Cars had triangle shaped windows for the front seat that could be opened separately by the driver or the passenger. The "vent" window could direct cool air in and of course for kids in the back seat, could direct the front seat smokers' cigarette smoke out of the car.

My dad received an award from his employer for driving a million miles without an accident. Those triangular windows resulted in hearing loss in his left ear. My voice range during his audio exam was exactly the range he failed, knowing this as a witness to the exam. But the hearing loss got him what we called his Blues in the Night check from the Veterans Affairs 50 years after he got out of the Army and they caught up with him when he went in for the hearing test. Why did we call it that?

"My Momma done told me...." echoed throughout the camp he was mustering out of. From behind him, he turned to listen to the lone voice belting out the song and was marked deaf for not hearing the commands given in his quick hearing exam. My daddy worked for Shell Pipeline as an electrician and his territory was large. He covered eastern New Mexico, west Texas and the panhandle of the state. He drove for 35 years in company cars before air conditioning was standard and depended on that little vent window to direct air for some comfort and to draw some of his cigarette smoke out of the vehicle.

We believe it was the noise and air pressure that caused his hearing loss. But the Veterans Administration thought it had been caused by the war so he began receiving a small check for his disability each month, until moving to follow employment, the VA lost track of him. All the while his compensation piled up in his account. After we forced him to go for the hearing exam so he could be fitted for hearing aids and give us relief from his debilitating hearing loss in his later years. We got to communicate with him again and he got those lost years of compensation in what we called his "Blues in the Night" check.

Shell Pipeline gave out service awards, longer service the better quality.
Tie tacks were the thing for men and he received several, each in the shape of what else? a shell. Shell's logo is a shell. The original company actually sold sea shells and never forgot their origins.

I got one of the last awards he received. This one hung from a golden bow and could be pinned on a garment. Marked with the date 1963 and his initials, RCF which were also mine and my brother's initials. I have treasured it, but have actually never worn it. Me with a diamond pin attached to a bow? Then through the years I have learned more about fossil fuels and how using these fuels for energy around the world is actually causing the changes we are experiencing with our climate. Our earth's future, and our own is tied up in a bow with fossil fuels. As an environmental activist, could I wear it?

The big oil companies have had a great ride, made a lot of money for their stockholders and put a lot of people to work extracting oil and gas all around the world. Use of fossil fuels throughout the last century and into this one has put a lot of daddies to work, but the damages continue to mount to humans and our environment from our use, our overuse of them.

Only one fossil fuel has a nickname, that being Clean Coal. Sure pick up any size clump of coal with a white glove on and that glove will no longer be white. The coal industry had a great public relations guy to come up with that phrase! Coal is dirty to handle, but also dirty to burn causing green house gases that get trapped in our atmosphere and actually change it, dirty and unsafe for the miners working to extract it from deep in the ground. Many, too many continue to develop a condition that affects their lungs and causes many to die before they reach 50 years of age. If the coal industry worked cleaner, many of their lives could be saved. That is not the end of the dirty deal coal gives us. When it is burned, the smoke is carried dropping the heavy metals embedded in the coal far and near, adding to the loading of mercury in our oceans, lakes and ponds, contaminating our fish.

Fossil fuel has made extracting companies rich, but they are beginning to see the future and the future will be renewable energy sources like wind and sun. There will be other ways to generate energy and these guys will find it including using waves and gravity.

Losses to our health and the environment and lives have occurred under these energy extractors' watch. In the years from 2008 through 2017, 1,566 workers perished trying to extract oil and gas in America, that is about as many U.S. troops died fighting in Afghanistan during that period.

One of the other companies is figuring out how to use algae to make energy. We are making way too much algae, because we are allowing the factory farms to pollute our waters, it is as if they will be partnering with another polluting industry to clean up both messes and continue making money.

Shell is investing in Green Energy, low carbon emissions and looking at the wind.
My dad could have told Shell years ago that wind would be the new power, power to produce energy and powerful enough to reduce hearing for sure.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

My brother and I got to experience The Santa Claus Ranch only once and it was probably when I found out Santa Claus wasn't real and there are many ways to give.

My family left Big Spring, Texas to spend the holidays with relatives the year there was so much snow it seemed like the kind of winter people had in the movies.

We arrived at Uncle Doc and Aunt Sylvia's one mile east of Welch and drove under the gateway with The Santa Claus Ranch emblazoned on it. My Uncle Doc was Dr. J.O. Bradshaw, Sr. and he married his nurse, Sylvia Bradshaw, who was a Bradshaw before she became a Bradshaw, and Sylvia was my mother's sister.

