One summer years ago a young woman came as a Quaker Witness for Tar Creek. She was so moved by her experiences here, she returned year after year to help us at our annual conference. I flew out to California to go to her wedding that would be held at Asilomar.

Asilomar's rich history dates back to its origins as a YWCA Leadership Camp built in 1913. Known as Monterey Peninsula's "Refuge by the Sea," the state park is located on 107 acres of state beach and conference grounds, within the quaint and scenic town of Pacific Grove.

What I experienced during that wedding ceremony was profound. I hadn't studied and did not know what would happen there at Asilomar and had not prepared myself. It was gentle. But I learned how loud silence is when a room full of people with connections with the bride and groom joined them in saying nothing for an untimed period, all focusing on the couple and their hopes and wishes, blessings on their lives about to begin together. My head was full and yet we all sat waiting until finally someone stood and expressed their thoughts for them and sat back down, as we waited yet again until the next person was moved to speak for them. This went on in timeless space until no more people spoke then the couple spoke to each other. And it was done.

As Sarah Dessen, author of Just Listen might have said, “Silence was so freaking loud.”

Back before the Bicentennial, while taking classes at NSU in counseling, I remember having awakened one morning suddenly from a deep sleep aghast that I had lost my voice and therefore my career in education, then realized, as a counselor, my role would be more the listener than the speaker and knew I had chosen this occupation well. It was only a dream, I woke to tell the dream.
It's been 3 days without a voice for real now. the old "give it a rest," hasn't worked yet , but there is always tomorrow.
There is a humbleness that settles in when you scramble to find someone, anyone to answer your phone and be you. To speak for you when you are unable. It happened this week and the callers heard me in lots of different ways, as a 5 year old girl and several men of differing ages.

That's what I have been doing since retirement, I have been speaking up for the voiceless. The land and the water impacted by the toxins in the Tar Creek Superfund Site, as well as the children born and yet unborn. Seeking a clean and safe environment.

I am looking always for ways to give youth a voice and to train them to know that what they say is valuable and actually vital.

Audre Lorde had been a prolific writer, who moved me when she said, "I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? She continued with, "I began to ask each time: What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth? Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.

Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you, interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end."
(That's something I would have said!)

And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will lose some friends..., and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”

The slogan mounted on the Homeland Security website encourages us to break our silences. They say, "every day is different than your neighbor’s—filled with the moments that make it uniquely yours. So if you see something you know shouldn't be there—or someone's behavior that doesn't seem quite right—say something. Because only you know what’s supposed to be in your everyday. Informed, alert communities play a critical role in keeping our nation safe. "If You See Something, Say Something®" engages the public in protecting our homeland through awareness–building, partnerships, and other outreach."

Silence is golden. Sometimes not so much. There will be times you need to speak, times you need to speak up and those other times when you realize when rallied together voices are powerful and profoundly beautiful.

Respectfully Submitted ~  Rebecca Jim
 

Geese are monogamous, living in permanent pairs throughout the year. Out of nowhere the proud parents and their goslings began marching across Highway 10 in the fog in front of me. They were at the gawky hairy tall stage still featherless. I stopped just in time to avoid hitting them, pulled to the side of the road to flash my lights to oncoming traffic since one of the goslings had run back off the road.  He was just barely missed by the big double cab truck but his second attempt in the fog, the little guy made it! 

As the Tar Creekkeeper and partly due to LEAD Agency's Grand Lake Mercury Study relationships were built with fishermen and women who eat local fish and love our rivers and especially our Grand Lake. If they see anyone messing with our waters and her water quality, they let us know and quickly.
 
One of these fisherman called about stuff being shoveled into the lake this week. After hearing his description, I called 1-800-522-0206 the DEQ Hotline to make a complaint, not an anonymous complaint but one with my name on it so DEQ will send a letter with the details, what they found and what were the results for the action on the person or company who was found to be responsible.
 
I headed to Grove to "have a gander" at the actions cited in the incidence report my name was on. The Sailboat bridge had been resurfaced with an overlay and the material that had not stuck was left by the side of the roadway. When the car got onto the bridge, Emerson Taylor, University of Arkansas graduate summer interning with LEAD, as a grand example of his generation, lowered his window and began recording the exchange with the men on the bridge while watching shovel after shovel of the substance being flung over the railings.
 
I yelled at them to stop doing it, the rare and absurd sound in my ears, was sort of like "Sa Sa" in Cherokee, the word for goose and if you have ever upset one, you may have heard that sound as they sort of hiss at you in a menacing manner, but the men really YELLED back and flagged us away as they continued their work. We saw the mass of stuff they had before them to remove and went to the bottom of the bridge to the company trucks with flashing lights, but found no supervisors to engage.

