Ray,
I suppose your mother is to blame for teaching you to type. You are off and
running with a kind of stream of consciousness torrent running from your
typewriter ribbon.
It makes great reading - I love it - but it's difficult to grab hold of to
answer. You dodge around covering many points - never too deeply, but
always with absolute assurance. I'll grab a few.
I suppose you believe the 20% below the poverty line for the USSR. But then
it is obviously a line. When all avenues of information are owned by the
State, we can trust their statistics, can't we? Ho, ho!
I must confess that I think very little of the statistics put out here -
but there are dozens of organizations who independently work the street and
often disagree with the official stuff.
In the Soviet, one could always go to Pravda for the Truth couldn't one.
Again a hearty guffaw.
Most of the potatoes arrived expensively in the mouths of Muscovites via
the black market. It's interesting how the "black" market becomes white -
or at least gray, when the collective fails to produce.
And don't compare the bleakness of the soviet with the Mafia type society
it is now. To turn 80 years of collectivism into some kind of free system
is probably an impossibility. When people are used to doing everything
through official departments, telling them they can now do it themselves
probably frightens the life out of them.
Of course there was no really wealthy class in the USSR. I can see now the
peasants putting gown their cellos and rushing to Moscow to shop in
the GUM Department Store. Oh, beg pardon, only Party dignitaries could
shop there, right?
Don't knock toilet paper. The US version sure beats the sandpaper found in
some countries. If a guy makes a lot of money to give me what I want, so be
it. I'll enjoy the symphony better if I get back to my seat from the
washroom without a sensitive bottom.
But, you mix two objectives. The job of the toilet paper manufacturer is to
provide what we want. The job of the artist is not to provide what we want
- but what he wants. Whether anyone likes what he does is beside the point.
If, however, he provides what we want, he's an entertainer.
Which is all right. And of course we are rarely in one corner or the other.
We are all mixtures of things.
So, we don't all appreciate some "artistic" things. I doubt the American is
any better or worse than the Russian in his appreciation of finer things.
But, that is not the issue, Ray. The fact is that you want more tax money
to go to artistic ventures. Perhaps you should think instead of a person's
right to use his own money as he himself wants to use it - not as you want
it used.
In a dictatorship, money goes where the bosses want it to go. The USSR
spent money on the arts because it was the thing to do. It showed the
country had class. But, the non-artists lived three families to an
apartment - rather like the illegals in California who often face death to
get across the border to live and work in the US.
But in a free system (and I have no illusions about how the US falls short)
if people prefer seeing a movie to listening to a quartet, that's the way
it is.
You tell me of the privations of the ballet dancer. So? It's the same here.
But, this is what he/she wants to do and this seems to be the way to do it.
What else is new?
I agree with you that American education is pretty awful. Then, it's a
government institution. Catholic schools do much better and (in Los
Angeles) with proportionally one third of the bureaucrats needed by the
public system.
I wonder why you are: "embarrassed and worried that they will replace
America's undervalued cultural capital with a pure Russian one."
Whether art in any form is Russian or American doesn't matter does it? Why
should it matter whether the painter, the triangle player, the dancer, is
American or Russian?
As for the lead contamination, like many things we found out belatedly (not
without hindrance from the perpetrators) that a lot of things are
dangerous. The Unions tell us that apart from the scores of people killed
getting coal to our furnaces, there are some half-million miners with black
lung. (A good enough reason in itself to use nuclear furnaces.)
Will you tell me that in Russia there are no mining tailings, no coal
mining, none of the other toxic results of our desires to eat and be warm?
Do Russians use lead-free gas?
Sorry, old friend, but the USSR will go down in history as something closer
to Reagan's "Evil Empire" than to a failed experiment in socialism.
Harry
____________________________________________________________
Ray wrote:
>To the list,
>
>This is long, (since my mother taught typing). So if it bothers you just
>cut to the next post. But the article at the end is an important one, I
>hope you will read it.
