>
>To the list,
>
>This is long, (since my mother taught typing). So if it bothers you just
>cut to the next post. But the article at the end is an important one, I
>hope you will read it.
>
>REH
>
>Harry Pollard wrote:
>
> (snip)
>
> And well you should avoid answering it, for their ability to put potatoes
> into the mouths of their peoples is atrocious.
>
>
>The below poverty level in the Soviet Union was 20% it is above that here!
>The difference was in the upper groups because there was no truly
>wealthy class. You can insist that one political group was paid more but
>relative to world wealth and to inheritance, it didn't exist. That is why
>their children often ended up here. There was no advantage to their
>parents accomplishments for their offspring. Here they could make
>money by making American feel better. Violence and terror, true,
>they were as bad as the LAPD in the ghetto or the FBI at Pine Ridge.
>
>You seem to insist that looking at something without bias is to deify it.
>Strange.
>You may very well call the party members an upper class but they had
>nothing compared to the wealth that they have now under the present system
>and the peasants and scientists are operating on barter. Not unlike Haiti
>in the back country and the US in the first hundred years of its existence.
>Slavery, genocide etc. and lots of railroads, plantations and textile tycoons,
>children laborers etc. Trying to "make it" in the world always makes brutes
>of governments and cultures. The Romans, the Catholics, the British,
>the Portuguese, the Americans and even the Dutch to mention only a few.
>Some call it Empire I would consider it national adolescence and it seems
>to be world wide including the "outspent" communist countries.
>
>
> It was the job of the State to support the Bolshoi, the Kirov, the two
> Moscow companies (three if you include the Kremlin) and the rest of them -
> and they did very well. The people they trained at great expense were often
> superior - and they had every reason to be so, for the competition for
> these plum positions must have been great.
>
>Your ignorance is rampant. The Soviet Union had thousands of performing
>arts institutions and major composers (writing in Russian of course
>incomprehensible to mono linguistic Americans.). "If you can't read it, it
>don't exist." Just like their fashions and space program! Seventy years
>into America they were still fighting over whether Blacks and American
>Indians were human or not. Meanwhile in the current U.S., Doctors and
>toilet paper CEOs make more than artists, scientists or master teachers.
>
>Harry, this is embarrassing but are you implying that the
>manufacture of toilet paper (which was terrible in Russia and still is I'm
>told) is more important or somehow more "real" work than the arts?
>
>That is an attitude that made the writers, painters, dancers and
>singers leave the U.S. in droves and still does. Read Henry James.
>Basically the history is that the peasants came here understanding
>Shakespeare and La Sonambula but with the contract for private
>funding of the arts, their children learned to understand much more
>simple things. Meanwhile in places like Kazan the families of former
>serfs know more about cultural complexity than America's children.
>How do I know? I have students who have sung there and told me.
>This is not unlike the miners in Colorado in the 19th century who would
>make most Americans seem like boobs in their knowledge of both
>history and their individual culture's treasures.
>
>Consider that today most can't understand the relationship between
>artistic complexity and the learning of math and history. They think
>of art as a pill to make children smart but have no idea of the
>discipline and processes by which that happens. They think it is
>found in simple listening. Meanwhile the Sloan School tries to
>teach ensemble to adults who were deprived of such complexity
>as children in simple academic three R courses.
>
>Ref. Levine Harvard Massey Lectures: Highbrow/Lowbrow, the
>Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Harvard pub.
>
>
> A very good ballet dancer would be treated like royalty. But, not so the
> bulk of the Russian people. The peasants who suffered under the Czar
> suffered equally under the Soviets - at least those who were left after the
> massacre of the millions.
>
>
>I have one of those Bolshoi members in my studio. You wouldn't be
>happy with the things she endured in order to be the best. Nothing
>"Royal" about those things. Or do you just resent the fact that they
>could eat and had a regular salary to live on? They couldn't eat much
>however, if they wished to survive the rigor. Their life style was middle
>to upper middle class here. "Oh horrors! Artists?"
