Author Archives: Advocate

The Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant I Remember; Its Rise and Fall

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This book by Clayton Lagerquist could be considered a companion to my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked.” We write about many of the same subjects and issues. However, I was careful not to identify other people and he was careful to identify everyone he could remember. I worked with Clayton after I was transferred from production support research and development to the environmental and health organization in the early 1970s. (He calls himself “Clayt” in messages, so I’ll begin using that name.) He is an interesting person who holds numerous technical degrees, and much of the book is about his role in the early days of Health Physics Department and the people in that organization. He is complimentary to most of those people, but there are others who receive less than glowing reviews. He refers to one manager “an arrogant ass.” He describes another manager as “easy to dislike.” But then he writes, “For some reason, I liked him.” Clayt’s assessment of the FBI raid and ensuring fiasco is quite blunt. He writes at the end of the Introduction, “The Federal Government closely supervised all activities with an on-site office and conducted numerous audits using outside experts. I say all this to remind everyone that in the end, the Federal Government sued Rockwell International for environmental misconduct in federal court and won. This has to be the most colossal act of arrogant stupidity that I have ever seen.”

The book would be of interest to anyone wanting to know more about the people of Rocky Flats and the constant efforts to improve the technology for monitoring external and internal dosimetry. There are descriptions of an unfortunate incident involving a gentleman who lost a thumb and forefinger from an explosive reaction between plutonium chips and carbon tetracholoride in the glovebox where he was working. There are details about the actions that followed to treat the worker and measure the extent of plutonium contamination in his hand and body. Clayt writes that he spent considerable time with the injured man, “…and was amazed at the patience he exhibited during this time. He was a first case in many ways and was willing to go along with all suggestions even though it involved inconvenience to him.” Clayt also writes about the autopsy program and the research program using beagles to investigate how plutonium translocates in the body following a contaminated puncture wound. Continue reading →

Meantime

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Our daughter had an injury when she was quite young, and an emergency room doctor said they would treat the injury, “…but in the meantime, keep her calm.” She told us later she thought “meantime was when the big bad wolf comes.” Of course that made me curious about the origin of the expression. Apparently, the origin is a mystery, but “mean” can refer to middle or intermediate. The expression refers to doing something in the interim (intermediate) while waiting for something expected to happen.

Warning to the West–Part II

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The first review about this book discussed the speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn to the AFL-CIO union and the U.S. Congress. This review is about a speech he gave to the members of the Senate and House of Representative on July 15, 1975 and both an interview and a speech on the BBC. His first comment in the speech to Congress was to thank the Senate for “…twice endeavoring to declare me an honorary citizen of the United States.” He quickly transitioned to his warnings to the West. He pointed out that in 1973, the year the United States embarked on detente and “…was precisely the year when starvation rations in Soviet prisons and concentration camps were reduced even further. He then mentions that the United States had the burden of leadership “…for at least half the world.” “We do not look upon you as Democrats or Republicans…we see statesmen, each of whom will play a direct and decisive role in the further course of world history, as it proceeds toward tragedy or salvation.”

The next entry in the book is the text of an interview, which I read to be contentious at times, on the BBC March 1, 1976. Solzhenitsyn responded to a question as to why the Soviets had exiled him instead of sending him back to the concentration camps. He observed that this was an instance where the West took a strong stand, and “…the Soviet Politburo simply took fright.” “I think now …they do regret it–we must remember they …had no choice. This was a rare moment when the West demonstrated unprecedented firmness and forced them to retreat.” However, Solzhenitsyn expressed dismay about the West’s reactions in most circumstances. Russians believed that the West would help raise them from slavery, but the West separated their own freedoms from the fate of the Russians. The press is accused of participating by not understanding their responsibility to publish the truth instead of mediocre headlines. He accuses that the West stood by while several countries fell to Communist rule. Continue reading →

Go For Broke

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The term means to risk everything for a potentially large gain. The result is “gone broke,” or bankrupt if the risk fails. Money lenders in the 15th Century worked on benches, and their bench was literally broken if they lost all their money. The term “broken bench” was shortened to “broke,” and was first recorded in the 1550s. The U.S. Army 442nd Infantry unit was formed from Japanese Americans during WWII, and many of them were from Hawaii. The unit adopted the motto “Go For Broke,” from Hawaiian gambling slang popular at the time. They were awarded the largest number of medals ever awarded to a single unit.

Warning to the West–Part I

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This book contains the texts of speeches given by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the United States and Britain after his expulsion from the Soviet Union in 1974. The first two in this review will be were given to the AFL-CIO. Solzhenitsyn condemned the Soviet Union and “…its intolerable policy of repression, yet also sharply criticizes those complacent Westerners who support their government’s misguided policy of detente and timidly fear to take up the obligations that freedom-hungry people expect from the leading democracies of the world. ‘Interfere more and more, he pleads…We beg you to come and interfere’.” As an aside from the speeches, Ronald Reagan was campaigning against Gerald Ford for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1974-1975 with warnings about detente with the Soviets. Solzhenitsyn said in one of his AFL-CIO speeches that the USSR was “the concentration of world evil.” Detente with the Soviets did not end until Reagan replaced Carter and declared the USSR to be “The Evil Empire.” 

Solzhenitsyn begins his first speech to the labor leaders with a short history of the Russian Revolution and tells them “…only four months after the October Revolution…all the representatives of the Petrograd factories were denouncing the Communists who had deceived them…” The Communists had fled from Petrograd to Moscow, and had given orders to open fire on the crowds of factory workers demanding election of independent officers. A lathe operator named Alexander Shliapnikov led the Communists before the Revolution: Lenin wasn’t even in the country. Shliapnikov charged in 1921 that the Communist leadership had betrayed the interests of the workers, and he disappeared.

Solzhenitsyn thanked the AFL for publishing a map of Soviet concentration camps to counteract charges by Liberals in the U.S. who were claiming the camps did not exist. He points out that Liberals weren’t the only group supporting the Communists. Capitalists were encouraging business dealings with the Soviets, which of course gave badly needed economic support. He mentions Armand Hammer by name. Some American businessmen arrange an exhibit of criminological technology in Moscow. The KGB purchased the equipment, copied it, and used it to spy on citizens. Solzhenitsyn tells a story about Lenin predicting that Western Capitalists would compete with each other to sell the Soviets everything they needed without any concern for the future. He predicts that “…when the bourgeoisie a rope and the bourgeoisie will hang itself.” Lenin is asked where they would get enough rope for that, he replied, “They will sell it to us themselves.” Continue reading →

Going Bananas

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Wiki Answers speculates that the origin of this idiom, which means acting crazy, was from a rumor passed around in the Love and Drug generation of the 1960s that inhaling the smoke from burning banana peels would cause a high. The expression swept through the streets and made it onto the television show “Laugh-In” despite the fact that numerous people proved by experimentation that it didn’t work.