>
>REH
>
>Harry Pollard wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
> And well you should avoid answering it, for their ability to put potatoes
> into the mouths of their peoples is atrocious.
>
>
>The below poverty level in the Soviet Union was 20% it is above that here!
>The difference was in the upper groups because there was no truly
>wealthy class. You can insist that one political group was paid more but
>relative to world wealth and to inheritance, it didn't exist. That is why
>their children often ended up here. There was no advantage to their
>parents accomplishments for their offspring. Here they could make
>money by making American feel better. Violence and terror, true,
>they were as bad as the LAPD in the ghetto or the FBI at Pine Ridge.
>
>You seem to insist that looking at something without bias is to deify
>it. Strange.
>You may very well call the party members an upper class but they had
>nothing compared to the wealth that they have now under the present system
>and the peasants and scientists are operating on barter. Not unlike Haiti
>in the back country and the US in the first hundred years of its existence.
>Slavery, genocide etc. and lots of railroads, plantations and textile
>tycoons,
>children laborers etc. Trying to "make it" in the world always makes brutes
>of governments and cultures. The Romans, the Catholics, the British,
>the Portuguese, the Americans and even the Dutch to mention only a few.
>Some call it Empire I would consider it national adolescence and it seems
>to be world wide including the "outspent" communist countries.
>
>
> It was the job of the State to support the Bolshoi, the Kirov, the two
> Moscow companies (three if you include the Kremlin) and the rest of
> them -
> and they did very well. The people they trained at great expense were
> often
> superior - and they had every reason to be so, for the competition for
> these plum positions must have been great.
>
>Your ignorance is rampant. The Soviet Union had thousands of performing
>arts institutions and major composers (writing in Russian of course
>incomprehensible to mono linguistic Americans.). "If you can't read it, it
>don't exist." Just like their fashions and space program! Seventy years
>into America they were still fighting over whether Blacks and American
>Indians were human or not. Meanwhile in the current U.S., Doctors and
>toilet paper CEOs make more than artists, scientists or master teachers.
>
>Harry, this is embarrassing but are you implying that the
>manufacture of toilet paper (which was terrible in Russia and still is I'm
>told) is more important or somehow more "real" work than the arts?
>
>That is an attitude that made the writers, painters, dancers and
>singers leave the U.S. in droves and still does. Read Henry James.
>Basically the history is that the peasants came here understanding
>Shakespeare and La Sonambula but with the contract for private
>funding of the arts, their children learned to understand much more
>simple things. Meanwhile in places like Kazan the families of former
>serfs know more about cultural complexity than America's children.
>How do I know? I have students who have sung there and told me.
>This is not unlike the miners in Colorado in the 19th century who would
>make most Americans seem like boobs in their knowledge of both
>history and their individual culture's treasures.
>
>Consider that today most can't understand the relationship between
>artistic complexity and the learning of math and history. They think
>of art as a pill to make children smart but have no idea of the
>discipline and processes by which that happens. They think it is
>found in simple listening. Meanwhile the Sloan School tries to
>teach ensemble to adults who were deprived of such complexity
>as children in simple academic three R courses.
>
>Ref. Levine Harvard Massey Lectures: Highbrow/Lowbrow, the
>Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Harvard pub.
>
>
> A very good ballet dancer would be treated like royalty. But, not so the
> bulk of the Russian people. The peasants who suffered under the Czar
> suffered equally under the Soviets - at least those who were left
> after the
> massacre of the millions.
>
>
>I have one of those Bolshoi members in my studio. You wouldn't be
>happy with the things she endured in order to be the best. Nothing
>"Royal" about those things. Or do you just resent the fact that they
>could eat and had a regular salary to live on? They couldn't eat much
>however, if they wished to survive the rigor. Their life style was middle
>to upper middle class here. "Oh horrors! Artists?"
