. Before it is too late.

I do want to save nature, and keep as much of the earth pristine as we can. Certainly, I am all for clean air, and clean water, and clean energy. Absolutely, I want the people in Hinkley to be able to drink their water without being afraid they or their children are going to die of some kind of pollution-induced cancer. Sure I want the people near some Australian plant to be able to drink their water without fearing Benzene intake. Don't we all?

But we have to remember...people are part of nature. At the heart of it, people are the reason I want to clean up. We have to love the people too.

I want to remember the people out there who are at the bottom of the "feeding chain." There are census statistics defining millions of home-owning Americans as poor. I'm not going to play the statistics game; I don't know where to draw the line between those suffering hardship and those struggling to survive. Certainly if you own your own home, you're better off than someone living in a cardboard box under an expressway bridge; but what if after paying your mortgage and utility bill, your taxes and the gas (or bus fare) to get you to work, you only can afford to feed your family starches and low quality food; or only for three weeks of the month? What about when you're barely making it, and then you get sick? Overcrowding, temporary hunger, difficulty getting medical care and impending destitution--the difference is a matter of degree.

The point is that even here in this most prosperous country in the world, there are people suffering real material hardship. Millions of people live from paycheck to paycheck. Some of them have no paychecks at all. And what is one factor behind this?

I am on the record for beating the "Made in the USA" drum for a while now, it has been pointed out to me by some of you readers that not everything that says "Made in the USA" actually IS made in the USA. John Bowe, author of "Nobodies" points out many labels on products which say they are made here aren't.

Maybe we need to make sure that the labels that say "Made in America" ARE made here, by American workers. There's enough "American" stuff being manufactured outside of this country that, if it were actually made here, it would put paychecks in the pockets of some of our unemployed; feed some of our hungry children. It would ease the struggle some of our own people who are fighting to survive.

I want to know that when I "buy American," that not only am I getting a sound, healthy product, I am also easing American hardship, feeding American hunger, sheltering American families.

I'm not talking about turning my back on the rest of the world. But it's like those old adages:, physician, heal thyself. First things first. I want to get my own house in order.

It is my dream that we can develop healthy, dynamic ways to care about our own needy, or we can ignore them and pretend they don't exist. And here's hoping that we do care, and we do find ways to show it. I have high expectations for us, because, in America this is still true: the dream of today is the reality of tomorrow.

Here's a fact I saw in a Reuter's article: 80 percent of toys are made in China. (I can only assume that is American toys. )

Congress is looking into Mattel.

The U.S. Congressional Committee panel scheduled a Sept 19 hearing on lead tainted toys. And well it should. Seventeen companies just recalled lead tainted toys made in China and they are under scrutiny.

Safeguarding our children from potentially toxic toys should be a given. And now that there's a push toward fine tuning this protection, how can the government proceed to work on dealing with the problem?

For one thing, they should upsize the Consumer Product Safety Commission, whose job is to "protect the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from more than 15,000 types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction."

The agency doesn't operate in a vacuum. Their proposed 2008 budget is listed here, online:

http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/REPORTS/2008plan.pdf

According to the report, ninety percent of Consumer Product Safety Commission's funding is absorbed by staff compensation and staff-related space rental costs. The largest cost increase is staff salaries. The January report projects that CPSC’s current staffing level will increase by $2,167,000, a projected 3.0 percent Federal pay increase ($1,076,000). The increase also includes other costs such asincreased Federal Employee Retirement System (FERS) contributions ($454,000), two extra paid days in 2008 ($295,000), staff within-grade step increases ($158,000), career ladder promotions ($144,000), and health insurance premium increases ($40,000). No details are included indicating the exact salaries of various positions.

But here are some of the cost-cutting measures listed in their plan:

• Over $1 million per year as a result of closing over 40 field offices, converting the jobs to telecommuting.
  
• $300,000 per year by closing the last three regional offices in 2005
  
• 5.6 million per year as a result of recent staff reductions and reorganization in 2006 and 2007
  

They freely admit they have "maximized staff efficiencies and cannot absorb further reductions without having an impact on its product safety activities."