>
>I'm putting an article at the end of this just for you and your attitude. I
>know about the massacre of millions first hand and my historian father's
>professor wrote the book on the Kulaks long before anyone else
>paid attention. He also spoke of the millions here both native and black
>as well. Have you no shame? You know Harry, the hard thing for me
>to understand is that the only Fed you seem to approve of is the police.
>Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is the part of the government that I
>learned to fear, not those researchers, and other bureaucrats who only
>take your money.
>
> The Soviet was the country of the very rich and a poor that suffered
> deprivation that makes our inner cities look like heaven. As soon as they
> were allowed, the Republics got away. As soon as they could, the more able
> people dodged around the barbed wire at the borders.
>
>
>Obviously you haven't been reading what those writers who wrote such
>things from the isolation of the Soviet Union and their dream of "Amerika"
>are now saying. Check out the net or the FW archives.
>
> Welcome them! There won't be many peasants, but the well-trained elite will
> head for the US and other western countries.
>
>Translate that into regular old children of peasants who were trained in
>chemical engineering and who now work for cosmetics firms in NJ. Who
>do you know? I lived amongst these people in a summer RV park for
>8 years. That your stories are inaccurate is putting it mildly. These
>"elite" you described are teachers and other middle class folks who were
>trained in good schools and who now are building schools here just
>like back home except they are better than ours. Also their kids are
>playing Mozart Concerti in the third and fourth grades. But I would
>only call them "elite" in relation to the undisciplined under cultured,
>over technologied average citizen that they beat out here for jobs.
>
>I can hear you claiming that I like them. Well I do but I am embarrassed
>and worried that they will replace America's undervalued cultural capital
>with a pure Russian one. If you read the archives you will see this
>point of view coming from my writing. Don't just live in the moment,
>study up and get caught up with what you've missed while you were
>out there making money.
>
>
> That they are available for
> American kids is a pretty happy thing for us. That it cost the Russian
> peasant who paid for their training a bowl of soup a week we can forget.
>
>They are the children of peasants themselves. We have our versions of
>the same. (see article at end)
>
>
> You might wonder, occasionally, why the US tries to keep people out by
> force - while the old Soviet Union used force to keep people in. Doesn't
> that tell you something? Are you able to see what is there behind your
> conditioning?
>
>The "yellow brick road" was invented by L. Frank Baum, the editor of the
>Antelope SD Gazette who advocated the complete annihilation of my
>ancestors. That someone dreams is not surprising. That they like a
>wild west atmosphere is also not surprising. That the the people who
>wrote those articles have changed their minds is also not surprising.
>That the "meek" come here and adjust rather than live in Russia today
>is also not surprising. Most people know how to adapt. Witness the
>artists who love America and their families and who have filled the
>performing institutions of Europe until there are no more openings.
>They did not want to leave but they call Germany "Heaven" and working
>in the U.S. "Hell." They are immigrants to Germany and Austria.
>
>
> Any able person worth his salt heads for the US. My nephew - an
> anesthesiologist - now in Virginia told me with amazement the change. While
> back in England the doctors over coffee would discuss football results,
> here they discuss their investments.
>
>And I have students from there who go home for their operations. They
>get poor care from physicians (Dept. of Labor Stats places MDs as the
>highest paid profession in America, far above company CEOs) who
>care more about investments.
>
>But there are wonderful Doctors here who care and sacrifice and
>then there are the ones who complain about money being spent for
>anything but their personal operations and then they can't be
>paid enough. There are old fashioned Drs. from America
>who have served in foreign mission fields and who represent the best
>in Christianity and then there are the Jimmy Swaggerts. My cousins are
>the first as are the Doctors at the VA but I found nothing but "Swaggerts"
>in the private "for profit-health care Industry." You should stay away
>from anyone who calls healing an "Industry."
>
> Once you have been trained at considerable expense to the English or
> Russian peasants, go for the money - which you will get in the US.
