For me, every day is Earth Day, and for LEAD Agency every time the phone rings at our office, we learn another aspect of what that could mean.

As the Tar Creekkeeper, water is life. But lately I have been thinking what on earth we can do about our air.
Folks in Alabama are dealing with the human waste from New York City being hauled there and land filled. They say it "smells like death." Few regulations and cheap land prices and a great need for New York City to find a refuge for their waste came together for their community.

Sometimes communities make choices, industries, sometimes individuals make them.
We make choices in own homes, and may find when installing brand new kitchen cabinets some of  which have been found to emit toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls).

I wasn't the only person thinking about air, there were an abundance of articles on air published this week revealing:
More than 95 per cent of the world’s population are breathing dangerously polluted air, with those in developing countries at considerably greater risk, facing a double whammy of breathing unsafe air both inside the home and out.

Total air pollution was responsible for 6.1 million deaths in 2016, with ambient (outdoor) air pollution being the largest contributor, accounting for 4.1 million deaths, according to a large-scale study by the Health Effects Institute.
 “Air pollution takes a huge personal toll worldwide, making it difficult to breathe for those with respiratory disease, sending the young and old to hospital, missing school and work, and contributing to early death” said Bob O’Keefe, Vice President of HEI.

“Exposure to air pollution, not just through the workplace but through other channels, such as during early childhood or the in utero stage, could have lasting long-term consequences on the labor market productivity — the economic productivity of basically the next generation,” says Rossin-Slater.

The air our mothers breathe is important.
Inhalation of metals may be particularly toxic because metals can be transported directly to the brain by breathing them. LEAD Agency partnered with Harvard with the MATCH Study to understand the impact on our mothers and their babies exposed to metals. Our air monitors in Quapaw, Picher and Miami measured PM 2.5 and PM 10 for 61 weeks. We discovered resuspension of chat, previously deposited on paved and unpaved roads, may be a more important transport mechanism at the Quapaw and Miami sites.

It is important to note the size of any particulates can cause harm, not limited to the type of material it is. A number of studies look at what air pollution means for education with slower cognitive development in school.

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Act of 1970, established air quality standards that are supposed to take into account health and economic assessments of pollutants, business and agriculture were generally opposed to regulations and many continue to be opposed.

In some of the larger cities in the country, the weatherman reports the weather, but also reports on the air quality. Poor air quality would indicate high levels of tiny pollution particles known as PM 2.5 which can be tied to spikes in emergency department visits for heart- and lung-related illnesses and stroke, a California study suggests. Smaller towns like Miami do not have a system to collect and produce alerts when we are having a "bad air day."

Last year, Sefi Roth, assistant professor of environmental economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, in an analysis of relevant studies, summarized some possible explanations for why air pollution may affect academic performance and ultimately “human capital formation,” defined as the skills, knowledge and experience accumulated by an individual.

First, the brain uses a lot of oxygen and may get less of it when a person is breathing in polluted air. Second, air pollution also appears to affect the development of the brain itself in young children, although the full range of impacts are not fully understood. Third, individuals experiencing physical symptoms associated with air pollution, from eye irritation to asthma attacks, may simply not function as well or even miss school altogether. Ultimately, these disruptions could alter a person’s entire career path.

In a separate study by a team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, researchers found that people with lung disease are more likely than those with heart diseases to be aware of the risks they face during poor air quality alerts.

“Targeted public health messages about air quality might raise awareness about alerts and motivate changes in behavior among those at risk during periods of unhealthy air quality,” said Maria Mirabelli of the CDC’s Asthma and Community Health Branch.

This same researcher suggested that we be aware of air quality alerts. I am suggesting we begin testing our air so we might begin giving those alerts and develop strategies to reduce air pollution from all sources in our county.

Earth Day for LEAD Agency will be celebrated in Tulsa at the Guthrie Green on Sunday afternoon while Friday will be spent at the Wyandotte Nation's Environmental Festival. But as you know you can celebrate Earth Day every day. And each of those days are filled with the air we breathe.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

This week I listened to a poet talk about this place. There is something different about a poet. The way they perceive the world around them and sum that up in words can leave regular people speechless. It happened to me, perhaps to the others who listened to the how and why each poem came to be and who might be the teller of those words.

As a woman drawn to water like a dreamy magnet Maryann Hurtt seeks out water with a passion. Having family roots here, when she arrived she found Tar Creek and was shocked and amazed when she noticed "someone had methodically sprayed orange neon paint along the creek banks and the water was pumpkin tinged. She could not imagine the energy or the possible motive to so completely vandalize  the creek." 

At the poetry reading we entitled, "Once Upon a Tar Creek" for the soon to be published volume, Mrs. Hurtt began with the line, "I didn't always look this way" to allow the part snake, feathered creature she first encountered in Tar Creek to speak in the first poem.  She longs for yet another glimpse each time she returns.

I have to say, Maryann Hurtt got hooked on Tar Creek. It was the defiled water that outraged her.

When she got home in Wisconsin, she read everything she could about this creek and this place. Each time she has returned to Oklahoma, she meets more people and asks more questions. What she did for our audience was to simply ask questions like, "Have you heard of the 3 story barn? Did you know the significance of the man who built it?"

