The film 'Living Downstream's' message very clear

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - The crowd at the tiny Glen Theater to watch the film Living Downstream and to hear Sandra Steingraber (on whose book the film is based) was mostly true believers who think our environment is being polluted by uncaring (and greedy) corporations, poisoning us in the process.

And sometimes that poisoning results in cancer from contact with weed killers, pesticides and whatever-the-hell the chemicals are in that toxic cocktail used in hydro-fracking for natural gas.

But any people on the edge about this heard a very compelling case that most people are looking in the wrong direction.

Wrong direction?

Most efforts when it comes to cancer are aimed at curing people who already are symptomatic. But Living Downstream says we need to look at how people are contracting cancers and try to stop things at that juncture, particularly when it comes to environmentally caused cancers.

The 55-minute film lays out the case using Dr. Steingraber's story of cancer as a template. And it contains some great punchlines.

My favorite comes from Steingraber's mother, who at one point says, "Don't let them bury you until you are dead."

Sandra Steingraber

Steingraber talks about how many in her family suffer - and have suffered - with cancers. She talks about how many doctors focus on genetic predispositions to cancer. If your mom died of cancer (mine did), well, the likelihood of you getting cancer is greatly increased.

In her case, when bladder cancer was diagnosed, she pointed out to her doctors that she was adopted.

Whoops. Nurse! Pass me a new theory, please.

But the townspeople where she grew up in Illinois have an astoundingly high rate of cancer. Coincidence? Hmm.. Perhaps it might have something to do with the factories spewing chemicals into the air and the vast stretches of farmland where a toxic stew of unpronounceable things are sprayed on crops, find their way into the water table and/or are served right with family meals. Or, I suppose, at a supermarket right where you shop.

(I'll be rolling up my car windows when I see anyone spraying fields, or one of those damn crop dusters comes swooping over. Oh, and probably hitting the organic food section more now, too.)

Steingraber is shown in the movie speaking to several groups - as she did last night following the film. And in most of the speeches, she says what we need to do is launch and environmental human rights movement.

With high-quality films like this one - and her two books, Living Downstream and Raising Elijah - it's  a movement that is already well underway.

"Wild Coast" takes readers back to Jonestown 1978

GUYANA, South America - Just the title, "Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge" is good enough to make most people want to reach to grab this book from the shelf. And so in the tiny Watkins Glen, New York library, I did just that last week, picking up this tome by John Gimlette, a veteran traveler and an author with plenty of wit.

Gimlette

"Wild Coast" was hard to get into at first.  Then suddenly interesting gave way to fascinating as he progresses across Guyana to Surinam to French Guiana, detailing out the rugged life there and revealing a history that alternately makes readers want to laugh or cry. He quotes from the works of Sir Walter Raleigh, looks at the history of slavery in the area and walks readers through the various revolutions, upheavals and events that shaped what's left for travelers to see in the 21st century.

The section on Jonestown - where the Oakland, Calif.-based Peoples' Temple mass suicide/massacre happened in November 1978 - was particularly compelling for me.

I lived in Northern California when that all took place and watched in horror from a distance.

And to this day, when people say that someone 'drank the Kool-aid' they mean someone has swallowed a line of dangerous bullshit. For the hundreds of people at the Peoples' Temple in the jungle, the Kool-aid drinks ended in their deaths.

The whole thing still makes me wince, though the author reveals some details about the event that I didn't know. Yes, you will have to read it yourself to see some of the nuance of what I think major media missed.



Gimlette's book is a first-person account as he travels by dugout canoe, on foot, by steamer, aboard a tugboat and sometimes in strange cars with even stranger people. Yet the character of the jungles and rivers of these nation-states rival the people he meets as he researches the book. It's hard to read parts of Wild Coast without breaking out in a sympathetic humidity-drenched sweat.

This is no armchair travelogue trying to convince you to take a vacation. Only the most neurotic of travelers would read any of this and think, 'Gee, let's pack and bag and head off to Surinam for the weekend.'

Terry Thomas

Still, a part of me read this book and wants to tour these great rivers, meet the people and see the historical sites he did - even if they are in tatters or barely there.

As I read about the caimans, the snakes, the oily water and piranha-like fish, I kept thinking of the late gapped-tooth British actor Terry Thomas, whose character in a film talked about traveling in Africa along 'the great gray-green greasy Zambezi.'

