Author Archives: RF_Alum

Controlled Burn Proposal for Rocky Flats

Posted on by

Rocky Flats has made it back into the news because of a proposed controlled burn near where the plant produced plutonium and other parts for nuclear weapons. An article by Bruce Finley states that west Metro leaders oppose the burn “…where plutonium contamination created an environmental disaster.” My book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats:  Urban Myths Debunked,” puts the plutonium releases from Rocky Flats into context compared to the amount of plutonium added to the environment by atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. A 1974 State of Colorado report estimated total world releases of plutonium from testing of nuclear weapons to be between 9,000 and 15,000 pounds of plutonium that contaminated the entire world everything that lives on it. The total released from all routine operations and accidents from Rocky Flats was estimated to be between 2 and 25 ounces. I can’t be certain of Mr. Finley’s definition of what would constitute an “environmental disaster,” but I’d choose atmospheric testing to have been worse than Rocky Flats.

One critic who has a lengthy career of providing inflammatory comments about of Rocky Flats was quoted in Finley’s article as saying, “If plutonium is released, it would be in the form of tiny particles suspended in the air. These could be inhaled. Even a single particle could destroy someone’s health.” I’ll respond with quotes from my book. “Is it true that a tiny particle of plutonium will kill people? Sadly, it’s too late to avoid that outcome it that is true.” “All humans have billions or trillions of atoms of plutonium in their bodies.” Is it surprising that people are living longer despite the plutonium we’ve all inhaled? Continue reading →

The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower

Posted on by

great fearThis book by David Caute is extremely long (697 pages including the appendices) and tedious (I skimmed much of it). I disagreed with most of what I read. The dustcover includes the statements that the book is about “…perhaps the greatest crisis that America has ever suffered in terms of her liberal and democratic values. Here is the first comprehensive history of the fearsome anti-Communist purges that affected almost every area of American life in the age of Truman and Eisenhower.” The author expresses skepticism or outright disbelief about numerous cases where people were accused and tried on charges they had spied for the Soviets. The book was written in 1978 before the Venona Project and the information in the Soviet archives became available and proved the extent of the Soviet espionage networks.

I won’t disagree that the lives of many innocent people were impacted. The book begins “…in the high summer of the great fear, (when) the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee warned that ‘the threat to civil liberties in the United States today is the most serious in the history of our country’. Federal, state, and municipal employees were worried that some youthful participation in a now-forbidden organization would come to the attention of the loyalty boards that had been formed because of the fear of communism. The fear reached to people in the military, civil servants, film stars, industrial workers, lawyers, teachers, writers, trade unions, and people serving in or running for public office.” The author admits that what he called “…the purge of the Truman-Eisenhower era…” never “…reached the frontiers of fascism.”

Perhaps the most ill-informed and startling part of the book is in the first page of chapter 3. “There is no documentation in the public record of a direct connection between the American Communist Party and espionage during the entire postwar period…”    Continue reading →

Castro!: An Impact Biography

Posted on by

castroI recently posted a commentary about President Obama’s initiative to normalize relations with Cuba. I noticed this small book by Don E. Beyer at the library and I’m glad I checked it out.  The book quickly gets to the point of explaining Fidel’s origins and how he became the face of revolution in Cuba. The first sentences of the book are, “Fidel Castro is a man at odds with the world. He likes to say he came into it under conditions natural for a guerrilla fighter. He was born on August 13, 1926, as an explosive storm swept over the mountains of the Oriented Province, the wild land that has long served as an incubator of revolution in Cuba.”

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz was born illegitimate, one of seven children from two mothers. His father, Angel Castro, and his mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, were not married until several years after Fidel’s birth.  Fidel’s combative nature was displayed frequently in childhood. He was described as rebellious and combative. His brother Raul described him as dominating every situation. “He challenged the biggest and strongest ones, and when he was beaten, he started it all over again the next day. He would never quit.” As a student he displayed a photographic memory. “In later years, Fidel’s prodigious memory enabled him to give the impression of knowledge and competence where it did not exist.” Spanish Jesuit teachers taught him to admire Spanish Fascists such as Francisco Franco. He later admired Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. “He was described as walking around his school with a copy of Mein Kampf under his arm.”

