Instead of “boomers” we should have been called the “guinea pig” generation. I am native Texan born 1955. I wonder how much better I could feel right now, and how many of my family might still be alive, had we not been poisoned on every level. Food, water, air, and our soil of course, has been stripped and poisoned. When I recently saw a statistical map showing every hazardous waste dump site in the US, that’s when I pretty much threw in the towel, so to speak. It happened this way in West Virginia, and every day, somewhere, similar devastating man-made disasters occur with alarming rates. I’m glad you got mad, and I’m glad you wrote about it. That’s what needs to happen to everyone, no matter where you call home. I wish that many people would copy your post here and take it downtown, to their people, and let others know that the time has come to implement a better system, a better way, because the people are everything. Nothing else counts more. To hell with the idiots who sprayed heavy toxic pesticides on my house and my neighborhood every week in the summer. To hell with the people who invented hydrogenated oils for causing so many terrible health-related problems and illness, me included. They said back then, the doctors didn’t know why. Well, they damn sure do now. You crazy greedy corporate knuckle-heads and you rich fat cats sitting behind big desks counting your money while peoples’ lives are seriously in danger. Jig’s up. We’ve got your number.
My dad, a lifelong firefighter, used to teach Hazardous Materials Response and Safety classes to first responders. The first informational point he covered at the beginning of the course was how to read the classification marks on transportation tankers—the little diamond-shaped signs, usually mounted on the back of the tank, that announce via numerical code what kinds of chemicals are stored in those transport vehicles, and what levels and types of health risks would be associated with a spill in the case of a wreck. The first homework assignment he gave was for the firefighters to go home and stand on the main cross street in their neighborhoods and home towns for about an hour, and write down the numbers on every tag they saw pass through that intersection, then go look up the numbers. Dad said that the next week, when those students came back for class, invariably there’d…
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ephemeral spirit 