Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters
An ambitious accounting (57 pages of footnotes) of the "atomic cities" of Richland, Washington, with its Hanford plant, and Ozersk, Russia, with its Maiak plant. Both cities were chosen as venues for production of plutonium (which, incidentally, has a half-life of 25,000 years). They were chosen because they were relatively remote. To date, the "only use of nuclear weapons in war" are the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima on August 6 and August 9 of 1945, in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed.
The details of the involvement of big business (DuPont, GE, Rockwell, Westinghouse, Fluor, Batelle and Bechtel Jacobs in the US) and our government are sobering, shocking and mind-boggling. A parallel and very similar story happened concurrently in Russia, and both areas have ongoing sequelae. In the beginning, ignorance was a factor but at time went on, and knowledge of radioactivity and its effects on humans and the environment became better known by more and more people, there was outright dismissal of the facts, lies, cover-ups and intimidation of the "whistle blowers" in order to keep the projects going with not enough concessions to safety or monitoring, and very little official acknowledgement of consequences (even as evidence increased). There is no immunity from exposure to unprotected radioactivity.
The folks who lived in Richland and Ozersk became very used to their safe, lovely, relatively small towns, subsidized by the governments and businesses, and most chose not to question what was involved in the production of radioactive materials. These towns were assured amenities (good schools, parks, theaters, police protection, healthcare, cheap housing, jobs), and since the damage from radioactive isotopes is usually not evident for years and is invisible, the residents and workers chose not to believe the sporadic reporting that all was not as rosy as it seemed. Richland was homogenous, white and conservative, proud of their community and liked its exclusivity. The lesser skilled workers, those of color and those of dubious character, were housed in other communities.
Over the years, select citizens, workers, journalists and scientists tried to warn of the dangers inherent in plants where safety measures were often ignored, where construction was hurried along so that Americans would win the Cold War instead of the Russians, where known radioactive materials were consciously (or in error as happened often) flushed into the rivers, or stored in containers which were prone to cracks and leakage, or released into the air where capricious winds then carried the particles far from the plants, where people began getting sick and sicker and babies were born with defects and the local fauna also began showing signs of radioactive poisoning....all was too often ignored, and still is, to some degree.
I read Plutopia over several weeks and ultimately found it fascinating. It seemed to me that the effects of too much radioactivity are not yet clearly defined or even quantifiable. Some folks live long lives; some get sick and/or die. The death toll from Chernobyl varies between "37 and a quarter of a million." Successive generations of those who lived near the plants are sometimes affected. Genes mutate, but without precise predictability, and the bad stuff silently accumulates....in bones, in soft tissues, in thyroids, in reproductive organs.
Hanford is the largest Superfund site in the US, and in 1989, DOE (the oversight agency after the Atomic Energy Commission was disbanded) "shuttered the plutonium plant admitting catastrophe in need of cleanup." Cost was estimated to be $100 billion and would take 50 years! with the imperative to "safely contain 1700 pounds of plutonium-239 scattered among 53 million gallons of other poisons and fission products."
And, just for the record, "1/4 of American communities are within four miles of a Superfund site" according to author, Sandra Steingraber.
I've driven US 14 along the north side of the Columbia River in SE Washington many times. It is a most gorgeous road, with far far fewer cars and trucks than the Interstate on the south side of the river. I will never drive that way again though without a slightly creepy feeling as I pass near Richland and Hanford.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Monday, August 26, 2013
Book: Tenth of December by George Saunders
Hmmm.....this book reminded me of what a French professor told our class once while we were reading Moliere. He said that Moliere was most admired by the folks he most satirized.
I had never read anything by Saunders before, but it seems the literary world likes him. And I did too, sort of......
A family comes to look at a new puppy. But the situation shocks the mom:
"Well, wow, what a super field trip for the kids, Marie thought, ha ha (the filth, the mildew smell, the dry aquarium holding the single encyclopedia volume, the pasta pot on the bookshelf with an inflatable candy can inexplicably sticking out of it), and although some might have been disgusted by the spare tire on the dining-room table...Marie realized (resisting the urge to rush to the sink and wash her hands, in part because the sink had a basketball in it) that what this really was, was deeply sad."
And in the yard:
"When the boy ran, the chain spooled out. He was running now, looking back at her, showing off. When he reached the end of the chain, it jerked and he dropped as if shot. He rose to a sitting position, railed against the chain, whipped it back and forth, crawled to a bowl of of water, and lifted to his lips, took a drink: a drink from a dog's bowl."
The stories are told in fresh imaginative language. They are funny and not funny at the same time. Sometimes it takes a few pages to figure out what exactly is happening. There are stories set in the near future, not exactly sic-fi, definitely more bizarre than the world we know, yet not all that unbelievable....which is one reason to read this book.