>
>Actually I agree with this as being true. Which is what I was saying about
>the Intellectual Capital issue with our computer companies. "Process,"
>Harry, "process!" What you claim to be "riding off in different
>directions"
>is really just the same process in different contexts. You have to put linear
>thought in its context. It is only one of the many possibilities, but process
>or structural thought can be carried across boundaries to open up thinking.
>
> Of
> course, I'm glad the kids are going to Russia to study "Stanislavsky
> techniques". I'm sure you know that Stanislavsky predated the Soviet.
>
>Stanislavky was a devout communist who believed in his revolution. Do
>you mean to imply that George Washington was a Tory since he got his
>education and wealth in an Aristocratic context?
>
> Maybe you should commend the Czar for initiating Stanislavsky and his
> techniques. But, you won't.
>
>Are you praising King George? Process Harry!
>
> When you properly mention the lead in your bones, a picture floats before
> me of a Russian service station "Lead or no-lead, Sir?" Ho, ho, ho!
>
> I'm sorry, Ray, but your God has indeed failed and I can understand the
> unhappiness that attends such a philosophical disaster.
>
>
>Do you mean to imply that a political system is my God? What kind of
>foolishness is that? As for your first statement consider the following
>article from the Daily Oklahoman newspaper about the situation on the
>reservation where I grew up and my mother and father gave their lives and
>safety for the education of the children.
>
>======================================================
>
> Who will save the children of Ottawa County?
>
> 12/09/1999
> By Tom Lindley
> Staff Writer
>
> PICHER -- In the beginning, the unforgiving lead and
>zinc
> mines of Ottawa County attacked the strong, reducing
> hardened miners to frail, hollow-eyed castoffs
>who spit
>up
> their lungs piece by piece in tin buckets placed
>next
>to their
> death beds.
>
> Today, it is the young and the innocent who pay the
>stiffest
> price. The levels of lead in their blood are
>alarmingly
>high
> and their futures are as precarious as the
>ground that
>sits
> above the more than 300 miles of abandoned mining
> tunnels in the far northeast corner of Oklahoma.
>
> The Environmental Protection Agency has spent
>more than
>
> $40 million and had almost 17 years to address
>some of
> the most disturbing and confounding water, soil and
> airborne contamination problems in the country.
>It now
> believes the cleanup operation could cost $500
>million,
>a
> sum no one is prepared to spend on the site, which
> includes the communities of Picher, Cardin, Quapaw,
> Commerce and part of North Miami.
>
> But the cleanup of the 40- square-mile area known as
>the
> Tar Creek Superfund site has been largely marked by
>poor
> judgment, neglect and mismanagement.
>
> Embattled EPA officials finally drew a small line in
>the sand
> last week.
>
> In an eight-page report, the EPA said it hopes to
>eliminate
> the use of a potentially hazardous mining waste
>referred to
> as chat and has threatened to take enforcement
>action
> against anyone who recontaminates residential areas
>that
> the EPA has cleaned up.
>
> At the same time, state Department of Environmental
> Quality Executive Director Mark Coleman said Tuesday
>his
> department intends to use existing statutes to start
> regulating the commercial sale of chat in an
>attempt to
>
> keep it out of residential areas and away from
>children.
>
> The silt-sized mining tailings contain heavy metals,
> particularly lead, and pose serious health risks to
>children 6
> years old and younger. Because of its hardness,
>chat is
>a
> road builder's delight and has been used as road
>fill,
>and in
> driveways, playgrounds, concrete foundations and
>even
> sandboxes.
>
> The recent flurry of governmental action may be too
>little
> and too late to help Ashley, a 4-year-old blue-eyed
>blonde
> who is among the latest victims of lead poisoning.
>
> "We thought she was just having tantrums like
>some kids
>
> do," said Ashley's grandfather, Leroy Byrd. "She was
>just
> so hyper ... then we found out it was the poison."
>
> Three years ago, a health study revealed that 38.3
>percent
> of the children tested in Picher, 62.5 percent
>of the
>children
> tested in nearby Cardin and 13.4 percent of the
>children
> tested in Quapaw had elevated blood lead levels,
>compared
> with less than 2 percent in the rest of the state.