I know the running budget sounds like a lot, but I don't presume to be a number cruncher. For most people, numbers in the millions, billions and trillions are an incomprehensible blur. Let's hope these numbers which were composed in January will be upgraded to compensate increased need now that there's recognition of the scope of the problem.

Don't we need more staff? More offices? More accessibility? Are there any small business owners out there who operate on a shoestring who are thinking Aren't there some broom closets in public buildings that can be converted to small offices, giving some of those telecommuters a local home base with minimum overhead? Can't punitive fees imposed on guilty suppliers defray the expense of a consumer protection agency sized appropriately to a superpower? Think of it--Toys 'R' Us alone recalled one: 27,000 Chinese-Made Lead-Tainted Coloring Cases. How many safety commission man hours would a fine on the Chinese source provide?

So this is what we should do: raise the standards, increase the staff, and give the enforcers teeth to back up the contemporary standards.

Because the problems aren't going away. When lead is under control--lead being something whose current lowball standards were negotiated thirty years ago--there are an awful lot of controllable toxins running rampant, toxins that we need to monitor.

What do you think?

I've already talked about how I am becoming a more careful shopper.

Sometimes being an American has a lot to do with shopping. Certainly raising children has an unavoidable shopping element, especially during school season. Or summer-camp season. Or any change of season. Or birthday season, which is any time. I remember countless shopping emergencies when I used to run down to the closest retail store and pick up a particular blouse for someone's cheerleading costume, emergency socks for gym, etc.... Looking even farther back, I remember visiting discount stores, especially when the kids were little--KMart, or WalMart or Target--the store names don't matter. Who can resist those tiny infant clothes? But there are always moments in the life of a mother when she's got to pinch the pennies until they scream for mercy. Fortunately, there were always discount children's clothes to be had. Inexpensive, cute, and they didn't have to last that long, because the children were going to outgrow them in a matter of weeks or months anyway.

I remember back in the day when I shopped with a great degree of confidence, because all I was looking for was something I could afford that fit well, looked decent, and had enough cotton in it to breathe. All I had to worry about was workmanship.

I never worried that I might be dressing my children in clothing saturated in embalming fluid.

But I recently received an email about something quite disturbing, and when I started looking into the situation, the facts were even worse than I had imagined: a New Zealand investigative television show did some snooping and reported the formaldehyde content of children's clothes.

Who knew there was formaldehyde in clothes? Apparently it is added to decrease the possibility of mold, make them stain resistant, or to prevent wrinkling.

The results of testing ranged from 230 ppm to 18,000 ppm. 20 parts per million is considered dangerous to a human being. Some tests revealed 900 times that. Ph levels were also tested; anything out side of the 4 to 7.5 range is likely to be damaging to skin.

Here are the lastest test results (from New Zealand):
Women's corduroys: 290 parts per million.
A spiderman T-shirt: 1,400 parts per million.
Pyjamas: 3,400 parts per million.
Kids pants: 16,000 parts per million.
White stain resistant pants: 18,000 parts per million.

Investigators determined that the source of the problem was either Chinese fabric or clothing made in China. In fact, ten percent of the tested clothes revealed one or more of twenty-two aromatic amine dyes which are banned in Europe because they are known carcinogens.

Last month, two young boys (in New Zealand) were injured when their supposedly fire retardant pajamas (labeled "low fire danger") caught fire. Guess where their clothes came from? China.

The US Environmental Protection Agency deems formaldehyde a volatile organic compound, and "a probable human carcinogen." They concede that exposure can cause breathing problems and asthma, and eye, skin and nasal irritation. The amount of formaldehyde given off by garments is relative to climate and humidity. Multiple washings and hanging in the sun may reduce the content, but if you have something that is called "permanent," it's going to be awfully hard to get rid of all that formaldehyde.