So we were family and as such were put right to work getting ready for the visitors who would arrive each night to visit Santa. It was sort of an assembly line, filling individual paper sacks with an orange or apple, nuts that would have to be shelled and different types of that old fashion hard candy only available during the holidays.  We had no idea what would happen once it got dark. Lights all over the trees, the Live Manger, the crew of full sized metal reindeer with the one in the front decked out with a red light bulb lighting up his nose. They lined up behind the sleigh with the stuffed Santa sitting on the seat of the sleigh in front of the picture window waiting for a child to come sit on his lap. My Uncle Doc had a microphone set up in the living room so he could be Santa's voice for each child when they came to sit and talk with Santa. Can you imagine? mid 1950's how modern!

We had so many people lined up to come, it was like a tourist attraction out there! He had loud speakers and Christmas music playing, but my brother remembered the nuns came one night and actually sang.

But add to this, snow! It was magical and special for us, certainly much different than the kind of Christmas we would have had that year in Texas.

Not 18 months ago, my brother, Clark Frayser came to Miami and he and I went to the Dobson Memorial Center and there in the basement, was the very same Santa's sleigh. No reindeer, but the bright red sleigh. He and I could not resist, we climbed up on the seat, sitting in the same sleigh we had sat in as children and had dear Larry Roberts take our picture. Memories. Larry became part of ours.

I don't remember if "Santa" brought us any gifts that year, but Santa's ranch left memories for us and for many who came. I hope you all find ways to create the memories that will sustain you as our planet warms and fewer and fewer people will experience those deep snow filled holidays.

The following Christmas caused me to tell a lie. Big Spring, Texas is a town divided by "the tracks." We attended the only Catholic Church in town which happened to have been across the tracks. When I went back to Big Spring for my high school reunion, I had to go see that church, it was built out of brown sand stone, still had the beautiful stained glass windows, but out in front was a FOR SALE sign. What is that about? What other bunch of Catholics would want to buy it, that wouldn't already just prefer to continue using the one they had? That church is where we met the family who lived across the tracks and had the little girl who would become another Christmas memory. They were poor and spoke little English, and she and I were brown and immediate friends.

After the holidays we went back to school. I lied when our teacher asked each of us what we got for Christmas. What I would have gotten was a doll I really had wanted, but the family we had visited lived in a home in my town with dirt floors! And that little girl my age got my present, the doll, it was the thing I could do and a lie I will never forget and never felt guilty for telling. I look back and wonder if it really had been a lie, Mrs. Boling asked what I got for Christmas and what I got was to give my gift to someone who would love her more than me.

That lesson comes back this time of year, how gifting can be things, or how it can become the thing that makes life sweeter. My friend Jim Shine sent me a set of poetry books written by Mary Oliver, but the message he inscribed in the New and Selected Poems, Volume One was to refer to page 94 with the question that ended the poem on that page: "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Do your part if you are using lights, burn LED's and turn them off and lower your thermostat when you go to bed tonight. And plan to wake up in the morning and figure out what you are going to do with your one wild and precious life.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
 
 

This morning a flock of geese got mad.

They were disturbed by a pickup truck that approached too quickly. I heard them 1/2 a mile away. Hollering.

They were rerunning the bean field, finding what the combine had left behind. When I arrived at the pond in the field adjacent to them, not surprisingly there was evidence they had been there, too. But not as much evidence as the beavers had left. OH MY GOODNESS.

Beavers had been working hard making tunnels through the dam, enough so, they are bypassing the pipe set in to regulate the pond level. They had built a home over the top of the stand pipe, so much so, there was soil enough on it to grow grass, and strong enough to STAND upon. It is funny to imagine how beavers have the ability to take down real trees using their teeth. It made me feel inadequate with my useless teeth incapable of such effort. But beavers have to develop their craft.

This pond had evidence it is a training camp for young beavers. The pups, if they may be called that had their own smaller version of a sort of demonstration dam, made from smaller parts of trees and branches, partially built, as well as a small wetland still in the development stages. At the other pond, which because of the beaver work there, I have gotten a lake. They have expanded the surface water there rising the water level a couple of feet. It is enough to make one shake one's head. If you are in need of developing a wetland on your property, this team is available to take the challenge.

The Department of Agriculture meeting was held in Oklahoma City in their headquarters near the Capitol on the 11th to decide on the Emergency Rules for Poultry Feeding Operations. That meeting began at 10 o'clock and at 4 minutes till, I got one of the last seats available in the room. Many of you must have submitted your comments making sure our voices were heard and we were heard! The board voted NOT to approve the rules but did vote to continue the suspension of approving any new applications until the end of May 2019. We cannot go to sleep. We must work to get our legislators to make decisions that will be protective of our land, our water and our public health. It will be hard, we have to put our minds together as one and keep pushing.