Fidel began to move into revolutionary politics when he went to Havana in 1945 to study law. He admired the stories of Jose Marti who had become a Cuban independence martyr in 1895 when he was killed fighting with a revolutionary army. Castro “…saw himself as Marti’s spiritual heir.” Continue reading →

All the Bells and Whistles

Posted on by

The Phrase Finder explains that the term has evolved to mean “attractive additional features or fittings,” and is often used in sales pitches for computers, cars, etc. The expression “appeared many times in the 18th and 19th century in literal references to warnings or promotional events. These contexts included citations about fire engines, the Salvation Army, circuses; anyone in fact that was trying to draw attention to themselves might do so using a bell or a whistle.” An interesting possibility about how it came to achieve the current definition is that the English cartoonist Rowland Emett designed “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” in 1968. That was about the time that the phase began being used in America for the current meaning.

 

Avoiding Risk is Dangerous

Posted on by

Being a parent is a tough job, and the argument over how much to protect children is making it even tougher. The lead to an article by Jamie Siebrase titled “Turns out, risking too little might be the biggest risk of all,” made me smile. It says that Disney produces movies that open with parental death because they “get it.” “Parents—mothers especially—are a huge hindrance to fun creativity, adventure, exploration, and, well, everything ultimately resulting in personal growth.”

Hovering parents assure that no one touches their child unless they have had their hands sanitized. The children are “…strapped like racketeers to booster seats,” and on and on. The dangers faced by children aren’t new, but we are bombarded with round the clock reports of horrors that have occurred. That makes us want to be “responsible” by assuring our children are always protected. The result is that children don’t have fun and don’t develop the skill involved in taking calculated risks. Wil Richards, a “…former outdoor education professor…” writes that overprotecting children robs them of the opportunity learn and sets them up “…to fail spectacularly in later life.” They don’t learn that they will be required to stand up for themselves.

This is becoming a subject of much discussion and disagreement. Lisa Zamosky published a web article “Free Range Parenting” that describes how a columnist allowed her 9-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone. Her description of the decision led to “…a mix of accolades and accusations from parents everywhere.”

So how much risk should you allow your kid to take? I’m certainly no expert, but I’d guess that’s where life’s lessons learned on the way to becoming an adult come into play. Let them climb the tree but help them make judgments about which limb might break. You also need to be prepared to fend off those who observe your child having fun climbing a tree and accuse you of being an irresponsible parent.

 

New Year’s Eve Possum Drop

Posted on by

We often post serious commentaries, but this isn’t one of those (unless you are a member of People for Ethical Treatment of Animals—PETA). I was alerted to this non-serious issue by a Rich Tosches editorial in  the Denver Post. He writes that he engaged in so much New Year “…over-the-top partying and so much wild and crazy hooting and hollering that many of the other residents of my assisted living center complained.” He then adds that what was missing was the lowering of an unattractive animal from a pole at midnight…in an Appalachian village in North Carolina.” The organizer of the possum drop stopped fighting PETA lawsuits that claimed the shy animal was left out in the cold and could also be “startled” by the fireworks and band. The organizer decided to put a dead possum or possum stew in the plexiglass box, but Tosches doesn’t report on the selected alternative. He does manage, as he often does, to close his editorial with comments that I found irritating.

I hope Tosches won’t be insulted that I found much of the editorial to be so silly that I checked to see whether there were other articles on the subject. Sure enough, David Zucchino has a confirmation. He adds that PETA claimed that even though the possums are released after the drop that “…they may die later of capture ‘myopathy,’ a cascading series of catastrophic physical reactions to stress or trauma.” Healthcommunities.com explains, “Skeletal muscle weakness is the hallmark of most myopathies.” I’ve failed at trying to imagine how a possum could become so frightened that it would develop muscle weakness and die.

This makes me want to look for something important for future commentaries.