>
> Lead is poisonous because it interferes with some of
>the
> body's basic functions, according to the EPA.
>The body
> cannot tell the difference between lead and calcium,
>which
> is a mineral that strengthens bones. Like
>calcium, lead
>
> remains in the bloodstream for a few weeks, then is
> absorbed into the bones, where it can collect for a
>lifetime.
>
> In children, low levels of lead exposure can cause
>nervous
> system and kidney damage, learning disabilities,
>attention
> deficit disorder and lower intelligence.
>
> The high lead levels in the series of mining towns
>prompted
> the EPA to rush in with bulldozers and men in
>moonsuits
>to
> scrape up to 18 inches of lead- contaminated topsoil
>off
> school playgrounds, off ball fields and away
>from more
>than
> 1,000 homes where the lead concentration was
>above 500
> parts per million.
>
> Two years later, at least another 800 homes
>remain on
>the
> remediation list.
>
> Banned from school
>
> Ashley has been sent home permanently from
>kindergarten
>
> for kicking a teacher in the shin. But the
>two-bedroom
> house she lives in near the center of Picher is no
>haven,
> even though the EPA trucked in new soil and
>planted new
>
> sod more than a year ago in her yard.
>
> "When she has one of her fits, you just want to
>hug her
>and
> hold her tight," Byrd said. "But that won't do any
>good. You
> just have to let her go."
>
> Most often, that's outside, where Ashley loves
>to ride
>her
> brother's toy plastic tractor and where giant chat
>piles still
> dominate the landscape.
>
> At one time, an estimated 165 million tons of the
> milky-white mining tailings proudly proclaimed
>Picher
>as
> the lead mining capital of the United States.
>Now those
>
> man-made mountains have the potential to induce lead
> poisoning the way the underground dust the miners of
> yesteryear ingested gave them silicosis,
>tuberculosis,
>lung
> cancer and liver failure in numbers far greater than
>the
> average.
>
> Mary Happy, a community education nurse with Grand
> Gateway Economic Development Authority, wants to
>help
> find the Byrds housing in a safer area. But they
>won't
>go,
> even though Ashley's younger brother also is testing
>high
> for lead.
>
> "My neighbor is letting us stay here for free," said
>Byrd,
> who is disabled and supports his family on a $553
>monthly
> Supplemental Security Income check. "He told us
>we can
> live here the rest of our lives. This is the most
>peaceful and
> friendly place we've ever lived."
>
> Out here where the foothills of the Ozarks meet
>up with
>the
> Oklahoma prairie, one man's home is another man's
> nuclear-war- inspired nightmare.
>
> Most outsiders take one look at the acidic water
>in Tar
>
> Creek, the piles of chat, the sinkholes, the
>cave-ins
>and the
> black holes where men were lowered into the
>ground to
> retrieve ore and conclude they have landed on
>the moon,
>or
> worse.
>
> But the common denominator is that for too long,
> practically no one -- neither the mining
>companies nor
>the
> federal, state and local authorities who
>regulated them
>-- did
> much to examine the toll it was taking on the
>land and
>the
> people.
>
> In describing the Tri- State Mining District today,
>Coleman
> said, "This is a problem whose magnitude is
>difficult
>to
> understand unless you've seen this place."
>
> Others think "the right people" simply haven't
>cared to
>visit,
> namely national and state politicians and key EPA
>officials
> who determine the priorities.
>
> At first, water
>
> Although the EPA declared Tar Creek to be one of the
>most
> contaminated sites in the country in 1983, it
>all but
> abandoned Ottawa County in 1988 after spending more
> than $7 million in a failed attempt to prevent mine
>water
> containing lead, cadmium and arsenic from
>surfacing and
>
> emptying into Tar Creek.
>
> It wasn't until 1994, when a study by an Indian
>clinic
> revealed the extent of lead poisoning among area
>children,
> that authorities realized they had a crisis on their
>hands,
> the likes of which hasn't been seen elsewhere in the
> country.
