i am sorry to hear about your husband too. i assume you are not planning to move back here now. boulder is more like santa cruz than denver is, i’ve lived in boulder and fort collins.

And, now I appreciate even more the time you are spending commenting here. Your life must be feeling very crazy right now with this illness in your family. Please know that I am thinking of you.

Your comment really touched me. Your childhood memory…it’s so vivid. The beauty we see as children…it’s how I would like the world to be. If people could just appreciate our planet as it is, bugs, weeds and all, we’d be living in something as close to paradise as we could imagine, I think. But this obsessive need to control everything, to see ourselves as masters of the universe rather than humble guests is truly coming back to get us.

I whole-heartedly agree with you, Mary Anne, that as horrible as the LBAM spraying is, it is also a time of opportunity for all people who are just starting to realize what toxins are doing to us. We can change our world. I believe this.

Keep fighting and, please, take care, Mary Anne!
Mim

Thank you for taking the time to comment, Maxina. I really appreciate it.
Mim

I would invite people to go to the website of the group which grew out of Sonoma Pesticide Alert, East Bay Pesticide Alert. Our site is http://www.dontspraycalifornia.org. You can click on the cropduster icon to see photos of pesticide drift, everyday life in Sonoma and Napa. That cropdusting icon was a photo I took of one of Nelson Harding’s cropdusting planes being used right across from Fish and Game land in the Carneros, right by the sloughs leading to the San Pablo Bay.

Yes, a toxic wasteland. Dr. Doris Rapp refers to our bodies as becoming toxic waste dumps because of pesticides and other chemicals being thrown at us. So very, very true.

I am so appreciative of your always remembering the people who work in the fields, the people with few choices, and their kids and other family members, the usually-forgotten populations.

A decade ago, when some activists were trying to get a zoning permit to build out an existing building in Boyes Hot Springs or Agua Caliente, back when for awhile I lived right nearby in Agua Caliente, to create simple living space for farmworkers, all these Sonoma people benefiting financially by these people’s work fought it saying that property values would come down, or that there would be violence (well, yes, organophosphate and carbamate pesticides used in Wine Country and nearby Apple lands are associated with violence, but we know that these people were not referring to this association, but more general race and class associations they have created in their minds).

The end result was that people continued to live under bridges by Sonoma Creek, and by edges of fields, getting no reprieve from saturation with pesticides. Meanwhile, people at the local health clinic, when we were doing health surveying, said that it was impossible to track these workers who had essentially no healthcare. They were in and out of Mexico and Central America and if sickened probably would not make it back to California, or if sickened in California might go back to be with family in their home countries. Regardless, nary a doctor in a Sonoma, Santa Rosa, Napa or Vallejo recognizes the most typical pesticide poisoning signs, though 911 operators do.

One wonders how the perpetrators of the alcohol industry sleep at night. I guess those glasses of wine put them to sleep.

If Sonoma County were somehow cut off from the rest of the world, there would be starvation. Nearly all usable land here is being used to produce liquor…not food for humans. It’s an absurd situation.

And, very, very sad for a girl who remembers the big open fields and apple orchards of childhood. They are all gone.

Mim

To my knowledge, there are no laws requiring anyone who uses chemicals on their property to notify surrounding businesses and residents of when, where, and how the chemicals will be used. As more homes, schools, and businesses are built in areas adjacent or close to agriculture, it becomes more important to have a variety of laws written in order to protect the safety of people in these situations.

As we open our eyes more about the LBAM spray crisis, more of us are becoming aware of the problems associated with chemicals that are polluting us and our planet.

Environmental problems are and will be the most pressing issues for the future of life on this planet.