According to a post by a local insurance agent the company received complaints the substance sprayed on passing vehicles crossing the bridge during the application. Call 913 402 5326, reference claim # CBLo812 if a check on your paint and windshields reveals epoxy overspray. It feels like a very hard non-sticky tree-sap and won't  wash away, needing specialized detailing to remove it.

What's so bad about shoveling that material into the lake? What is the concern? The fisherman told me that morning that he eats the fish from that spot and that was why he was concerned.

I will know if there were consequences to the company for loading the lake with the residue left from their work on the bridge. You might imagine I am hopeful that the company's "goose is cooked" with some consequence from either the DEQ or the Lake Patrol. Surely we can't all go to the bridge and fling whatevers over without consequence. Wouldn't we need a permit? Did the company have a permit to discharge into the lake?

They were told by DEQ to stop and load everything and haul it away. But the fisherman called back later. They had gotten a wheelbarrow to make it easier to dump instead.

I called DEQ again and the Lake Patrol 918-256-0911. They returned to ask if I was willing to testify about seeing the flingers if their officer didn't get there in time to witness himself. I said of course. Wouldn't you want to have a chance to confront a wrong doer? Well, there is a bit of fear in saying yes. They were really loud YELLERS and they welded a quick shovel. But I said yes and yes again when asked if I could identify them in court.

The gaggle of geese got away, as we would want. And perhaps the company will get away with their lake discharge. But this evening the fisherman's wife told me she had contacted the game warden to be alert to dead birds who may experience consequences from the shoveled material that was flung from the bridge. And in a couple of weeks, I will receive a letter in the mail to find out what came from the complaint.

Miami High School students lined up to watch flashing lights on police cars coming down Central Avenue and behind them a yellow school bus, loaded with students heading to the Special Olympics in Stillwater. The student body was out there waving them on! We have come a long way in acceptance and I think a lot of that comes from good leadership, with a salute to Mrs. Lisa Munson on one of her last days as MHS principal, before all her graduates and herself fling out of here. Job Well Done!

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

There is a photo at my house that came to mind when all the good news came one day this week. It is a picture of Cato, my son’s dad when he was a child and his grandfather, an older Navajo man wearing a beautiful turquoise necklace, the type with lots of big stones. When I first saw that picture over 40 years ago, I asked to know more about it. Two little boys, were standing in front of a Hogan, Cato, wearing a cowboy hat was on a horse while their grandfather Dan Jim stood with them, all looking at the camera.

The photo brought back a memory of the time, when Cato asked his grandfather where he got that necklace. The grandfather had been in the Hogan singing a “give me something song,” he explained, and suddenly some strangers knocked on the door and presented him with the necklace. On hearing this, he was quiet for a while before asking, “Grandfather, could you teach me that song?”

I felt like someone had sung that song for LEAD Agency this week!

Last fall we began to look for the Lead Care II instrument and testing kits we felt would arrive any day. Dr. Robert O. Wright who we know for the MATCH Study is now at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and had donated it to LEAD Agency so we would be able to assist in helping residents know if they have a current exposure to lead.

The box came this week and the day it arrived, we called the Ottawa County Health Department to tell Keesha Bunch and Amanda Burnett the news and left a message for Dr. Shirley Chesnut at the Northeast Tribal Health System to let her know, too.

The Lead Care II instrument can use 2 drops of blood and in 3 minutes give a result.
It is nice to know, or perhaps not NICE, but important to know, if your test shows you have lead in your blood. That means for the general public, you are currently receiving an exposure to lead, and you can look around your environment, find the source and REMOVE it so you will not be exposed anymore. Knowing allows you to DO something about it, for yourself or for a child of your own.

Lead poisoning can affect the central nervous system, kidneys, and blood-forming organs. Lead exposure is associated with learning and behavior problems and even reduced income in adulthood.

The same day we opened that box, I got a call from Bob Gelso, a Miami High School woodshop instructor. He called to let us know he had made a set of cornhole regulation sized game boards for us to use as a means of entertainment, but also as a way to engage folks and have a chance to discuss the things that matter to us all: clean water, clean air and knowing which and how much FISH to eat.

The other thing that happened that day was also a gift. We really have nothing more important to give than our time and sharing with others what we know. Jim Shine who was one of the many Harvard researchers who spent so much time in Ottawa County during the years of the Children’s Center and our current intern,

Emerson Taylor who is a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas spent some their valuable time working through the process of planning a pilot project we want to do to understand more about what we are tracking in our back or front doors. It starts with the questions, how will we do it? What will be measured? The length of the project and how many units?