>
> "I don't want to alarm people, but given the
>substance
>of the
> land and the vast amounts of water, wouldn't you
>love
>it for
> the ground to open up and the chat piles to drop
>in?"
>said
> Niall Kirkwood, associate professor at the graduate
>school
> of design at Harvard University.
>
> Kirkwood, who is part of a Harvard research team
>that
> hopes to provide real tools and techniques for the
> community to reclaim the area, said Tar Creek
>has more
> obstacles than most contaminated landscapes.
>
> Among them:
>
> The high exposure to lead from chat piles, mill
>ponds
>and
> lead- based paint that for decades was
>manufactured and
>
> sold by the local mining company.
>
> The water quality in Tar Creek and the danger it
>poses
>to
> Grand Lake and its blossoming resort community.
>
> The former mined areas, many of which sit below
>homes
> and businesses, that are still sinking.
>
> The overall environmental quality and the
>proximity of
> community buildings, schools, tribal
>headquarters and
> homes to the sources of lead.
>
> The broader environmental concerns regarding water
>quality
> and flooding.
>
> "One thing I have not heard expressed is: What
>is the
>future
> of this site, I mean 20 or 30 years down the road?"
> Kirkwood said. "Is there any visionary thinking
>for the
>
> environment to become cleaner and less disturbed?"
>
> EPA and state officials admit they are taking the
>cleanup
> piece by piece.
>
> Noel Bennett, the EPA's project manager for the
>site,
> predicts that it will be "several decades before the
>site is
> cleaned up."
>
> "We are concerned about the continual spread of this
> material by misuse," he said. "Some uses are
>acceptable,
> some are not."
>
> The latest EPA fact sheet is designed to make sure
> children don't play in unsafe areas, while
>putting into
>place
> guidelines allowing chat to be sold for use on
>nonresidential
> roads.
>
> "To imply that we've got a fully figured out plan,
>well, we
> don't," Coleman said. "But if I waited until we
>did, we
>would
> be waiting to eternity. Our biggest problem is
>elevated
>blood
> levels in children, and the results we've gotten
>recently have
> been encouraging. The levels have been cut in half."
>
> It's been estimated that it would take more than
>$500
> million to return northern Ottawa County to a
>pristine-like
> state.
>
> Phillip Allen, newly appointed residential
>manager for
>the
> EPA, said, "It would be hard to go to EPA
>headquarters
> and get a half-billion dollars."
>
> While the EPA has footed most of the bill, the state
>also
> has trouble enlisting support from lawmakers for
>the 10
>
> percent state match that is required at Superfund
>sites,
> Coleman said.
>
> "We have had an uphill battle convincing anyone that
>this is
> a problem," Coleman said. "And without the locals
>thinking
> it was a problem, it was hard to convince anyone
>else."
>
> As an example, the EPA's promise to crack down
>on chat
> users who recontaminate remediated sites came in
> response to evidence that residents whose lawns had
>been
> replaced were covering their driveways with chat.
>
> Allen does promise continuity and cooperation as the
>yard
> cleanup phase winds down next year, adding, "I
>hope to
> add to the residents' comfort level."
>
> However, Earl Hatley, environmental director for the
>Quapaw
> tribe, whose members still own 70 percent of the
>land
>in the
> Superfund site, predicts the winds will continue to
>blow and
> that two years after the EPA has completed the
> remediation project, the yards will be
>recontaminated.
>
> "The EPA still doesn't have a vision for what to
>do,"
>he said.
> "This is a Band-Aid approach, and the Band-Aid
>doesn't
> have any stickum."
>
> It has been estimated that the mining
>operations, which
>
> began in 1891 and ceased in the late 1950s when
>imported
> lead cut into the U.S. market, produced more
>than 160
> million tons of chat. About 60 million tons
>remain. The
>rest
> was either stolen or sold -- chat now sells for
>about
>$1.20 a
> ton -- but there are no records to indicate where it
>went.