Our new EPA is also finding ways to protect BIG AG. Comments are due on the 14th on the exemption they are going to give Agriculture on reporting air emissions from animal waste at farms so they never have to report air emissions that are hazardous, like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia, smells you know. This change would include emissions from animal waste that is mixed or commingled with bedding, compost, feed, soil, or any other material typically found with such waste. This means it would NEVER be reported, as if it had ever been measured and reported here at all. This would be a great benefit to our air emitters but also to the new poultry feeding operations.

On the same day the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Board voted to continue the suspension of approving new poultry feeding operations, the EPA announced  a new definition for "Waters of the United States."  Last summer when J-M Farms had the release that killed the fish we didn't know were in Tar Creek and the wood ducks disappeared, the black water went into a dry weather draw or what could be called a ditch, that then flowed into Tar Creek. Because of the Clean Water Act every agency that dealt with water and fish kills responded as soon as it was reported. The new Clean Water Act would not kick in since the proposed change would limit protections only to wetlands and streams that are “physically and meaningfully connected” to larger “traditional navigable” bodies of water. With the new changes citizens would also lose our right to sue the polluter to protect a waterway. Your comments will be needed soon on this.

We got a reprieve with one issue, only to face a new challenges, right?

Another challenge is BF Goodrich. Since the Department of Agriculture meeting ended so quickly, while in Oklahoma City, I went to the Department of Environmental Quality and requested the documents they had on BF Goodrich. Hundreds of documents have arrived by email. We are reading each, taking notes, and noting questions. Former workers are needed to explain how the plant operated.

There are so many questions and there are folks here that can help make more sense out of it. We want the site cleaned up, let's make sure the investigators know where else to look. We could use your help, call LEAD Agency at 918-542-9399 or come with information or help us read these files and make sense of them.

With all these challenges we have to ask, when are we going to raise our voices like the geese can and let it be known we are mad? Oklahoma City is going to have to hear us say, "We are not going to take it anymore."

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

We should laugh more, reach out and find a way to help someone you might not know, fill your day with learning and putting what you learn into action.

And quickly determine a day is just not long enough. These are my days. Many filled with facts that cannot be changed, no matter how positive a person's attitude may be and how sure the change can occur in this lifetime.

There have been times this year that have found me knocking on the door of strangers and leaving having made a friend. It happened again this week and I wish you this experience and these results. We don't put ourselves out there much anymore, as we hurry too quickly home to our familiar walls and ways.

Big Chicken kept me scrambling and struggling with how on earth to share information and how to challenge others to act on the chance we have to speak up, or write down our thoughts and get them turned in by December 10th. This led me here to share some thoughts and ask you for help. Imagine I am knocking on your door to tell you: We found out 3 weeks ago from the Secretary of Agriculture, James Reese that he would work with his board to establish some Emergency Rules to strengthen the weak rules we have now on where new poultry facilities can be built in relation to neighbors, private or public wells, highways, public schools and city limits. These proposed rules have been released and we need to celebrate the beginning of the process but the rules will not be as protective of our environment, our water and our health as we need them to be. So??

WE TELL THEM right now, do it later and you will forget, since as you know we fill our days to the brim, wedge this moment into your day to send your comment on The Emergency Rule for New or expanding poultry feeding operations and how close they can be to the following:

(1 ) Occupied residences:(A)More than 30,000 birds shall be ¼ mile; and (B)  30,000 or fewer birds shall be 1000 feet.
(C) All distances between occupied residences and poultry feeding operations shall be measured from the closest corner of the walls of the occupied residence to the closest point of the poultry feeding operation, excluding land application sites;
(2)  Public school shall be ½ mile;
(3)  Incorporated city limits shall be ½ mile;
(4)  Public highways shall be 150 feet;
(5)  Property line shall be 150 feet;
(6)  Streams as identified on a current USGS 7.5 minute topographic map shall be 200 feet;
(7)  Private wells not owned or used for the poultry feeding operation shall be 100 feet;
(8)  Public wells shall be 500 feet; and
(9)  The 100-year flood plain as designated by FEMA

Read it all on the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Food website.

Submit comments about the proposed rule until 8:00 a.m. December 10 to andrea.bair@ag.ok.gov.

In your mind imagine your house in the country suddenly with a new neighbor with lots of chickens living in houses that are 600 feet long... buildings as long as 2 football fields, but six of them in a row, each full of as many as 50,000 chickens. Help us out on this. Have an attitude, want your well protected? want the value of your home diminished? How close to the city limits? is one half mile enough? Is 200 feet from a stream going to protect that stream? Show the Department of Agriculture we are not asleep, show your country cousins we stand with them. We SHOULD do this.

December 11 is another BIG day for the Department of Agriculture, decision day on the Emergency Rules and the public can attend that meeting in Oklahoma City. Are you saying back at me, "You SHOULD attend that meeting!" I think we all SHOULD.

