Saturday, October 28, 2023

Chemical Imbalances

While we were doing our investigations that yielded the books “Circle of Poison” and “The Bhopal Syndrome” in the 1970s and 1980s, I interviewed many scientists researching the long-term effects of agrochemicals like DDT, paraquat and Roundup (glyphosate).

Readers were understandably concerned about either getting poisoned by pesticides, or the possibility of developing cancer, birth defects or other central nervous system damage from exposure.

Inside the U.S., much of the reaction to the books focused on the low but persistent levels of residues in foods. Others, primarily environmental activists, worried about the contamination of the soil, water and air.

Personally, as one of the people doing the reporting, I did not have much concern about the short-term effects on anyone other than farmworkers or the industrial plant workers manufacturing these toxic substances. The dangers to those on the front lines were severe for sure, but to consumers, much less so.

On the other hand, I developed a sense from the many interviews with researchers that the long-term combined effects of multiple chemical exposure might gradually weaken the human immune system.

This would be due to the interactive or synergistic effects of absorbing the virtual cocktail of chemicals all of us unwittingly experienced day after day, year after year.

There were a number of potential consequences, according to those I interviewed:

  • A weakened immune system would make us more vulnerable to mutating viruses. Accordingly, pandemics would occur.

  • Injuries would become more common in competitive activities like sports.

  • Conditions like autism and other mental health problems might increase.

  • Our life expectancy would stop increasing and begin to drop.

Unfortunately, in the intervening decades, all of these complications have come to pass. In retrospect, the cumulative deterioration of our immune systems indeed appear to have been a factor.

It would seem we still have time to react, however. By transforming our agriculture from a chemical-intense mono-cropping system to organic multi-crop system, we may minimize the damage for future generations.

This is how we could break the circle of poison that is slowly weakening us as a species.

And that is my hopeful message for today.

(I first published this piece a year ago.)

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Friday, October 27, 2023

JUJu 25!



 

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One Penny's Story

The other day I found a penny, or rather it found me.

It had been sitting there for a few days. Many people had passed it by but none had thought it worth their time to scoop it up.

Maybe out of pity for the cast-off, which over the course of our lifetimes has lost almost all of its value, I picked it up.

The penny was marked with the date it was minted, 1971. 

Every coin has its story; few of them get told.

***

1971 — What a year that was! I quit my job as a pizza deliveryman for Cottage Inn Pizza in Ann Arbor and drove an old white Chevy van with "Ft. Myers, Fla." stenciled on the side all the way across America. 

Exiting the freeway in San Francisco, we chugged up Fell Street, turned right onto Fillmore Street, and drove until just before Pine Street, arriving at our destination: the self-proclaimed world headquarters of Running Dog Inc., publisher of the forthcoming SunDance magazine.

The building was nestled into a space next to a blues club called Minnie’s Can-Do. 

We were a very small start-up team and before we could publish this brand new magazine, we had to build out the office by sheet-rocking the walls, painting them, refinishing and shellacking the floor. 

As a flourish of sorts, we sealed a penny into that newly shiny hardwood just before we finished preparing the space that would see an amazing menagerie of the famous (John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Jerry Rubin, etc.) and the crazy (too many to list) and the talented (everybody) walk through its front door over the next two years.

The experience of helping produce that magazine helped shape my career, leading directly to Rolling Stone, the Center for Investigative Reporting and all the rest.

***

Many years later, when SunDance was already a distant memory, I happened to be back in what was by then known in real estate terms as the Upper Fillmore District. There were no blues clubs left in the area but plenty of fancy, chic shops. After a brief search, I located old number 1913 and stepped inside for the first time since our first magazine dream had died there three decades earlier.

The space was by then a boutique. I feigned interest in the women's clothes on the racks. What I was actually seeking was pretty vague — some wisp or ghost of a memory, nothing more than that. The sheetrock had long since been dismantled, the walls had been repainted many times, and the track lighting overhead was a major upgrade from our day. All the evidence of our time there seemed to have vanished.

But then, near the rear of the store, I spotted something that stopped me dead in my tracks. There was the penny we’d imbedded in the hardwood floor, still frozen in time with its date: 1971.

Every coin has a story; few of them get told.

This one’s did.

(I first published this last June.)

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Thursday, October 26, 2023

Speaking of Hope


 In place of an essay today, my plan was to simply present one of my long-lost watercolors (above).

(I know.)

It’s probably better for me to stick with writing. 

But then the House Republicans finally got around to electing a Speaker. They chose a guy that few people have ever heard of, with a generic-sounding name, and precious little experience in Congress.