>
> "At some point, we will begin to chase down
>where the
>chat
> went," Coleman said. "There are just a bundle of
>public
>
> safety issues."
>
> Ominous prediction
>
> As early as the 1940s, the U.S. Bureau of Mines
>predicted
> a calamity resulting from the many
>interconnected mine
> openings filling with water that had previously been
>pumped
> out from the acquifer.
>
> "The rising water table would dissolve great
>quantities
>of
> soluble sulphates and would become high in carbon
> dioxide, minerals, acids and salts (especially
>sulphates of
> iron and aluminum) which hydrolyze to create acid
>water,"
> the prophecy read.
>
> In 1979, more than a decade after the last of
>the mines
>
> closed, acid mine water began finding its way to the
> surface, turning Tar Creek orange and eliminating
>aquatic
> life. Experts have been looking unsuccessfully
>for ways
>to
> keep the ooze out of Tar Creek and the
>tributaries that
>flow
> into Grand Lake ever since.
>
> As the state environmental department focuses on
>locating
> the hundreds of potentially dangerous mine
>shafts and
>the
> EPA winds down its remediation program, health
> professionals and environmentalists will take up the
> crusade.
>
> Meanwhile, Ashley's fate is yet to be determined.
>
> "Each child is different," Mary Happy said.
>"Ashley has
>so
> many strikes against her. But it's hard to
>predict what
>will
> happen to her."
>
> In addition to remediating her grandparents' yard,
>several
> other steps are under way. Ashley, for example, has
>been
> referred to the county health department for
>frequent
>lead
> monitoring and nutrition counseling.
>
> Her family also is using an EPA-designed special
>cleaning
> technique that makes her house safer until the
>home's
> lead-based paint can be removed as part of Grand
> Gateway's $1.4 million project to remediate 51
>homes in
>
> the area.
>
> When Ashley's house was first inspected for lead
> contamination, the first things to go were the mini-
>blinds,
> which showed high levels of lead.
>
> "I took them down, replaced them with curtains
>and took
>
> the blinds to the hazardous waste site," Happy said.
>
> Ashley's blood level is still testing in the 18
>ug/dl
>range,
> Happy said. (Lead is measured in micrograms, or
>ug, per
>
> unit. One microgram is equal to one- millionth of a
>gram.)
> Levels above 10 ug/dl can cause learning
>disabilities,
>can
> affect a child's IQ and social behavior, and may
>require
> medical attention.
>
> It would be easier if lead poisoning had a face,
>but it
>
> doesn't, said Susan Waldren, director of the Ottawa
>County
> lead poisoning program.
>
> "It's tasteless and odorless," she said. "At one
>time,
>we
> didn't understand the cause and effects of
>smoking, and
>it's
> the same with lead poisoning. We know some
>children are
>
> more affected than others and that the more
>susceptible
>
> children are those with a lot of hand-to-mouth
>activity.
>
> The problem is that when a lot of families don't
>have
>enough
> money to feed their kids, lead poisoning isn't very
>high on
> their lists of concerns.
>
> (This sounds like the water problem in Bengladesh
>REH)
>
> Rebecca Jim, a Miami High School counselor who has
> spearheaded a lead awareness campaign among Cherokee
> students and others in the community, hopes to see a
>day
> when the chat piles don't always symbolize the
>land of
> lead.
>
> (You can always count on culture and family to
>care and
> rescue people. REH)
>
> Jim said she doesn't see the chat piles the way they
>are
> today. Instead, she thinks about how they will
>look in
>the
> future.
>
> "I see them gone," she said.
>
> It can happen the same way mountain monuments to her
> Cherokee ancestors were built in their North
>Carolina
>home
> -- one bucket at a time.
>
> "If everyone figuratively takes a bucket and puts it
>back,"
> she said, "this can be a tall prairie of grass some
>day."
>
>
> =============================================
>
>Thanks,
>
>Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
>The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble, Inc.
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