>
>I'm putting an article at the end of this just for you and your attitude. I
>know about the massacre of millions first hand and my historian father's
>professor wrote the book on the Kulaks long before anyone else
>paid attention. He also spoke of the millions here both native and black
>as well. Have you no shame? You know Harry, the hard thing for me
>to understand is that the only Fed you seem to approve of is the police.
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is the part of the government that I
>learned to fear, not those researchers, and other bureaucrats who only
>take your money.
>
> The Soviet was the country of the very rich and a poor that suffered
> deprivation that makes our inner cities look like heaven. As soon as they
> were allowed, the Republics got away. As soon as they could, the more
> able
> people dodged around the barbed wire at the borders.
>
>
>Obviously you haven't been reading what those writers who wrote such
>things from the isolation of the Soviet Union and their dream of "Amerika"
>are now saying. Check out the net or the FW archives.
>
> Welcome them! There won't be many peasants, but the well-trained elite
> will
> head for the US and other western countries.
>
>Translate that into regular old children of peasants who were trained in
>chemical engineering and who now work for cosmetics firms in NJ. Who
>do you know? I lived amongst these people in a summer RV park for
>8 years. That your stories are inaccurate is putting it mildly. These
>"elite" you described are teachers and other middle class folks who were
>trained in good schools and who now are building schools here just
>like back home except they are better than ours. Also their kids are
>playing Mozart Concerti in the third and fourth grades. But I would
>only call them "elite" in relation to the undisciplined under cultured,
>over technologied average citizen that they beat out here for jobs.
>
>I can hear you claiming that I like them. Well I do but I am embarrassed
>and worried that they will replace America's undervalued cultural capital
>with a pure Russian one. If you read the archives you will see this
>point of view coming from my writing. Don't just live in the moment,
>study up and get caught up with what you've missed while you were
>out there making money.
>
>
> That they are available for
> American kids is a pretty happy thing for us. That it cost the Russian
> peasant who paid for their training a bowl of soup a week we can forget.
>
>They are the children of peasants themselves. We have our versions of
>the same. (see article at end)
>
>
> You might wonder, occasionally, why the US tries to keep people out by
> force - while the old Soviet Union used force to keep people in. Doesn't
> that tell you something? Are you able to see what is there behind your
> conditioning?
>
>The "yellow brick road" was invented by L. Frank Baum, the editor of the
>Antelope SD Gazette who advocated the complete annihilation of my
>ancestors. That someone dreams is not surprising. That they like a
>wild west atmosphere is also not surprising. That the the people who
>wrote those articles have changed their minds is also not surprising.
>That the "meek" come here and adjust rather than live in Russia today
>is also not surprising. Most people know how to adapt. Witness the
>artists who love America and their families and who have filled the
>performing institutions of Europe until there are no more openings.
>They did not want to leave but they call Germany "Heaven" and working
>in the U.S. "Hell." They are immigrants to Germany and Austria.
>
>
> Any able person worth his salt heads for the US. My nephew - an
> anesthesiologist - now in Virginia told me with amazement the change.
> While
> back in England the doctors over coffee would discuss football results,
> here they discuss their investments.
>
>And I have students from there who go home for their operations. They
>get poor care from physicians (Dept. of Labor Stats places MDs as the
>highest paid profession in America, far above company CEOs) who
>care more about investments.
>
>But there are wonderful Doctors here who care and sacrifice and
>then there are the ones who complain about money being spent for
>anything but their personal operations and then they can't be
>paid enough. There are old fashioned Drs. from America
>who have served in foreign mission fields and who represent the best
>in Christianity and then there are the Jimmy Swaggerts. My cousins are
>the first as are the Doctors at the VA but I found nothing but "Swaggerts"
>in the private "for profit-health care Industry." You should stay away
>from anyone who calls healing an "Industry."
>
> Once you have been trained at considerable expense to the English or
> Russian peasants, go for the money - which you will get in the US.