Read how beautiful young girls from the third world make money after coming to the US; read how a debilitated cancer patient spends his last days; read of a very ordinary man who wants nothing so much as a happy daughter and what he does to see her smile; read of experiments with mind altering drugs; read of a young man with truly horrid parents who rises above their confining boundaries and does the right thing.
Here is a sad, overweight, middle-aged small business owner:
"He just really hated those beggars walking past his shop with their crude signs. Couldn't they at least spell right? Yesterday one had walked by with a sign that said, PLEASE HELP HOMLESS. He'd felt like shouting, Hey sorry you lost your hom! They spent enough time under that viaduct, couldn't they at least proofread each other's____"
Thanks, Faith, for the recommendation....
I had never read anything by Saunders before, but it seems the literary world likes him. And I did too, sort of......
A family comes to look at a new puppy. But the situation shocks the mom:
"Well, wow, what a super field trip for the kids, Marie thought, ha ha (the filth, the mildew smell, the dry aquarium holding the single encyclopedia volume, the pasta pot on the bookshelf with an inflatable candy can inexplicably sticking out of it), and although some might have been disgusted by the spare tire on the dining-room table...Marie realized (resisting the urge to rush to the sink and wash her hands, in part because the sink had a basketball in it) that what this really was, was deeply sad."
And in the yard:
"When the boy ran, the chain spooled out. He was running now, looking back at her, showing off. When he reached the end of the chain, it jerked and he dropped as if shot. He rose to a sitting position, railed against the chain, whipped it back and forth, crawled to a bowl of of water, and lifted to his lips, took a drink: a drink from a dog's bowl."
The stories are told in fresh imaginative language. They are funny and not funny at the same time. Sometimes it takes a few pages to figure out what exactly is happening. There are stories set in the near future, not exactly sic-fi, definitely more bizarre than the world we know, yet not all that unbelievable....which is one reason to read this book.
Read how beautiful young girls from the third world make money after coming to the US; read how a debilitated cancer patient spends his last days; read of a very ordinary man who wants nothing so much as a happy daughter and what he does to see her smile; read of experiments with mind altering drugs; read of a young man with truly horrid parents who rises above their confining boundaries and does the right thing.
Here is a sad, overweight, middle-aged small business owner:
"He just really hated those beggars walking past his shop with their crude signs. Couldn't they at least spell right? Yesterday one had walked by with a sign that said, PLEASE HELP HOMLESS. He'd felt like shouting, Hey sorry you lost your hom! They spent enough time under that viaduct, couldn't they at least proofread each other's____"
Thanks, Faith, for the recommendation....
Book: The Looking Glass Brother by Peter von Ziegesar
A Memoir....
Big Peter von Ziegesar grew up in an affluent family in the northeast. His parents divorced and remarried. His father's remarriage brought with it a couple of his new wife's children, including Little Peter. This non-fiction account of the two Peters and their families is original, sad, funny and (I think) as honest as the author could tell the story.
Little Peter was a physically lovely child and musically talented, but as he becomes a teenager, he also becomes mentally ill, or at least that was the perception of most of society. He enters and leaves multiple treatments, both residential and outpatient. He survives on the streets somehow but is an addict and often gets in trouble with various law enforcers. He travels here and there, usually on buses. He sleeps on sidewalks and in parks; he eats out of dumpsters. He occasionally is explosively violent, but much more often is a fairly gentle soul with some insight into his fractured life. He is not exactly abandoned by his mother and sister but they eventually become weary. There is almost nothing about his biologic father, and his stepfather is too self-absorbed to pay more than token attention now and then...to any of his children, step or otherwise.
So one day, after years of no contact, Little Peter telephones his step-brother, Big Peter. The book tells of the next few years with many reminisces of lazy summers on Long Island with wealthy, self-indulgent grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and various parental combinations, who vaguely and off-handedly raise this youngest generation, sometimes there, but more often not in any real way. They were not the most highly evolved people with regards to sanity and morality.
Big Peter is now an adult with wife and children of his own, living in Manhattan, successful enough, but not without his own jagged edges.
This book is about all of the above with the main theme Big Peter's presence in Little Peter's life, his compassion, his attempts to "help" his brother with the implications of how nature versus nurture affect us.
Big Peter von Ziegesar grew up in an affluent family in the northeast. His parents divorced and remarried. His father's remarriage brought with it a couple of his new wife's children, including Little Peter. This non-fiction account of the two Peters and their families is original, sad, funny and (I think) as honest as the author could tell the story.