But back to what we hope to all be able to do during the holiday season: we should laugh more. Two nights ago I read an email that had come in and as I read it that is exactly what happened. I was laughing out loud and now just thinking about it makes me smile. It was a message from Lauren Pelaia and her 2 friends who are theatrical types in New York City.

They have been studying and learning ALL about Picher, Oklahoma and our issues, this place and they are writing a MUSICAL. Now that is what we need! The serious work of environmental damages and hard times might be hard to rhyme, but boy do we have characters who could be represented in a musical! Musicals are rarely sad and serious through and through. They deal with issues but they SING about them, lots of times ALL TOGETHER.

We could benefit from being together more, imagine that we burst into song and maybe even DANCED! I was laughing because I could not believe they had discovered my weakness, my love for musicals. We have to help these folks tell our stories and we have to hope they will include the Picher Parade and how we moved on over to the Quapaw Parade and then later to the Miami Parade.

I smiled all Saturday, so many people lined up, and SO MANY PEOPLE IN THE PARADES. There has to be a song about them at least there SHOULD be.

Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim

Ken Wagner came to Miami OK last February on what would have been my mother's 100th birthday. He was sent by Albert Kelly who was another one of then EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt's senior advisors at EPA headquarters. Ken Wagner has been chosen to be Oklahoma's Secretary of Energy and the Environment come January.
 
When Mr. Wagner came in February LEAD filled the 2 hours he and Erin Chancellor spent with us with people who spoke of the issues citizens face in the Tar Creek Superfund site. As many as we could schedule got to meet him, and in this environmentally challenged county in Oklahoma, won't it be in our best interest to know he knows us, had sat with us and listened to our stories, our points of view, our fears and our hopes for the future.
 
Take some time, write a card to our Ken Wagner. We will stamp your welcome home or congratulation cards to him if you drop them by before mid-January. Won't it be great if he had a stack of them on his desk when he cracked the door open and sat himself down in his Oklahoma City office?
 
We are going to need a friend in state government who has been seen to have the ability to sit and listen. What made me think he did connect with us?  It was after listening to our Ottawa County Health Department nurse and lead prevention specialist and the mother of a lead poisoned 2 year old child with developmental delays who had lost his ability to speak whole words  and is now speaking only the first syllable of the words he used to know.
 
Before Ken Wagner left us he asked to know the name of that 2-year old lead poisoned child he met at the table with his mother. Mr. Wagner may not remember any of the rest of our names, but that child's, but he met us, sat and listened.
 
Elections have consequences and we have got to put our hopes in the hands of the folks with the keys to power, that they will use that power to protect our citizens, our environment and our precious little ones.
 
Now we have to hope that our new Governor will hand pick someone with heart, someone who knows Ottawa County, loved northeast Oklahoma, fishes our rivers and swims in Grand Lake and LIKES US to be head of Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Food.
 
As we all sat together with Secretary Jim Reese, our current head of ODAFF recently at the Afton Senior Citizen Center, lined up on the front row were the Grand Lake Water Protectors and many others who will be affected by the lack of regulations our state has put on the expanding poultry industry.
 
Every person who spoke had the attention of Mr. Reese, who admitted the Department of Ag had been "caught off guard" with over 200 requests for permits for new larger than life barns that flooded the agency over the last 2 years. What we saw was a person in a position listening and himself faced with the fact our state, our people and our water is sitting out here unprotected from this invasion.
 
But for the next month, he has the keys, and as he listened, I had hope he would use what power he has to cease, stall or in some way inhibit the expansion. I have that hope because people came, spoke up, shared their feelings and filled every chair in that facility, and were treated with respect. That is the least we can ever hope for, but the bigger hope is he will take that back and do what he can now in his remaining days. The other hope is the person who fills that seat next might be chosen carefully.
 
I grew up in West Texas, but my dad was from Vinita, had land in Craig County and knew when he retired he would return to live. I remember his 2 brothers taking turns calling him on the single phone in the hallway, telling him to hurry up and move back because all their friends were "dying like flies" and they needed his help attending all the funerals.
 
I am at the same age he was when he got those calls, and it is happening to me now, too, people dying like flies. But my regrets lie more for the fact many of those dying remind me that we must be an affected people, lately I am losing former students and even the children of former students. What affects us? our habits, our choices, but the wider environment we can do little to control, but if it could be making us sick, we must do what we can to make those who could improve it, DO IT.
 
We can learn from these senior officials the art of listening. We can reach out this season, let another person into your circle. Go to parades, breathe cold air deeply, enjoy the life you have, fight for another day even better than this one.
 
LEAD will be entering the parades this year, watch for the Jeep with the kayaks on top and the message: We Want Clean Water! That's what we want for Christmas!
 
Respectfully Submitted  ~  Rebecca Jim