He would have been quite at home in a movie based on Wild Coast.

The great gray-green greasy Zambezi, indeed.

The problems with our economy explained - and drawn - by Robert Reich

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - The woes of the economy are evident around Central New York, but camouflaged by the beautiful scenery and the beginnings of summer.

But the number of people out of work is astounding.

And what about young people? (Anyone under 30 these days in my viewpoint.) Very few jobs for them, outside of tending bar (a prized occupation, actually) or some work in the tourist industry. If they have left the area and returned with an engineering degree or a medical degree, it's not that much better.

There's not that many jobs for engineers or doctors, even.

And at the same time, public agencies are cutting and cutting and cutting. The great schools here might have to settle for a not-so-great environment, if the cuts keep coming.

So what the %&E^*^*^ is going on?

Economist Robert Reich explains it in about 2 minutes. Two minutes. Really.

'Freedom' ponders functional dysfunction, really...

SOMEWHERE IN MINNESOTA, USA - The novel Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen, had been on my list to read since it first came out in 2010.

It was one of those books I picked up in Costco three times, each time reading a few more pages before deciding I just couldn't part with the $25+ dollars Costco wanted.

Jonathan Franzen

Still, the lives of the family in the book - Walter and Patty - and children Joey and Jessica - had me fascinated from the first few pages. There's love, hate, a touch of violence and enough familial intrigue and interplay to give almost anyone gas, gasps, and very occasionally a guffaw.

Very occasionally.

It is not a book for everyone, even though the family themes and woes and joys are nearly universal.

The author's narrative voice probably drives some readers to distraction. (The librarian in Watkins Glen where I checked out the book told me she tried to read it three times and each time gave up). And it spans many years, with significant flashbacks, a device some people find maddening. It does work in this book, though.

I found that I could not wait to pick it up, and so I read it in just over a week, this in between regular life, writing assignments and adjusting to life here in upstate New York.

So why is the dateline on this review Minnesota? Well, life in that state figures prominently, as does the little blue bird on the cover.

But to find out about either, you will have to read it, or find a reviewer who doesn't mind spoiling a story.

Recommended summer reading, if that list isn't already filled.

Gas storage on the front burner in Watkins Glen, NY

WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - A proposal to use salt caverns on the shores of Seneca Lake to store propane and natural gas is drawing a lot of attention - most of it negative.

The proposal is by a mega-corporation called Inergy (LINK:Inergy website) to use the caverns owned by its subsidary, U.S. Salt, to keep propane and natural gas - and become the transportation and distribution hub for gas for the entire Northeastern United States.

U.S. Salt (Photo by Observer-Review)

The proposal currently under discussion seems relatively modest and the company has been pedaling it hard with local government officials.

But many local residents believe that if Inergy gets the approval to do this, it will be a case of the camel getting its nose into the tent.

Increases in heavy truck traffic, noise, water and air pollution are all cited as reasons to oppose the project.

And those factors are especially important to local residents who have watched the area bloom in the past 10 years as a major tourist destination for central New York.

Watkins Glen has a gorgeous downtown area, a world-class race track, natural attactions like the Watkins Glen waterway and Seneca Lake.  Added to that are more than 50 wineries around the lake that draw thousands of people ever weekend, nearly year round.

A gas-based industrial project - one that would send heavy trucks rumbling down the only highway through the center of Watkins Glen - would seem at odds with that.

Complicating the issue is the ongoing proposal to extract natural gas in the area using the 'hydrofracking' method that has been an environmental disaster in nearby Northwestern Pennsylvania.

Many local residents fear that if hydrofracking is allowed in New York (it is currently being studied), that the gas will end up being storde by Inergy on the shores of the lake.

Some believe that Inergy's project is actually counting on hydrofracking being approved as part of its business strategy for doing the project in the first place.

William Moler

An interview with Inergy's point man on the Seneca Lake project, William Moler, would seem to give pretty strong evidence that Inergy is banking on the gas from hydrofracking become part of its storage.
"The development of the Marcellus Shale has steadily increased the interest and value in its storage and transportation assets in a region that critically needs energy infrastructure to efficiently allow the Marcellus to proliferate," Moler told the Pipeline and Gas Journal last July in an interview.

The full interview and more comments about the connection between Inergy and the possibilities for hydrfracking in New York can be read here: LINK: Marcellus Shale and Inergy