Little Peter was a physically lovely child and musically talented, but as he becomes a teenager, he also becomes mentally ill, or at least that was the perception of most of society. He enters and leaves multiple treatments, both residential and outpatient. He survives on the streets somehow but is an addict and often gets in trouble with various law enforcers. He travels here and there, usually on buses. He sleeps on sidewalks and in parks; he eats out of dumpsters. He occasionally is explosively violent, but much more often is a fairly gentle soul with some insight into his fractured life. He is not exactly abandoned by his mother and sister but they eventually become weary. There is almost nothing about his biologic father, and his stepfather is too self-absorbed to pay more than token attention now and then...to any of his children, step or otherwise.
So one day, after years of no contact, Little Peter telephones his step-brother, Big Peter. The book tells of the next few years with many reminisces of lazy summers on Long Island with wealthy, self-indulgent grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and various parental combinations, who vaguely and off-handedly raise this youngest generation, sometimes there, but more often not in any real way. They were not the most highly evolved people with regards to sanity and morality.
Big Peter is now an adult with wife and children of his own, living in Manhattan, successful enough, but not without his own jagged edges.
This book is about all of the above with the main theme Big Peter's presence in Little Peter's life, his compassion, his attempts to "help" his brother with the implications of how nature versus nurture affect us.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Book: Raised from the Ground by Jose Saramago
A historical novel about Portugal and events leading up to the Carnation Revolution in 1974
From Wikipedia, this is the bare bones background of Raised from the Ground:
From Wikipedia, this is the bare bones background of Raised from the Ground:
António de Oliveira Salazar
Opposed to communism, socialism, anarchism and liberalism, Salazar's rule was corporatist, conservative, and nationalistic in nature.
At home, Salazar's government and its secret police PIDE repressed civil liberties and political freedoms in order to remain in control of Portugal, including the 1965 PIDE shooting of Humberto Delgado, declared winner by the opposition in the 1958 presidential election, while Delgado and his secretary tried to illegally enter Portuguese territory from Spain.
Control of the economy, of citizens and of colonial policy were only cosmetically relaxed until the left-wing Carnation Revolution in 1974. The latter led to attempts to introduce democratic socialism and eventually allowed for the restoration of a full parliamentary democracy.[5]
The men and women who live on and work the latifundio (large estates) are the characters in this novel. They are poor, mostly illiterate peasants who work for the prosperous owners. In this novel, we follow four generations of the Mau-Tempo family. Their priest, Father Agamedes, is of little comfort and gives no lasting solace for his people. They are always struggling and hungry.
"But Joao Mau-Tempo isn't so sure about having set a good example. He has spent his whole life simply earning his daily bread and some days he doesn't even manage that, and this thought immediately forms a kind of knot inside his head, that a man should be bom into a world he never asked to be born into, only to experience a greater than normal degree of cold and hunger as a child...and grow up to find that same hunger redoubled as a punishment for having a body capable of withstanding such hardship, to be mistreated by bosses and overseers..."
The men slowly begin small resistances with predictable results of brutality and incarceration and torture when discovered. Their stories are universal in the history of civilizations and are sobering. To write of the poverty and marginal existence of these men and women is to recognize, validate and honor them. Every country has their Mau-Tempos and we need to be reminded how everywhere and every place there are those with power and money and those without. How the fortunate think of and treat the less fortunate is surely a measure of morality which can be operative in each of our lives, everyday.
Book: Follow the Money by Steve Boggan
A Month in the Life of a Ten-Dollar Bill
The author is an Englishman and he does follow a $10 bill for a month, starting in Lebanon, Kansas, and ending in Detroit, Michigan.
The book is delightful and basically a travelogue through the upper Midwest. Steve meets and hangs out with all kinds of interesting, mostly kind and helpful folks and surely revised some of his notions about these states between the coasts.
He interjects bits of history about the places he visits, but mostly just tells the story of a $10 bill with the serial number IA74407937A. He starts in Lebanon because it is close to the geographical center of the contiguous United States. From there, he goes where the money goes.
One memorable encounter is with the band Crash Meadows and its singer Dean Agus:
"I couldn''t remember when I've seen such accomplished musicianship in a small town bar. Possibly never, and I had hung out in more bars than most....Dean was 36 and past his prime if he wanted to be in a boy band. Thankfully, he had no such ambition and so looked just about right for an earthy blues and rock singer who had lived a little....His mother, Jula, a Gypsy and his father, Javid, had married at at the age of 12, which was not unusual in that community (Macedonia) at that time, and they were struggling to make ends meet as their children arrived one by one. Then, as unlikely as winning the lottery, the family was identified as a worthy case by members of an American church working in the region. They were adopted by the church and brought to the US via France and Belgium and to opportunities beyond their wildest dreams."
