To Drink, To Bathe, To Sleep in Peace

January 18th, 2014  |   

To Drink, To Bathe, To Sleep in Peace

A short walk, along water near my home,

I spy a lover’s rendezvous.

Such fun, to take a peek,

on this clear day, I don’t need to see forever,

just for now.

 

Two rivers running toward one another,

fast flowing as if in heat, never mind the winter chill.

The Elk flows into the Kanawha,

disappears, the two become one,

as the current carries them west toward Cincinnati.

 

The Kanawha is swift, but not swift enough perhaps

to know that the Elk has been cavorting along the way,

with company that has wasted itself in riotous living

and has leaked on her,

pissed poison into her.

 

Who’s to blame for what she has done to people who

count on her for a drink, a bath, clean sheets?

If not her, then who’s to bear the guilt?

Some company hired to bring her to my home,

to quench my thirst, bathe my body,

and sleep peacefully on clean sheets?

A Suffix Just For Scandals              

Remember in grade school when you learned about a suffix, that little stick-on to a word that gave new or added meaning to it? You know, like –ance in brilliance, defiance or annoyance, or –ist in artist and linguist. Hundreds of little cabooses connected to words.

Then along came the White House 1970s break-in of the Democratic Party Watergate headquarters in Washington that cost Richard Nixon the presidency. And behold, the last four letters of the headquarters’ name, Watergate, came into its own. A four-letter suffix was born, –gate, all ready to be applied to any public scandal. 

Since Watergate, the “-gate” suffix has been attached to dozens of scandals. There was Billygate (Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy, representing the Libyan government as a foreign agent). There was Nannygate (the disqualification of two U.S. Justice Department nominees because they hired illegal immigrants as nannies).  And who can forget Weinergate, even though we might like to. Anthony Weiner, a candidate for the House of Representatives tweeting picture of his, well, need I mention the body part?

The year began with a broken water pipe in my downstairs bathroom. Hardened water flexed its frigid muscles and literally blew a hole in a copper pipe. And then, only two days later the river that runs through my life in Charleston sent chemically poisoned water into all the water pipes in my home, as well as 300,000 other homes in the area.

My bottled water next to my computer, I shall write now about water, with the aid of the suffix, -gate. There’s New Jersey Governor Christie’s bridge over troubled waters—a possible politically motivated traffic lane-block on the Hudson River’s George Washington Bridge, now labeled Bridgegate. And finally, the scandal brewing around Robert Gate’s new dish-the-dirt book, which I’ll label Squeal-gates. But first, I begin in my own backyard with eleven sips of this scandal I call Chemcoalgate.

Chemcoalgate—West Virginia’s Poisoned Water

First Sip: Ten days ago, a chemical company, Freedom Industries, took a BIG leak into the Elk River, just a few miles from my home, and only a mile and a half from the West Virginia American Water Company (WVAW) plant, the company that pipes us water. Our water was then declared unsafe for drinking, bathing, cooking, and cleaning.

Second Sip: The leak came from a storage tank situated next to the river. It is estimated that 5,000 to 6,000 gallons of a chemical used to clean coal oozed into the river. The better part of the day passed before the community learned about the syrupy flow into the river. By then, every water pipe in every building in the nine county area using WVAW water contained dangerously contaminated water.

Third Sip: Coal must be cleaned of residue before trucks and trains transport it. People who live in the poverty-ridden and population-depleted coalfield regions of West Virginia see the connection between the coal taken from the ground, the chemicals trucked in, and the slurry left behind in the soil and the streams. They’ve smelled it, and seen it in the red, yellow or blue water that comes out of their spigots for years. Chemical and coal mess has been a reality for years.   

Fourth Sip: Call it a Big Gulp. Six years ago, seventeen people, myself included, responded to an explosion at the Bayer Crop Science plant in Institute, just west of Charleston, in which 2 plant workers were killed. The incident could have been prevented, and responded to better by the plant and the community after the explosion. A very dangerous, stored chemical could have been released and killed a large number of people. The chemical was methyl isocyanate (MIC,) the same chemical that 40 years ago killed over 8,000 and left thousands of people with residual illnesses in Bhopal, India. We won our case in court. The MIC left the valley, and the federal Chemical Safety Board heard and incorporated our safety recommendations in their report. Six years later, those recommendations have not been adopted. They are still buried at the legislature.