Even worse, the Environmental Protection Agency hasn't managed to eliminate any industrial compounds since it tried to control Asbestos. Clothing containing formaldehyde levels this high are banned in Europe, and are likely soon to be banned in New Zealand–they plan to adopt European guidelines–but they are still legal here in the US.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a World Health Organization panel of 26 scientists from 10 countries, has concluded that formaldehyde is a human carcinogen contributing to nasopharyngeal cancer and possibly leukemia.

Wake up America and smell the formaldehyde. It's time to get these toxic compounds out of our children's clothes--out of ALL of our clothes. It's time for "Made In America" to mean something again.

What is it going to take to get corrective action?

Made in America

Once upon a time, we looked at a product and were able to draw certain generalizations-- whether or not these were completely correct, there were axioms we generally could consider true:

Electronics "made in Japan" were superior.
Small parts "made in China" were inexpensive.
"Made in Germany" meant items that were mechanically efficient and usually overpriced.
"Made in Italy" usually referred to expensive, fashionable and frequently hand-made shoes that wore badly but looked great before they fell apart; specifically "Made in Venice" would refer to hand-blown glass.
"Made in France" meant something artistic, avant garde, or gourmet" cheesy" like Camembert de Normandie or Roquefort.
"Made in America" meant something.

Maybe you bought different products from other countries and developed other impressions. Your mileage may vary based on your shopping/consumption history.

But what about "Made in America?"

John Ratzenburger's Made in America" notwithstanding, now, we can't generalize. It's not that Americans don't manufacture--American's still invent, create, build and distribute.

It's just that to know who that is, now we have to read the fine print. The tag "Made in America" has been largely replaced by "Assembled in America." Sure, the Federal Trade Commission enforces what that means. (Follow the link to see their very specific guidelines to what is and is not required. I won't go into the political sleight of hand that lowered consumer costs and reduced American jobs by moving many of them out of the country into cheaper, less regulated labor forces.)

I don't know if it is the FDA or the immense power of the American Consumer, but it becomes increasingly obvious that American manufacturers recall stuff. They do so VOLUNTARILY. They voluntarily pull items for "possible contamination with the bacteria Shigella," "potential contamination with Salmonella," "undeclared drug ingredient sibutramine," "potential contamination with Clostridium botulinum,"--all direct quotes from the FDA.

There are things you don't find.

You don't find that American manufacturers regularly pump up the quality of rice with poisonous melamine as a food additive, as has been discovered in China. Internationally, China is getting the reputation of being the Wild West of manufacturing standards.

We're not alone in struggling to protect and maintain a nation-wide standard in spite of imported ingredients. Switzerland with its highly reputable FDA has had similar ingredient importation issues; in July 2007, Swiss manufacturer Unipektin recalled guar gum (a thickening agent) because its Indian supplier provided ingredients contaminated with dioxin.

So much product is imported, parted out, or purchased that it is becoming increasingly obvious there are differences between items "Made in America" versus items made outside of the country.

It's not that our products are innately superior (though they may be), or that the standards are higher (though they may be.)

It is that our manufacturers--like Switzerland's Unipektin--voluntarily recall. If they find something is wrong, they don't wait until hundreds of dogs die from poisoning, or dozens of consumers are stricken with unwarranted allergy attacks from hidden "peanut" tainted ingredients. At great cost, they pull products that have "possible" contamination.

For the consumer, it doesn't matter if these manufacturers are recalling in compliance with the law, or because they fear our litigious society. Motive is invisible. It's the result that matters, and that result is safer consumer goods.

It is a sad development when a company like Mattel has to recall 18.2 million toys because of lead-based paint potentially threatening children's health. Since that recall, if you search the internet, you can find hundreds of articles blaming the recall on new guidelines, Chinese suppliers passing the buck, etc....

Even so, I haven't lost confidence in Mattel. I can only point out to them that in this case, the weakest link in their chain of operations originated out of the country. At the risk of sounding sentimentally patriotic, I can only hope that in the future, they too will perhaps consider returning to "building American."

The news is out on Reuters News Service. Trailers are showing up on youtube. As summer set in, Springfield Vermont won the right to host the premiere of the New Simpson's movie. This could have been my moment in the sun.