All of which, ironically, may turn out to be a good thing. Mike Johnson doesn’t seem to have much baggage, or very many enemies. He’s deeply conservative, but there is nothing inherently wrong with that.

His first words as Speaker displayed a heavy reliance on the concept of hope.

That struck a nerve with me. Hope is something we could all use a good deal more of. Let’s hope, for starters, that Johnson is better at bipartisanship than I am at watercolor painting, for example.

As an aside, I painted the piece above after I had lost a job and had no idea what would come next for me or my family. I was depressed and scared, but for some reason in that moment I tried to paint something beautiful. I guess I was trying to be hopeful.

I think that Mike Johnson may be right — these are dark times and we need a sense of hope to reinvigorate our broken political system, not to mention our broken and tragic geopolitical situation in Ukraine and the Middle East. 

If the U.S. is the greatest nation on earth, which is Johnson’s contention, as well as that of every other American politician, let’s see some actual leadership based on regaining hope. He could start by reversing his stand as an election denier. He needs to admit he was wrong about that. Joe Biden is President. Donald Trump is a liar. 

But that’s probably too much to hope for, right now. So let’s hope he will just cooperate with President Biden and succeed in not shutting the government down. Baby steps. Then get back to the business of governing. Those of us who actually believe in hope will be watching and listening.

And yes, we will be hoping.

LINKS:

  • Lewiston, Maine, shootings leave at least 22 dead, and dozens injured (CNN)

  • Congressman Mike Johnson Elected Speaker of the House (House.gov)

  • Who is Rep. Mike Johnson, the House GOP’s latest speaker? (CNN)

  • With Plea Deals in Georgia Trump Case, Fani Willis Is Building Momentum (NYT)

  • We all ‘did it’: Third Trump lawyer confesses and flips on his RICO ‘lies’ (MSNBC)

  • Trump rages as former acolytes turn against him under legal heat (CNN)

  • Trump is fined $10,000 over a comment he made outside court in his New York civil fraud trial (AP)

  • Cohen Denounces Trump During Courtroom Face-Off (NYT)

  • Florida's DeSantis bans pro-Palestinian group from state campuses (Reuters)

  • What does Taiwan want? (Economist)

  • China’s Xi Welcomes Gavin Newsom in Beijing With Eye on U.S. Visit (WSJ)

  • As Gaza Barrage and Deaths Surge, Angry Accusations Fly at U.N. (NYT)

  • Turkey's Erdogan says Hamas is not terrorist organisation, cancels trip to Israel (Reuters)

  • Israel rejects cease-fire calls; U.S. to send Iron Dome systems (WP)

  • Russia maneuvers carefully over the Israel-Hamas war as it seeks to expand its global clout (AP)

  • Hurricane Otis: How a tropical storm turned into a 'nightmare scenario' overnight (NBC)

  • Why aliens might already know that humans exist (BBC)

  • Microsoft Gets Another Leg Up on Google in AI Race (WSJ)

  • AI-generated child sexual abuse images could flood the internet. A watchdog is calling for action (AP)

  • The Future of AI Is GOMA — Four companies are taking over everything. (Atlantic)

  • Study: Climate Anxiety Increases As Rising Sea Levels Expected To Force More People To Wear Swimsuits (The Onion)

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Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Non-Conspiracy Theories

When we were writing our textbook, Raising Hell: How the Center for Investigative Reporting Gets the Story, my colleague Dan Noyes and I described the hypothesis-driven method of journalism that we and many others practiced.

It's a tricky business, this hypothesis methodology. You've got to have some basic evidence that indicates some sort of pattern plus a suspicion, an instinct, a guess about what you'll find as you keep searching.

But a hypothesis is not a conspiracy theory, which may frustrate true believers who wish reporters would try to substantiate their theories. An example is the JFK assassination. Perhaps no other event inspired more complex yet largely unfounded theories.

How could something like this have happened without a conspiracy? As years passed, even though no credible evidence emerged to substantiate any of the wilder theories, enough provocative details became public to stoke the conspiracy fires and keep them burning.

Oliver Stone exploited this more skillfully than most, imagining how the conspiracy might have unfolded in his movie, “JFK”, which has shaped subsequent generations' views about the event. That he patched in real footage, including the Zapruder footage that is the only known visual evidence of the shooting, made his docudrama feel more realistic than it actually was.