She has found the places her grandparents worked and visits them. It was in the Mining Museum in Picher she saw the picture of her grandfather as a miner and I know how she must have looked when she gazed upon his face, because I saw that look on Donna Webster's face when she found her father as a young man on those walls. Both men died young from the dust. The dust in the mines caused silicosis. Maryann's father thought he could out run it and took his family away during the dustbowl, but it got him anyway.

Each time she comes, she eats a breakfast at the Mini-Mall in what was a Miami hotel, because her grandmother used to cook in the cafe eighty years ago.

Maryann told a story and of course the poem followed about the son of William Clark, of LEWIS AND CLARK, Halaftooki (Daytime Smoke) whose mother was a Nez Perce. Indian Territory was a dumping ground for tribes, some stayed stuck here, others like the Nez Perce were brought here as prisoners of war and eventually were able to leave. So the son of William Clark was in Ottawa County with Chief Joseph, the REAL Chief Joseph, who eloquently spoke of justice and peace. I wonder if chat dust now in their language might translate to something like "Daytime Smoke."

We arranged Miami High School artwork behind the podium that had served Bob Walkup all his years teaching Civics at Will Rogers. Meredith MacQueeney's Tar Creek Monster was among those hangings. The poet faced the sun, as she had hoped to get as much sun as possible before heading back to winter in Wisconsin.

In the preface of her upcoming book, she reflected about how chance encounters change the way we see the world and make us care in ways we don't know possible.  She wondered if her heart bleeds orange now and I am thinking maybe it does. And maybe mine does too. But the water I want to see flowing won't be orange in the future, it will be clear and clean.

One of the last times she visited Tar Creek her socks got stained orange and stayed that way, my hope is those days will end in the future and if you all push for it, those stains on the trees and along the banks will only be stories, or lines in poems written by folks after they hear these stories.

I am not sure when the poems about the aftermath of the Picher buyout will be birthed and how our current EPA administrator, then Oklahoma's Attorney General buried the audit of the process and why. But more of the parts of that story has been revealed and I am believing this story is not over.

If money could have gone to ensure equity and make those leaving's transition easier, if an ombudsman of sorts could have been assigned to assist the elderly find their new most perfect homes, if a common center could have been built to maintain community and hang those high school photos. My poem might then need to talk of justice.

What if some of that questionable spending could have paid the back rent to the tribal owners of the land that were not compensated in the buyout? All this said, it is easy to understand this story is not yet poetry.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
 
 

I was 18 years old when Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. I was a student at the University of Texas, and not really settled in there yet. The day after he was killed, I rode a bus from Austin to New Orleans where my father picked me up. The bus trip was quiet. I rode near the back. As one would say in those days, the people of color in the back of the bus were shocked, sad and I believe scared. It was a solemn trip.

My parents had honeymooned in New Orleans so my dad wanted to show me some of the sites and take me to eat at the Court of the Three Sisters where they had had a meal they still talked about. It was a dark rather dingy restaurant and though I never told my dad, I didn't care for the food. He had taken a job in Houma, Louisiana and we spent Saturday at his place just visiting. Then early Palm Sunday morning we went back to New Orleans, visited Jackson Square, walked into a cathedral between services and picked up the palm branches left in the pew before we walked around the park. It was a quiet peaceful spring morning. Later that day, the square was filled with mourners and remembrances about the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr., which broke out into a riot with tanks seen amid the crowds, that we totally missed by a few hours.

My dad took me to the train station and I rode the train back to Texas. On the train, the only people of color were the train attendants who visited the cars checking on the passengers. There was no visible mourning on that trip back, only the silent faces of the attendants showing absolutely no emotion. Not like the bus trip days earlier.

MLK was in Memphis to speak up and out for the sanitation workers, for a living wage, to better their lives.
Struggles like that should be long passed. But this week, teachers here in Oklahoma stood up and made a stand not just for living wages but for their students and for their schools long left out of the state's shrinking budgets. Years of cuts.

I retired after working in the Miami Public Schools for 25 years. Everyone knew the moment you made it known you were retiring, there would be endless numbers of teachers visiting you, looking over your shelves, books, chairs and making it known which they would like once you closed the door the last time. That is how I got everything I ever had in my office. Used tables, used desk and chairs. The school district furnished the computer and upgraded through the years, but that really was the only equipment that came out of the box in my career.

I am proud of the teachers and the superintendents across this state who see the power of people on their feet in the space of the people with the power to make schools better.

People on the street corners speaking up standing up believing in the value of the individual teacher who stands alone in that classroom making lives of our children better every day. 50 years after MLKjr.'s death we are reminded of the power of non-violent protest. But also reminded that the struggles continued and the efforts for justice must not stop.

 Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.

We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. When people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.
We don't need any bricks and bottles, we don't need any Molotov cocktails. We've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
 
In the room where I grew up, hung a painting of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. that a friend of my brother had painted.
 
The last time I saw his friend, he had come over to change the painting. He painted a single spot on the forehead of the image. He didn't say anything. But it came to be true just months later.
 
Sometimes we know the future. The artist knew and Martin Luther King, Jr. knew it, too and stated it in his famous last speech. I may not get there with you... I've seen the promised land..
 
We can see a better future for our children and our state by the greater determination shown by their teachers and supported by all of us.
 
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim