FROM T H E LO W ER LEFT CORNER
NOW IN PRODUCTION !
As We Sow, So Shall We Reap
- 14TH EDITION -
Okay, so where did I leave off?
My three faithful readers noted the
Professor's absence last month.
God
Bless them.
I dawdled away for a few
weeks with fine intentions. Alas,
the precious hours drifted off like
smoke into thin air.
I'm pretty
relaxed today, maybe even indolent,
about my piece this time. Expect
fustian, gentle readers, not rich
burnished silk.
I don't even know
how to commence.
A man walked into a bar?...no, that
won't do.
Not to put too fine a point on
it, or flog a dying horse, but this
summer stank.
I only console myself
in the knowledge that thousands of
visitors piddled away $200 dollars a
day to stare seaward at a leaden
ocean and dusky sky drear.
My yard
looks like a stage set for Jurassic
Park.
Huge stands of impenetrable
green bracken fern and bushiness
choke the landscape.
God knows how
much dank cellulose and bast sucks up
the eternal moisture.
Europeans call
this a "Green Winter." Sometimes I
figure we've been singled out like a
passel of Jobs for exemplary
punishment. What hath God wrought
here, people? Pretty rusty iron, I'd
say.
The signs are everywhere.
Last
week the first smart geese winged
south down the coastal flyway on a
dead run.
I think they were slip
streaming a jet aircraft to get over
"that Oregon nastiness" and reach the
California border as expeditiously as
possible.
I eaves-dropped on their
gabble as they sprinted through the
rain clouds.
Don't expect them next
year.
They'll be summering in Baja.
Last week in the pre-dawn hours
a young woman glanced out through the
glass doors of a bakery in Cannon
Beach, startled to see large dark
shapes oozing toward her on the
pavement.
"My God," she shrieked, "what
are those things?"
A free-range
herd of slithering banana slugs
menaced the walkway, undaunted and
treacherous. A pound of Leslie's
iodized salt wounded the first
assault wave;
the rest of the
battalion stormed inexorably onward.
I return to my small home each
evening with caution.
Banana slugs,
like swollen Brontosauri, skate
around on the surface of my entry
door, bellowing and pawing the slime.
Sweet Jesus, the nightmare of it alll
Oh, I've heard the stories, all
right.
Innocent citizens stepping
into shower stalls, only to be
confronted by wayward slugs crawling
up through drains and pipes.
Ughl
It makes the flesh crawl.
A young red-haired woman quietly
sipped her glass of beer, enjoying
the music of the Beerman Creek String
Band performing at the Relief Pitcher
Tavern.
Suddenly a scream pierced
the air.
"Aii...ahh...a...a slug was on
the rim of my glass. Oh, yuck, ickl
I think I'm going to throw upl"
Yes, dearly beloved, these are
trying times. And don't expect
better. The Forestry Department has
removed that sign with the needle-
pointer to indicate fire danger.
You
know, that one out by Kloochy Creek.
The department has thick skin, but no
one likes to be mocked and ridiculed.
The boys at the skate park have
installed mud-flaps on their
skateboards, an ominous sign.
Those
wooly orange and black caterpillars
that show up this time of year and
augur a short or long winter.
This
year they're all black. That bodes
ill. A man told me he saw moss
growing on a mushroom, mould feeding
on lichens.
I've given up.
I recommend
patching up the Helly Hansen's and
the Extra-Tuf's, sending the beach
umbrella to the dump, and subscribing
to a 20-year program at Fanny
Tanners.
I'm sending off to Eddie
Bauer's for a Gore-Tex cod-piece.
Victoria Stoppiello
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l »F ok A ll V our R eal E state M elds •
An Ambassador is a man of virtue sent to
lie abroad for his country; a newswriter is
a man without virtue who lies at home for
himself.
Henry Wotton
C annon B each O utdoor W ear
We Carry Clothing that
makes you feel great!
A n /fregonian headline on Saturday , July
31: "EPA lim its on pesticides worry farmers."
Other possible headlines: "Farmers' pesticides
worry cancer patients," and "Cancer patients'
claims worry EPA." The news story that
followed barely touched on these concerns, yet
they arc relevant, especially for those who have
read Sandra Steingraber's "L ivin g Downstream: A
Scientist's Personal Investigation o f Cancer and
the Environment." The book rev iews evidence of
a relationship between chemical use and increased
cancer rates, and has been desen bed as a modern-
day "Silent Spring."
As a species, we've gotten ourselves
into quite a pickle. As population keeps
increasing, we keep figuring out ways to produce
more food, but it's never enough. Agriculture
experts are always playing catch-up.
Now we've turned to the "green
revolution" — hybridized and genetically
engineered plant materials, pesticides, herbicides,
and pumping water from thoasand-year-old
acquifers. The biotech approach to farming (and
corporate profits) includes generating plants
whose seeds w ill not thrive or are always sterile,
including those with the "terminator gene." The
plant produces whatever it is we eat— the bean,
the squash, the corn, but that food, which is part
o f the plant's reproductive process, no longer can
reproduce. Sounds okay until you consider that
the terminator gene could get lixise and cross
w ith other "normal" members o f its species and
could accidentally make those plants sterile as
well. Think about it: Most o f the fruits and
vegetables w e cat require a seed to get them
started; a seed that cannot produce life means no
fix x l for us or anyone else. It seems to me we're
playing w ith fire.
a
We also have plants bred to carry
bacillus thunngensis which is a bacteria that
kills butterfly larvae. In our garden, those are the
worms that plague our cabbages. BT corn, as it's
called, is marketed by Monsanto and sold on
contract to farmers. BT com therefore has a built-
in pesticide to k ill the green caterpillar that enters
com silk and damages the kernels. The problem
is the BT is transmitted via pollen to other com
plants in other farmers' fields. Right now,
Monsanto is suing hundreds o f farmers for theft
o f intellectual property because Monsanto has
discovered the BT gene on those farmers' com.
Monsanto wants its money. The fact that com
pollen moves freely on air currents is being
ignored, Monsanto wants a contract with every
farmer; otherw ise they're convinced the farmer
"stole" the BT com technology.
The implications o f this are several.
First o f all, BT moving this massively through
the plant community could decimate the butterlly
population. So what! you say, they're just pretty
baubles in the natural order o f things. But
butterflies are also great pollinators, right up
there with bees. Second, organic farmers have
pledged themselves to producing food without
chemicals or bioengineering, and their crops arc
being adulterated. Third, fighting Monsanto's
lawsuits could bankrupt many small farmers
regardless o f mcthtxls, through no fault o f their
own.
Monsanto has also been producing
"Roundup Ready" food plants, meaning you can
spray it with the herbicide glyphosate with
impunity and the plant won't die, but other
plants or weeds around it w ill. It just means you
won't have to weed your fields. Nor w ill you
have to be very careful about how much
Roundup you apply because the fix x l crop w ill
survive to market. O f course, the long-term
impacts o f human consumption o f glyphosate-
laden plants probably won't show up for a long
time, w ill they? Or have those impacts already
revealed themselves, but we just don't recognize
the long term trend because we're too close to it.
Which gets me back to those headlines.
My gripe is that the focus o f the headline and the
ensuing article was on the farmers' economic
woes and the potential reduced crop volume, but
not on the quality o f the fix x l pnxluced or the
potential long-term health effects o f the
chemicals used.
We're proud that the Bald Eagle has been
taken o ff the endangered species lis t The eagle
has recovered because we banned D D T ; that is,
we in the U.S. banned D D T, not just for the
birds' health but for our own safety. DDT,
however, is still being used in other countries,
including Mexico, which prixluccs a lot o f our
winter fixxl. Like I said, we’ve gotten ourselves
in quite a pickle. Our fix x l system has become
bigger, more complex, more cutting edge, more
expenmental, more chemicalized, and also more
risky.
Victoria Stoppiello is a writer living in Ilwaco,
at the lower left corner of Washington slate.
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Yes, we will do anything for the poor man, anything
but get off his back.
Tolstoy
UrrtR i-E-FT
SEPTEMBER 4W