As a result, if you ask people, say, in their 50s or younger today about the assassination, they probably believe it was seen on television as it happened. But that is incorrect: There was no live coverage at all. In fact we never saw any video at all until a decade later, when the Zapruder film of Kennedy's head exploding was finally released to the public.

All of this only complicated the effort of journalists to investigate the assassination. Maintaining the rigor of sticking to the facts for journalists is similar to that for a lawyer, a homicide inspector, or a scientist. All we can do is stay alert and adjust our hypothesis in light of the new evidence as it emerges. We can't afford to get wedded to any one hypothesis until and unless the preponderance of evidence becomes overwhelming.

Otherwise all you end up with are conspiracy theories.

To this day, whether someone besides the gunman was behind the Kennedy murder remains unknown. 

I first published this essay a year ago.

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Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Pause

Within a day or two of the horrific attacks on Israelis by Hamas, we started hearing reports of a large Israeli buildup of military forces on the Gaza border. The widespread assumption was that a land invasion was imminent.

Two and a half weeks later, that invasion has still not happened.

Theories are abundant but at least a partial explanation has to be the status of the 200+ hostages held by Hamas. As of Monday, four had been released, apparently after intense negotiations involving Qatar and Egypt.

U.S. news outlets are reporting that the Biden administration has warned Israel to proceed cautiously with an invasion, partly because of the hostages, a few of whom are Americans, but also out of a larger concern.

That is: assuming Israel accomplishes its main objective, which is dismantling Hamas, who or what will fill the void of ruling Gaza, a strip if land containing some 2.3 million people that Hamas has ruled the past 17 years?

It’s become clear during the delay that Israel has no answer to that question.

This, in turn, has caused some commentators to draw an analogy with America’s response to 9/11. With the hindsight of decades, many consider the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan serious errors that did little to resolve the underlying causes of 9/11 and only engendered increased anti-American sentiment in the Moslem world and beyond.

Israel already is one of the most unpopular countries in the world and it finds itself in an almost impossible position as it strives to neutralize Hamas without engendering even more anti-Israeli sentiment in the Moslem world and beyond.

Thus the pause.

LINKS:

  • Jenna Ellis becomes latest Trump lawyer to plead guilty over efforts to overturn Georgia’s election (AP)

  • Israel-Hamas war: Gaza death toll tops 5,000, nearly half are children (Al Jazeera)

  • Israelis and Gazans Flee Amid Clashes and Warnings of Wider Regional War (NYT)

  • Hamas releases two more hostages from Gaza, Red Cross says (WP)

  • Another Palestinian journalist killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza

    Roshdi Sarraj is now among at least 23 journalists killed since October 7, as he tried to protect his wife and daughter from an Israeli air strike near their home. (Al Jazeera)

  • Israel strikes across Gaza after allowing another small aid convoy into the besieged enclave (AP)

  • U.S. braces for regional escalation (WP)

  • Iran, a longtime backer of Hamas, finds itself in a quandary as it tries to manage a spiraling crisis, according to nine Iranian officials with direct knowledge of the thinking within the clerical establishment. (Reuters)

  • Families meet with Israeli officials in push for hostage negotiations (Today)

  • U.S. Advises Israel to Delay Gaza Invasion, Officials Say (NYT)

  • How Israeli bombing turned Gaza’s desperate situation into a ‘catastrophe’ (Al Jazeera)

  • Hezbollah steps up attacks, IDF says, amid fears of wider conflict (WP)

  • The unprecedented attack Hamas militants waged on Israel scarred the country but the man at the top has so far failed to take responsibility. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, has managed to weather several crises during his time in politics but this time is different, experts say. [HuffPost]

  • The House GOP's parade of humiliation shows no sign of stopping (MSNBC)

  • Republicans worry key McCarthy spending promise is unraveling amid Speaker’s fight (The Hill)

  • Americans’ faith in institutions has been sliding for years. The chaos in Congress isn’t helping (AP)

  • 9 Republicans are running for House speaker. Only 2 of them voted to certify the 2020 election (USA Today)

  • Cheney says threats against GOP lawmakers over Speaker vote driven by Trump (The Hill)

  • Sidney Powell tells the truth (NYDN Edit)

  • Cheney not ruling out White House bid (The Hill)

  • Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA wage shadow war against Russia (WP)

  • A price cap on Russian oil aims to starve Putin of cash. But it’s largely been untested. Until now (AP)

  • Philippines says Chinese coastguard 'intentionally' collided with its boats (Reuters)

  • Newsom began a weeklong visit to China Monday in an effort to reinforce his state’s role as a global leader on climate change (AP)

  • A US watchdog says the Taliban are benefiting from international aid through 'fraudulent' NGOs (ABC)

  • Scientists learned more about how plants warn each other of danger, according to a new study. (WP)

  • Rapid melting in West Antarctica is ‘unavoidable,’ with potentially disastrous consequences for sea level rise, study finds (CNN)

  • More than 5 billion people are at risk of contracting malaria by 2040. A warmer planet will mean malaria-carrying mosquitoes will migrate to new places. (WP)

  • Why is Elon Musk attacking Wikipedia? Because its very existence offends him (Guardian)

  • Apple, caught by surprise in generative AI boom, to spend $1 billion per year to catch up: Report (CNBC)

  • The AI workforce: Coming soon to an office near you (VentureBeat)

  • While tech companies play with OpenAI’s API, this startup believes small, in-house AI models will win (TC)

  • Here’s a look at how the newly up-to-date ChatGPT reports the latest news (Nieman)

  • How generative AI can boost highly skilled workers’ productivity (MIT)

  • From doom to boom: AI is slowly re-energizing San Francisco (WP)

  • Study: Depression Up Among Teenage Girls Able To Perceive Any Part Of World Around Them (The Onion)

 

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Monday, October 23, 2023

Nested



Yesterday I wrote about erasures, art and remembering. Today I am thinking about space, possessions and remembering.

As the only boy growing up in a family with three sisters, I always had my own room. It must have been pretty empty at first but it filled up over the years. In America, growing up means acquiring stuff.

As these things go, I didn’t acquire all that much stuff. We weren’t rich and my tastes tended more toward ideas and fantasies than toys, clothes or objects.

When I left home for college, it was for good. Within a few years, I’d graduated, married, worked in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan and moved across country from Ann Arbor to San Francisco.

As was the practical thing to do, my parents packed up some of my stuff and discarded the rest. And the things they chose to save — a few books, many yellowed newspaper clippings of my early articles, some of my collections (baseball and hockey cards, seashells, a scrapbook, some random relics) have followed me around wherever I’ve gone over the many decades since.

Throughout all those middle years (ages 20-70) I lived in a succession of houses with multiple rooms and we acquired plenty more stuff.

But then, four years ago my health faltered, and my possessions had to be weeded out. While I recuperated in a series of hospitals and health-care facilities, my remaining possessions were radically distilled down to the contents of about 20 boxes.

Now the residue of that material co-exists with me in one room, just like when I was a child. The bell curve of life has brought me right back to where I started from.

As I sort through those boxes now, the contents stir memories and rediscoveries, many of which I’ve written about here. This newsletter is my living memoir; it’s going to have to serve the purpose of a book. Because I’ve decided they’ll not be a book, at least not on my watch.

But I’ll continue to write and rewrite this series of essays, some new, some old, in this space as long as I am able.

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Sunday, October 22, 2023

Oliver's 12th Party









 

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As Real As We Need



During the years that my sidelight career was selling Robert Rauschenberg paintings, I tried to improve my knowledge of abstract expressionist history.

Inevitably, I was drawn to Rauschenberg's "Erased de Kooning Drawing," an experiment about the limits of art.

At the time the two artists combined on the piece, 1953, I was being taught to erase my own writings and drawings as a first-grader in school. At the time, we were told that we were to erase our "mistakes" as part of the process of learning how to write and draw correctly.

Rauschenberg, of course, had a very different purpose in mind when he asked Willem de Kooning to produce a drawing that he would subsequently erase. He sought to discover whether an artwork could be produced entirely through erasure— the removal of what was once there, sort of like transforming it into a ghost.

It would be not a mistake but an eradication entirely on purpose. And the result would be only the memory of what used to be. 

This is, of course, very similar to what happens in life on certain occasions and ultimately. It happens when we lose things, including to fire, theft, or a conscious decision to eliminate them from the premises. It happens when we get dementia.

It also is what happens when we die.

It is also happens when autocrats try to erase history, criminals try to cover up crimes, or genocidal armies attempt to remove an entire people from the planet.

But I digress. In the case of the actual de Kooning drawing, Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns carefully matted and framed the work (pictured above), with Johns inscribing the following words below the now-obliterated piece:

"ERASED de KOONING DRAWING"
"ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG"
"1953"

The psychologically loaded history of the creation remains otherwise unknowable. To be considered perhaps.

At the end, as long as we remain aware of what happened, what was once drawn, what was once seen, what was once touchable, it is as real as we need it to be.

Just like our memory.

I first published a version of this essay two years ago. It has been rewritten twice since then.

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