>
>Actually I agree with this as being true. Which is what I was saying about
>the Intellectual Capital issue with our computer companies. "Process,"
>Harry, "process!" What you claim to be "riding off in different
>directions"
>is really just the same process in different contexts. You have to put
>linear
>thought in its context. It is only one of the many possibilities, but
>process
>or structural thought can be carried across boundaries to open up thinking.
>
> Of
> course, I'm glad the kids are going to Russia to study "Stanislavsky
> techniques". I'm sure you know that Stanislavsky predated the Soviet.
>
>Stanislavky was a devout communist who believed in his revolution. Do
>you mean to imply that George Washington was a Tory since he got his
>education and wealth in an Aristocratic context?
>
> Maybe you should commend the Czar for initiating Stanislavsky and his
> techniques. But, you won't.
>
>Are you praising King George? Process Harry!
>
> When you properly mention the lead in your bones, a picture floats before
> me of a Russian service station "Lead or no-lead, Sir?" Ho, ho, ho!
>
> I'm sorry, Ray, but your God has indeed failed and I can understand the
> unhappiness that attends such a philosophical disaster.
>
>
>Do you mean to imply that a political system is my God? What kind of
>foolishness is that? As for your first statement consider the following
>article from the Daily Oklahoman newspaper about the situation on the
>reservation where I grew up and my mother and father gave their lives and
>safety for the education of the children.
>
>======================================================
>
> Who will save the children of Ottawa County?
>
> 12/09/1999
> By Tom Lindley
> Staff Writer
>
> PICHER -- In the beginning, the unforgiving
> lead and zinc
> mines of Ottawa County attacked the strong,
> reducing
> hardened miners to frail, hollow-eyed castoffs
> who spit up
> their lungs piece by piece in tin buckets
> placed next to their
> death beds.
>
> Today, it is the young and the innocent who pay
> the stiffest
> price. The levels of lead in their blood are
> alarmingly high
> and their futures are as precarious as the
> ground that sits
> above the more than 300 miles of abandoned mining
> tunnels in the far northeast corner of Oklahoma.
>
> The Environmental Protection Agency has spent
> more than
> $40 million and had almost 17 years to address
> some of
> the most disturbing and confounding water, soil
> and
> airborne contamination problems in the country.
> It now
> believes the cleanup operation could cost $500
> million, a
> sum no one is prepared to spend on the site, which
> includes the communities of Picher, Cardin,
> Quapaw,
> Commerce and part of North Miami.
>
> But the cleanup of the 40- square-mile area
> known as the
> Tar Creek Superfund site has been largely
> marked by poor
> judgment, neglect and mismanagement.
>
> Embattled EPA officials finally drew a small
> line in the sand
> last week.
>
> In an eight-page report, the EPA said it hopes
> to eliminate
> the use of a potentially hazardous mining waste
> referred to
> as chat and has threatened to take enforcement
> action
> against anyone who recontaminates residential
> areas that
> the EPA has cleaned up.
>
> At the same time, state Department of
> Environmental
> Quality Executive Director Mark Coleman said
> Tuesday his
> department intends to use existing statutes to
> start
> regulating the commercial sale of chat in an
> attempt to
> keep it out of residential areas and away from
> children.
>
> The silt-sized mining tailings contain heavy
> metals,
> particularly lead, and pose serious health
> risks to children 6
> years old and younger. Because of its hardness,
> chat is a
> road builder's delight and has been used as
> road fill, and in
> driveways, playgrounds, concrete foundations
> and even
> sandboxes.
>
> The recent flurry of governmental action may be
> too little
> and too late to help Ashley, a 4-year-old
> blue-eyed blonde
> who is among the latest victims of lead poisoning.
>
> "We thought she was just having tantrums like
> some kids
> do," said Ashley's grandfather, Leroy Byrd.
> "She was just
> so hyper ... then we found out it was the poison."