Not all news was good that day. I learned early in the morning Albert Kelly had resigned from his position at EPA in charge of Superfund. In his official position, he gave out his cell phone number to the environmental activists he met. I got the nerve and called and sure enough he answered the phone to listen to more perspectives on Tar Creek.
Mr. Kelly had been a banker who got banned from banking. And his friend Scott Pruitt, who seems to be dismantling EPA gave him the job at the agency. Mr. Kelly was receiving a lot of criticism in the media for his past but was working to regain face while head of Superfund, all while improving EPA's reputation in communities that had lost hope. He texted me a message late in the day and I guess it was a give me something comment for Tar Creek:  "would like to be part of the solution" was what he wrote.

Hum a few bars of that song, stop by and lend a hand in the garden as we prepare it for the vegetables  Frisbie’s will donate when the children are ready to plant, drop off some books for the Little Free Library or find one you were dying to read, then share it again.  Your time and effort is more valuable than you know and every time you show up,

I can hear a bit of that song in the wind.

Gratefully Submitted

Lead shot out of a gun can kill. But lead causes another danger. A real danger. It has been linked for decades to criminal behavior in some who have been exposed.

I have been thinking of criminal behavior lately, starting with a call from an investigator in a federal defender's office inquiring about a former student of mine who is on appeal for a capitol murder conviction. I remember him well, even after all these years.

The investigator was working on his appeal, hoping to save him from the death sentence he received to reduce it to life in prison. The investigator has come to Ottawa County several times and tracked down his school records and learned more about the boy's school behavior from interviews.

AND discovered he had grown up near the largest superfund site in the country and one EPA had designated lead as the "contaminate of concern" for our site. The investigator was working on other murder conviction appeals, and had found others had grown up near other superfund sites where lead was their contaminate of concern, too.

So many Ottawa County children were lead poisoned in the mid 1990's EPA began working to reduce those numbers by removing chat piles, remediating yards and playgrounds that were contaminated with lead. They are still spending money on these efforts because the EPA now says there is “no demonstrated safe concentration of lead in blood.”

Lead does most of its damage to the brain by mimicking calcium. Inside the brain, calcium triggers nerve firings, releases neurotransmitters, and activates proteins important for brain development, memory formation, and learning. Lead can seriously and permanently reduce IQ. It can change the way brain cells communicate and grow and can affect the dopamine system which controls the executive functions: judgment, reward and impulse behavior, relating to aggression.

Lead increases the odds that kids will develop ADHD, making it difficult to focus their attention in classes. Some exhibit disruptive behavior, make poor social choices and with these, some may later demonstrate criminal behavior.

This metal causes physical damage to the developing brain that persists into adulthood. It can do a number on our brains. And sometimes those affected do a number on others.

This week, the announcement of the arrest of a suspect in the murders of the 2 girls taken from a Welch residence in 1999 seems to be solved at last. But their last days were spent in the heart of our superfund site, before they were killed and left somewhere not yet found. A few years later only two blocks away Harvard placed the air monitor to collect dust that was loaded with lead and other heavy metals I changed weekly for 61 weeks. It is sobering to think killers had been so close, but cold chilling to know there were young girls hurt and sentenced to die by them.

There are a lot of reasons to prevent lead poisoning, but  protecting  children  from torture is now on my list. I have no way of knowing if any of the 3 people assumed to have committed murder were lead poisoned as children.

But we do know that lead has been linked to criminal behavior in the research and our superfund site is loaded with lead, and there in the middle of it these girls suffered. And it makes me furious this happened.

We know this STUFF we know as chat is loaded with lead is still out there, piled up, blowing in the wind, sold and hauled away for safe uses by anybody wanting a load of it with the money to take to other communities and roadways from here to yonder. 

600 acres of the superfund site has been cleared off and tons of the material separated to either build the newest mountain in Oklahoma or sold for the good of the roads we travel. But there are TONS more and miles of this stuff and our new status on the EPA's latest list of top superfund sites could mean action, like immediately for all the yards in the county. It has only brought funding for more acres, and we are grateful, but anxious, would more describe my feelings, like ONLY THIS MUCH? why not the whole thing, if we are so bad, why can't we get it all done?  When is done happening?

Not another child should be lead poisoned.  As long as that stuff is out there for the taking, the climbing, the sledding, the exploring will continue, and more goes home in the shoes that are worn, even more tracked in from our yards by each member of the family and each of the dogs and cats that come and go during the day, more blown in the wind. Hopefully the dust will not be worn home on the clothes of the folks doing the work on those acres, or operating the sites selling chat, so babies are safe giving  a "daddy's home" hug.

We are dealing with dangerous stuff, stuff that can make some people dangerous criminals and others victims.
My sincerest regrets for the loss of the lives of Ashley Freeman and Lauria Bible who were just kids on the road to the rest of their lives when they were taken.

Respectfully in Sorrow ~ Rebecca Jim