Fifth Sip: When DuPont, FMC, Monsanto, Union Carbide Bayer CropScience, and companies like Freedom Industries take up residence in your valley, it’s not surprising that the place is labeled “Chemical Valley.” And when they pick up and move someplace where they can get a refuge from regulations and accountability, they leave behind not only the unemployed but spoiled streams and rivers, along with soil perforated with dioxin, hidden dumps of waste, and God doesn’t even know what other chemicals lurking to do us harm.

Sixth Sip: Don’t you despise these corporations that star-spangle-banner you by co-opting and polluting precious words like freedom and patriot?  Think chemicals and coal—Freedom Industries and Patriot Coal. And then there is our water company that runs two flags up the flagpole—West Virginia, where our state motto is Montani Semper Liberi (Mountaineers are always free) and American, where we cover our hearts and sing the words, “land of the free and the home of the brave.” So much for West Virginia American Water Company.

Seventh Sip: So why aren’t we, and other Americans all over this country, free and brave enough to stand up to these companies that exploit us, and the place we call home? I think we know the answer. Quite simply, we have been taught to say grace over the food on our table and never curse the hand that feeds us when it exploits us. Our obedience and loyalty stands in line for a paycheck and we dare not remember to thank the boss, and God, for the cash, even if some of it winds up on the church offering plate with traces of poison on it.

Eighth Sip: The military C-130’s come off the airport runway and roar over my roof. In the 80s I knew they were taking weaponry and supplies to fight an undeclared war in Central America. I visited the delivery site, Palmarola Air Base in Honduras. During the Iraq and Afghanistan war, they’ve transported supplies and troops. Now they are bringing water to us. Swords being converted into water bottles? I like that. It’s a better mission for the National Guard.

Ninth Sip: To say that coal and chemicals are not connected is like saying that potassium chloride is not connected to the subject of an execution on death row. By the way, West Virginia University has studied sickness and death in coal producing areas of the state and the findings clearly show higher rates of cancer, respiratory disease, and other illnesses there, as opposed to other parts of the state. Water, meant to bring life is, instead, delivering death.

Tenth Sip: The Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday has arrived. Because we are engulfed with matters pertaining to water, I think about water in the battle for civil rights. I cannot erase those indelible pictures in my mind of fire hoses turned on black people as they protested and rallied for justice nonviolently. Water—that glorious God-given gift from the sky, then drawn fresh from the earth—was never meant to be used as a weapon. It is a blasphemous and ugly deed when the powerful turn hoses on people who want justice to flow down like a might stream. In like manner, we should not have to turn on our spigots and have a powerful New Jersey company that manages water in 32 state, shoot poisonous poison water at us.

An Eleventh Hour Sip: The term, reinvent yourself, is in vogue these days. Freedom Industries, owing $2.4 million in back taxes, will run to bankruptcy to reinvent itself. I am suspicious of the term because it can so easily be just another attempt to paint-and-powder a face, or slip into anther fashion trend that soon gets handed over to a Goodwill store or a Nearly-New shop in a church basement. America the beautiful is not so beautiful. Back to water again—waterboarding and sending more and more weapons overseas for war is not a pretty picture. Perhaps if reinvent yourself means real repentance and amendment of life, to borrow religious language, there may still be time for hope.

Squealgates—The Robert Gates Affair

Robert Gates has just written a book about his tenure as Secretary of Defense under presidents Bush and Obama. Getting a huge wave of media exposure, it squeals on both presidents by unloading harsh criticism of the way both of them have conducted the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While offering an occasional polite bow to both of these men, the book refuses to circumvent the incompetence, poor judgment, confusion, political expediency, and ineptness of Bush and Obama in their conduct of these wars.

No one comes out unscathed, nor should they. The book will raise the same question Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara faced when he confessed to the mistakes of the Vietnam War, in a book written after he retired as Secretary of Defense. Why didn’t he squeal before writing a book, and then resign? It might have led to an earlier end to the war, with fewer lives lost.

I am perpetually suspicious of people, especially military leaders, who wait until they retire to spill the beans about the wars in which they led troops into battle, costly wars. Sure, Gates says that he thought about retiring more than once. But I say, write the truth about the folly of these wars immediately and not later, not after retirement. Think of the prosthetic body parts that could have been stored away, not used.