These are the kinds of stories Steve tells.
And of gangsters and therapeutic baths at Hot Springs, of apple orchards and wheat farmers, of discovering Chicago, stories of St. Louis and days spent in deer camp near Morley, Michigan...
The title is a bit boring but the content isn't.
The author is an Englishman and he does follow a $10 bill for a month, starting in Lebanon, Kansas, and ending in Detroit, Michigan.
The book is delightful and basically a travelogue through the upper Midwest. Steve meets and hangs out with all kinds of interesting, mostly kind and helpful folks and surely revised some of his notions about these states between the coasts.
He interjects bits of history about the places he visits, but mostly just tells the story of a $10 bill with the serial number IA74407937A. He starts in Lebanon because it is close to the geographical center of the contiguous United States. From there, he goes where the money goes.
One memorable encounter is with the band Crash Meadows and its singer Dean Agus:
"I couldn''t remember when I've seen such accomplished musicianship in a small town bar. Possibly never, and I had hung out in more bars than most....Dean was 36 and past his prime if he wanted to be in a boy band. Thankfully, he had no such ambition and so looked just about right for an earthy blues and rock singer who had lived a little....His mother, Jula, a Gypsy and his father, Javid, had married at at the age of 12, which was not unusual in that community (Macedonia) at that time, and they were struggling to make ends meet as their children arrived one by one. Then, as unlikely as winning the lottery, the family was identified as a worthy case by members of an American church working in the region. They were adopted by the church and brought to the US via France and Belgium and to opportunities beyond their wildest dreams."
These are the kinds of stories Steve tells.
And of gangsters and therapeutic baths at Hot Springs, of apple orchards and wheat farmers, of discovering Chicago, stories of St. Louis and days spent in deer camp near Morley, Michigan...
The title is a bit boring but the content isn't.
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Book: Wilderness by Lance Weller
This is a fine, fine novel, and will probably be my favorite fiction for 2013.
Abel Truman is now an old man, a recluse, living in a shack on the beach in Washington State. It is 1899. He fought in the Civil War and the chapters alternate between his present life and a few weeks in May of 1864 when Abel fought in the Wilderness campaign.
This book has everything a good novel should have, and Abel's story is told with tenderness and beauty, in lush and vivid descriptive prose.
1864
"See them on the road....What little dust their bare feet raises curls and licks the road-side grasses, then finally settles after they pass. Two of them, a man and woman, hopeful contraband, walking north along the road. The man's face creased with worry and with pain, hand furrowed with fieldwork, stiffened and rough, He emancipated himself a fortnight ago, and the root-sour stink of fear still rises from the sad folds of his thin shirt."
1899
"Abel had been watching them since dusk and it was getting on late now for an old man to be up and about in the woods in winter. He fisted his hand before his lips and blew warmth into his cold fingers. Every now and again a great nausea would surge through him, hot, salty waves breaking against the back of his throat, and he had to fight to keep from coughing. When he hung his pale hand in the dark before him, it trembled and he could not stop it. Abel sniffed softly and rubbed his prickly, hairless chin. Taking a breath,he softly blew and figured in was November. "
The author lives in Gig Harbor, Washington. This is his first novel.
Annie Dillard writes: "Here is a book in the great tradition of the novel: a vivid world that wraps and holds the reader who can well lose himself in its grandeur."
Book: Open House by Elizabeth Berg
This was an Oprah's Book Club book.
While predictable, it was fun to read, with good dialogue and credible characters.
Sam's husband leaves her and she is heartbroken. She has an adolescent son, a perky mother, a good friend....
"I sigh, lean back in my chair, close my eyes. How come Rita gets such a good life and I get such a crummy one? ....How come Rita's husband adores her, sits lazily in his char watching her, laughing at all her jokes?"
Sam takes in boarders to earn extra income. She thinks a lot and works through what her marriage was and what happened. She continues with all the daily stuff that needs doing...
If you like relationship books...need a good zuzu book that you can read in a night or weekend, this will probably suit.
While predictable, it was fun to read, with good dialogue and credible characters.
Sam's husband leaves her and she is heartbroken. She has an adolescent son, a perky mother, a good friend....
"I sigh, lean back in my chair, close my eyes. How come Rita gets such a good life and I get such a crummy one? ....How come Rita's husband adores her, sits lazily in his char watching her, laughing at all her jokes?"
Sam takes in boarders to earn extra income. She thinks a lot and works through what her marriage was and what happened. She continues with all the daily stuff that needs doing...
If you like relationship books...need a good zuzu book that you can read in a night or weekend, this will probably suit.
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