Being on the Simpsons means that you've arrived. Homer Simpson's corner of the universe is one of the classical popular culture barometers of our time. Anybody can be cast in stone, but it takes a real icon of our culture to be immortalized in cartoon. And after nineteen seasons in production, practically everything has been immortalized in cartoon: George Bush, The Moody Blues, Michael Jackson, Cheers, Jerry Springer, Dolly Parton, Michael Moore, Eric Idle, Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, George Harrison, Tony Blair, Stephen Hawking...I could go on.

Some time ago, I was asked to do a voice over and play myself in the new Simpson's movie. It's already in my IMBd film credits. Since it was released early on that I would be in the movie, I have been getting many a media request for interviews.

I could go on but I won't. Alas, I am crushed. About a month ago, Fox called and informed me that "Homer had dumped me" and that I am now on the cutting room
floor.

Oh well. As I said before, it would have been my moment in the sun. Homer will have to save Springfield without me. It would have been fun but that's show biz.

I'm not giving legal advice. I can't. I'm not a lawyer. All I can do is speak from the heart.

And sometimes what I say is heart-rending. There are no easy answers.

I frequently get mail from broken families. Sometimes the source of the mail is the mother; sometimes the father. This one is begging for equal rights, that one is begging for money, time, shared responsibility, or input. Each story is completely unique, and yet no matter how you interpret them, they are all the same.

In all of these stories, there are victims--and those victims are not the parents.

Mel went to court, and now he blames the court for holding him away from his daughter. I don't know the details--perhaps he didn't or couldn't pay the child support. Perhaps his wages were garnisheed. Now he blames the court for separating him from his daughter and writes me for help.

Michelle is raising her three children. Her rent is seven hundred dollars a month, the same amount her ex-husband is supposed to provide, only he hasn't sent anything for the past year. Maybe he was laid off, she doesn't know. Fortunately the utilities are included, and her mother has moved in with her to help defray the bills. Her secretarial job brings in $2000 a month, but there are medical bills to pay, clothes for her children, not to mention school expenses--she hasn't saved a penny for their college educations, living from paycheck to paycheck. Her youngest daughter--who does not even remember her father--has taken a job, but the cost of car insurance, gas and the extra car is far more than her daughter makes. Michelle can barely cover her own car insurance, and the cost of the gas to go back and forth to work has her serving ramen noodles for lunch and dinner several nights a week. She writes me for help.

Jeremy is the gay parent of an adopted child. Or he used to be. His deceased life-partner--the child's actual birth father--died of aplastic anemia after his bone marrow transplant failed. Already bereft from his loss, Jeremy also lost custody of his adopted son to his deceased partner's parents who are in their fifties and in the eyes of the court, will provide a better home for the child. Admittedly, Jeremy doesn't make that much money but he has been the child's parent for the last five years. But the grandparents have a big house in a settled neighborhood; they can afford private schools. And they are good people. But Jeremy loves his child, and wants more than the occasional visitation the court allows. He writes me for recourse--what can he do?

What can any of us do? We're the adults here. We can cope. Children are the victims.

Don't always blame the court first. The court didn't bring you to this situation, or break up your marriage. We all have a degree of personal responsibility.

All I can say to every parent out there is please...consider the welfare of your child first.

Consider it before you consider yourself. Make your adult choices with the welfare of your child being the foremost thing in your personal agenda. The choices are difficult if not impossible to decide. Do you take the better job so you can be the better provider or do you take the lesser job which provides you quality time at home? Do you suck in your anger at your former spouse, and respect your child's innate need for the other half of the parenting team? Do you go to the trouble of working out supervised visits so that your child can enjoy the legal right to their other parent--without being exposed to the alcoholism (or irresponsibility or manic depression or ________fill in the blank with your family's own personal horrorscape.) Do you go the extra mile to do the right thing, and not simply the thing you want to do?

Just remember that children are not weapons to be used in vicious court battles as one parent tries to destroy another.

Erin's OTHER Place


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