>
> Three years ago, a health study revealed that
> 38.3 percent
> of the children tested in Picher, 62.5 percent
> of the children
> tested in nearby Cardin and 13.4 percent of the
> children
> tested in Quapaw had elevated blood lead
> levels, compared
> with less than 2 percent in the rest of the state.
>
> Lead is poisonous because it interferes with
> some of the
> body's basic functions, according to the EPA.
> The body
> cannot tell the difference between lead and
> calcium, which
> is a mineral that strengthens bones. Like
> calcium, lead
> remains in the bloodstream for a few weeks,
> then is
> absorbed into the bones, where it can collect
> for a lifetime.
>
> In children, low levels of lead exposure can
> cause nervous
> system and kidney damage, learning
> disabilities, attention
> deficit disorder and lower intelligence.
>
> The high lead levels in the series of mining
> towns prompted
> the EPA to rush in with bulldozers and men in
> moonsuits to
> scrape up to 18 inches of lead- contaminated
> topsoil off
> school playgrounds, off ball fields and away
> from more than
> 1,000 homes where the lead concentration was
> above 500
> parts per million.
>
> Two years later, at least another 800 homes
> remain on the
> remediation list.
>
> Banned from school
>
> Ashley has been sent home permanently from
> kindergarten
> for kicking a teacher in the shin. But the
> two-bedroom
> house she lives in near the center of Picher is
> no haven,
> even though the EPA trucked in new soil and
> planted new
> sod more than a year ago in her yard.
>
> "When she has one of her fits, you just want to
> hug her and
> hold her tight," Byrd said. "But that won't do
> any good. You
> just have to let her go."
>
> Most often, that's outside, where Ashley loves
> to ride her
> brother's toy plastic tractor and where giant
> chat piles still
> dominate the landscape.
>
> At one time, an estimated 165 million tons of the
> milky-white mining tailings proudly proclaimed
> Picher as
> the lead mining capital of the United States.
> Now those
> man-made mountains have the potential to induce
> lead
> poisoning the way the underground dust the
> miners of
> yesteryear ingested gave them silicosis,
> tuberculosis, lung
> cancer and liver failure in numbers far greater
> than the
> average.
>
> Mary Happy, a community education nurse with Grand
> Gateway Economic Development Authority, wants
> to help
> find the Byrds housing in a safer area. But
> they won't go,
> even though Ashley's younger brother also is
> testing high
> for lead.
>
> "My neighbor is letting us stay here for free,"
> said Byrd,
> who is disabled and supports his family on a
> $553 monthly
> Supplemental Security Income check. "He told us
> we can
> live here the rest of our lives. This is the
> most peaceful and
> friendly place we've ever lived."
>
> Out here where the foothills of the Ozarks meet
> up with the
> Oklahoma prairie, one man's home is another man's
> nuclear-war- inspired nightmare.
>
> Most outsiders take one look at the acidic
> water in Tar
> Creek, the piles of chat, the sinkholes, the
> cave-ins and the
> black holes where men were lowered into the
> ground to
> retrieve ore and conclude they have landed on
> the moon, or
> worse.
>
> But the common denominator is that for too long,
> practically no one -- neither the mining
> companies nor the
> federal, state and local authorities who
> regulated them -- did
> much to examine the toll it was taking on the
> land and the
> people.
>
> In describing the Tri- State Mining District
> today, Coleman
> said, "This is a problem whose magnitude is
> difficult to
> understand unless you've seen this place."
>
> Others think "the right people" simply haven't
> cared to visit,
> namely national and state politicians and key
> EPA officials
> who determine the priorities.
>
> At first, water
>
> Although the EPA declared Tar Creek to be one
> of the most
> contaminated sites in the country in 1983, it
> all but
> abandoned Ottawa County in 1988 after spending
> more
> than $7 million in a failed attempt to prevent
> mine water
> containing lead, cadmium and arsenic from
> surfacing and
> emptying into Tar Creek.