Gates is intelligent and affable, but he is at heart a professional “spook.” How could he be anything but, having lived under the cover of the CIA and the NSA for so long? But even as I say that, given my innate propensity to believe in the human capacity for change, he could have been a patriot turncoat, an honorable tradition, and joined an American audience ready for honesty, no matter how painful. It would of course have required him to say that we should not have gone to war by sending troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and GULP! If any more troops are sent, they will surely die in vain.

Bridgegate—Governor Christie In Troubled Water

“I cannot tell a lie, father,” said George Washington, “I chopped down the cherry tree.” As for the vicious political-payback hatchet job—closing a portion of the George Washington Bridge—is Gov. Christie telling the truth? when he says, “This completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge.”

The familiar questions emerge, no matter the scandal. Did he know what was going on? How could he not have known what was going on right below his nose? Is there a smoking gun, an e-mail tucked away, or a testimony waiting in the wings that will execute his self-proclaimed innocence, and his quest for the presidency, or exonerate him? We must wait on that while we guess about answers to those questions.

Perhaps the Christie crisis is about what I will call the Mafioso Syndrome? Is this a political incarnation of the “Godfather” movies? You know, a wink and a nod, and the Don is given the gift of plausible deniability by his loyal partners-in-crime, and the dirty deed gets done.

I remember when the hidden dealings in the 1980s Iran- Contra War surfaced. President Reagan said, “First, let me say I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior.”

Reagan aides were indicted, some given immunity, and others were fired. Colonel Ollie North, on staff, right across the way from the Oval Office, plotting and planning a dirty war in Central America, finally took the bullet even though the Republican written congressional investigation report said, “There is some question and dispute about precisely the level at which he chose to follow the operation details. There is no doubt, however, … [that] the President set the US policy towards Nicaragua, with few if any ambiguities, and then left subordinates more or less free to implement it.”

Question: Is the Mafioso Syndrome alive and well in New Jersey, and other political venues as well?

How Did It Get So Late So Soon?

The clock has now been set to run in the direction of a new year—2014. It has a guaranteed shelf life of 365 days or, if you like, 8,760 hours, or 525,600 seconds. It may tick quietly, but you can be sure that it is already traveling over unexplored and unpredictable terrain. There is no going back to what has been known, only forward to what is unknown. We are traveling on a river that respects our paddled efforts, yet has its own current-driven intention to take us to unplanned and unexpected places. To borrow the title of a Dr. Seuss book, “Oh, The Places You’ll Go.”

This time one year ago, Judy and I had just returned from a visit in Mexico with my brother, Gary, and sister-in-law, Nancy. Even though Judy had lived under the shadow of breast cancer for 28 years, I had no idea that the clock would stop for her on September 5, leaving 117 blank pages in her 2013 calendar.

There is a lot to be said about time, plenty of words of wisdom. Can anyone capture truth as simply and profoundly as an author of children’s books, someone like Dr. Seuss, whose trademark is getting straight to the truth with a few crooked words?

How did it get so late so soon?

It’s night before its afternoon.

December is here before it’s June.

My goodness how the time has flewn.

How did it get so late so soon?

People ask me how I am doing now that Judy is gone. Almost always they say I look pretty good. What some folks are curious about is what I plan to do with my time, whatever time I have left, as the clock ticks. Since I rely on images to best describe how I see myself, I tell them that I see myself as a trapeze artist.

Flying high above the ground, the trapeze artist finally has to let go of the trapeze. He can’t hold on to it forever. And when he lets go, he flies through the air without his trapeze. He is a man in space, twisting and turning on his way in search of another trapeze to reach for and grab hold of, hoping it will be there so that he will be able to keep flying and not fall to the earth below.

I am not “the daring young man on the flying trapeze,” not by a long shot. But spinning and turning, right side up and upside down, dizzy at times, I have not lost faith in the earth below, the heaven above, or the belief that as I enter my fiftieth year of ordination this year, a trapeze will be there the other side of my spinning

I’ll bet I can say, with a high degree of probability, that my readers, from under whatever tree they sit, know exactly what I am talking about from beneath my fig tree, when I talk about a trapeze and flying through space.

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