It has been a long time since I retired as an Indian Counselor for the Miami Public Schools, but it was my career here for 25 years. This week, I got to try it back on when a Native couple came to the back door of the LEAD Agency with tears and anger. After listening and understanding long standing grief and anger issues could not be solved with a glass of cold water and time on the front porch, I suggested they go with me to the garden since we had some potatoes that needed to be dug. There is magic in the garden, or maybe it is old fashioned therapy, but there is something special that occurs when your hands begin to dig in rich soil and the very first potato is found. I believe potatoes can change lives. And just this week, I saw it happen to real people with longtime unresolved issues. Indigenous people have always believed that the earth has what we need, she provides the medicines that can heal, and the earth herself can be that.
Our good earth, we need to ensure we keep it that way. Protect it from the poisons we can apply, poisons that may then lie beneath the ground decades later that still can poison. We know this only too well with the metals left behind by our lead and zinc mining and what it did to our Tar Creek and what our prized industry left that lies beneath the neighborhood just south of the now abandoned BF Goodrich plant. Those chemical substances just didn't go away, they linger, resting beneath the ground hovering there waiting to be reclaimed, removed and taken away for the risk they pose to harm the humans who live above.
The marvelous research Dr. Ean Garvin did on the plants that grow in the soil tainted by the metals from the Tar Creek Superfund site and the additional Tri-State Mining District Superfund sites in Kansas and Missouri proved that in many places not a single blackberry can be safely eaten. That strikes home to me since I live on a plot of land long deemed the "Blackberry Hill" and come mid-June the picking begins. To not be able to consume one of these black beauties would break my spirit and leave me saying, THIS IS NOT RIGHT! and it is not right for the downstream affected lands and all that grows there. And not right for the BF Goodrich neighborhood.
A month ago, a funny thing happened. June Taylor came to visit and brought a box. It was a wooden box her husband Bob had made for her when she was teaching. On the top of the box he had painted the single word SOAP. And they had decided to give it a new home with me. . . Do you think they thought it righteous? Timely? Needed? I have to admit, they really nailed me with that one. Seems as you read these words, you might be wondering: "is she actually ON her SOAPBOX?" I do realize more times than not, these articles seem that way (when re-read later by the writer). Because of my height, there have been many times the box would have been handy for lots of situations.
So for your imagination, please assume the box is not so nimbly climbed upon, to allow you this opportunity to dream with me about that wrecked land at Miami's BF Goodrich plant. I am truly thankful the United States EPA, what I am calling today (the E for EARTH ) is hard at work with the white suits removing the loose asbestos that remains on site to (the P for PROTECT THE PUBLIC) us.
The soapbox speaker is asking all of us to ask EPA to conduct a complete investigation of the site including the lagoon, the offsite dump AND to clean up the whole site of whatever they find that can harm human health and the environment. We want EPA to stay here and SUPERFUND this site and protect our community, our school children, the soccer kids who play north of the site. It would be SUPER! We want the Polluters to PAY not the taxpayers! Go get a box, stand on it, tell your friends, gather your family around, go to the soccer field and holler. Or write a resolution.
Imagine so many soapboxes with people of all types standing on them, standing up for themselves and for the future of the whole. I am imagining if you need to borrow mine, there are times it can be shared.
When you all get off it and what we have said worked, and EPA cleans it up and has cleaned up your yard to remove the lead. We will feel better. AND you will have a soapbox just in case you need it to carry the potatoes you are going to grow in your newly reclaimed soil or the blackberries when the season brings them.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
Our good earth, we need to ensure we keep it that way. Protect it from the poisons we can apply, poisons that may then lie beneath the ground decades later that still can poison. We know this only too well with the metals left behind by our lead and zinc mining and what it did to our Tar Creek and what our prized industry left that lies beneath the neighborhood just south of the now abandoned BF Goodrich plant. Those chemical substances just didn't go away, they linger, resting beneath the ground hovering there waiting to be reclaimed, removed and taken away for the risk they pose to harm the humans who live above.
The marvelous research Dr. Ean Garvin did on the plants that grow in the soil tainted by the metals from the Tar Creek Superfund site and the additional Tri-State Mining District Superfund sites in Kansas and Missouri proved that in many places not a single blackberry can be safely eaten. That strikes home to me since I live on a plot of land long deemed the "Blackberry Hill" and come mid-June the picking begins. To not be able to consume one of these black beauties would break my spirit and leave me saying, THIS IS NOT RIGHT! and it is not right for the downstream affected lands and all that grows there. And not right for the BF Goodrich neighborhood.
A month ago, a funny thing happened. June Taylor came to visit and brought a box. It was a wooden box her husband Bob had made for her when she was teaching. On the top of the box he had painted the single word SOAP. And they had decided to give it a new home with me. . . Do you think they thought it righteous? Timely? Needed? I have to admit, they really nailed me with that one. Seems as you read these words, you might be wondering: "is she actually ON her SOAPBOX?" I do realize more times than not, these articles seem that way (when re-read later by the writer). Because of my height, there have been many times the box would have been handy for lots of situations.
So for your imagination, please assume the box is not so nimbly climbed upon, to allow you this opportunity to dream with me about that wrecked land at Miami's BF Goodrich plant. I am truly thankful the United States EPA, what I am calling today (the E for EARTH ) is hard at work with the white suits removing the loose asbestos that remains on site to (the P for PROTECT THE PUBLIC) us.
The soapbox speaker is asking all of us to ask EPA to conduct a complete investigation of the site including the lagoon, the offsite dump AND to clean up the whole site of whatever they find that can harm human health and the environment. We want EPA to stay here and SUPERFUND this site and protect our community, our school children, the soccer kids who play north of the site. It would be SUPER! We want the Polluters to PAY not the taxpayers! Go get a box, stand on it, tell your friends, gather your family around, go to the soccer field and holler. Or write a resolution.
Imagine so many soapboxes with people of all types standing on them, standing up for themselves and for the future of the whole. I am imagining if you need to borrow mine, there are times it can be shared.
When you all get off it and what we have said worked, and EPA cleans it up and has cleaned up your yard to remove the lead. We will feel better. AND you will have a soapbox just in case you need it to carry the potatoes you are going to grow in your newly reclaimed soil or the blackberries when the season brings them.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim
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