>
> It wasn't until 1994, when a study by an Indian
> clinic
> revealed the extent of lead poisoning among
> area children,
> that authorities realized they had a crisis on
> their hands,
> the likes of which hasn't been seen elsewhere
> in the
> country.
>
> "I don't want to alarm people, but given the
> substance of the
> land and the vast amounts of water, wouldn't
> you love it for
> the ground to open up and the chat piles to
> drop in?" said
> Niall Kirkwood, associate professor at the
> graduate school
> of design at Harvard University.
>
> Kirkwood, who is part of a Harvard research
> team that
> hopes to provide real tools and techniques for the
> community to reclaim the area, said Tar Creek
> has more
> obstacles than most contaminated landscapes.
>
> Among them:
>
> The high exposure to lead from chat piles, mill
> ponds and
> lead- based paint that for decades was
> manufactured and
> sold by the local mining company.
>
> The water quality in Tar Creek and the danger
> it poses to
> Grand Lake and its blossoming resort community.
>
> The former mined areas, many of which sit below
> homes
> and businesses, that are still sinking.
>
> The overall environmental quality and the
> proximity of
> community buildings, schools, tribal
> headquarters and
> homes to the sources of lead.
>
> The broader environmental concerns regarding
> water quality
> and flooding.
>
> "One thing I have not heard expressed is: What
> is the future
> of this site, I mean 20 or 30 years down the
> road?"
> Kirkwood said. "Is there any visionary thinking
> for the
> environment to become cleaner and less disturbed?"
>
> EPA and state officials admit they are taking
> the cleanup
> piece by piece.
>
> Noel Bennett, the EPA's project manager for the
> site,
> predicts that it will be "several decades
> before the site is
> cleaned up."
>
> "We are concerned about the continual spread of
> this
> material by misuse," he said. "Some uses are
> acceptable,
> some are not."
>
> The latest EPA fact sheet is designed to make sure
> children don't play in unsafe areas, while
> putting into place
> guidelines allowing chat to be sold for use on
> nonresidential
> roads.
>
> "To imply that we've got a fully figured out
> plan, well, we
> don't," Coleman said. "But if I waited until we
> did, we would
> be waiting to eternity. Our biggest problem is
> elevated blood
> levels in children, and the results we've
> gotten recently have
> been encouraging. The levels have been cut in
> half."
>
> It's been estimated that it would take more
> than $500
> million to return northern Ottawa County to a
> pristine-like
> state.
>
> Phillip Allen, newly appointed residential
> manager for the
> EPA, said, "It would be hard to go to EPA
> headquarters
> and get a half-billion dollars."
>
> While the EPA has footed most of the bill, the
> state also
> has trouble enlisting support from lawmakers
> for the 10
> percent state match that is required at
> Superfund sites,
> Coleman said.
>
> "We have had an uphill battle convincing anyone
> that this is
> a problem," Coleman said. "And without the
> locals thinking
> it was a problem, it was hard to convince
> anyone else."
>
> As an example, the EPA's promise to crack down
> on chat
> users who recontaminate remediated sites came in
> response to evidence that residents whose lawns
> had been
> replaced were covering their driveways with chat.
>
> Allen does promise continuity and cooperation
> as the yard
> cleanup phase winds down next year, adding, "I
> hope to
> add to the residents' comfort level."
>
> However, Earl Hatley, environmental director
> for the Quapaw
> tribe, whose members still own 70 percent of
> the land in the
> Superfund site, predicts the winds will
> continue to blow and
> that two years after the EPA has completed the
> remediation project, the yards will be
> recontaminated.
>
> "The EPA still doesn't have a vision for what
> to do," he said.
> "This is a Band-Aid approach, and the Band-Aid
> doesn't
> have any stickum."
>
> It has been estimated that the mining
> operations, which
> began in 1891 and ceased in the late 1950s when
> imported
> lead cut into the U.S. market, produced more
> than 160
> million tons of chat. About 60 million tons
> remain. The rest
> was either stolen or sold -- chat now sells for
> about $1.20 a
> ton -- but there are no records to indicate
> where it went.
>
> "At some point, we will begin to chase down
> where the chat
> went," Coleman said. "There are just a bundle
> of public
> safety issues."
>
> Ominous prediction
>
> As early as the 1940s, the U.S. Bureau of Mines
> predicted
> a calamity resulting from the many
> interconnected mine
> openings filling with water that had previously
> been pumped
> out from the acquifer.
>
> "The rising water table would dissolve great
> quantities of
> soluble sulphates and would become high in carbon
> dioxide, minerals, acids and salts (especially
> sulphates of
> iron and aluminum) which hydrolyze to create
> acid water,"
> the prophecy read.
>
> In 1979, more than a decade after the last of
> the mines
> closed, acid mine water began finding its way
> to the
> surface, turning Tar Creek orange and
> eliminating aquatic
> life. Experts have been looking unsuccessfully
> for ways to
> keep the ooze out of Tar Creek and the
> tributaries that flow
> into Grand Lake ever since.
>
> As the state environmental department focuses
> on locating
> the hundreds of potentially dangerous mine
> shafts and the
> EPA winds down its remediation program, health
> professionals and environmentalists will take
> up the
> crusade.
>
> Meanwhile, Ashley's fate is yet to be determined.
>
> "Each child is different," Mary Happy said.
> "Ashley has so
> many strikes against her. But it's hard to
> predict what will
> happen to her."
>
> In addition to remediating her grandparents'
> yard, several
> other steps are under way. Ashley, for example,
> has been
> referred to the county health department for
> frequent lead
> monitoring and nutrition counseling.
>
> Her family also is using an EPA-designed
> special cleaning
> technique that makes her house safer until the
> home's
> lead-based paint can be removed as part of Grand
> Gateway's $1.4 million project to remediate 51
> homes in
> the area.
>
> When Ashley's house was first inspected for lead
> contamination, the first things to go were the
> mini- blinds,
> which showed high levels of lead.
>
> "I took them down, replaced them with curtains
> and took
> the blinds to the hazardous waste site," Happy
> said.
>
> Ashley's blood level is still testing in the 18
> ug/dl range,
> Happy said. (Lead is measured in micrograms, or
> ug, per
> unit. One microgram is equal to one- millionth
> of a gram.)
> Levels above 10 ug/dl can cause learning
> disabilities, can
> affect a child's IQ and social behavior, and
> may require
> medical attention.
>
> It would be easier if lead poisoning had a
> face, but it
> doesn't, said Susan Waldren, director of the
> Ottawa County
> lead poisoning program.
>
> "It's tasteless and odorless," she said. "At
> one time, we
> didn't understand the cause and effects of
> smoking, and it's
> the same with lead poisoning. We know some
> children are
> more affected than others and that the more
> susceptible
> children are those with a lot of hand-to-mouth
> activity.
>
> The problem is that when a lot of families
> don't have enough
> money to feed their kids, lead poisoning isn't
> very high on
> their lists of concerns.
>
> (This sounds like the water problem in
> Bengladesh REH)
>
> Rebecca Jim, a Miami High School counselor who has
> spearheaded a lead awareness campaign among
> Cherokee
> students and others in the community, hopes to
> see a day
> when the chat piles don't always symbolize the
> land of
> lead.
>
> (You can always count on culture and family to
> care and
> rescue people. REH)
>
> Jim said she doesn't see the chat piles the way
> they are
> today. Instead, she thinks about how they will
> look in the
> future.
>
> "I see them gone," she said.
>
> It can happen the same way mountain monuments
> to her
> Cherokee ancestors were built in their North
> Carolina home
> -- one bucket at a time.
>
> "If everyone figuratively takes a bucket and
> puts it back,"
> she said, "this can be a tall prairie of grass
> some day."
>
>
> =============================================
>
>Thanks,
>
>Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
>The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
