MobyPicture.com

Jack’s morning
MobyPicture.com

I watched Charlie Wilson’s War last night and I’m glad I didn’t pay $9 to see it in the movie theater. While the performances by Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts & Philip Seymour Hoffman were above par the story for me didn’t grasp me the way I thought it would. I liked the movie but didn’t love it.

I think what I would have liked to see more of is the interaction between Hanks, Roberts and Hoffman. Those were the best scenes, especially between Hanks and Hoffman who plays a CIA operative. Their bantering back and forth was the best part of Charlie Wilson’s War for me.

The story was easy enough to follow. Hanks as Charlie Wilson is a philandering Congressman from Texas who takes special interest in the Afghani mujahideen fight against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. Wilson works with Hoffman and Roberts to raise the amount of the covert operations budget to supply stinger missiles to the Afghanis to destroy Soviet tanks and shoot down helicopters & planes. The outcome being that the Soviets retreat from Afghanistan in 1989 and shortly thereafter the Iron Wall crumbles.

Charlie does try in vain to get funding to rebuild Afghani schools and keep the U.S. involved in Afghanistan rather than just leaving a void to be filled by who knows who…we know now it was filled by the Taliban and the mujahideen whom we supplied with weapons who end up forming Al Queda. It made me wonder what would have happened Charlie hadn’t gotten involved in supplying the mujahideen…would they have been destroyed and Al Queda not exist today? Our legacy in Afghanistan was leaving when the Soviets left without helping in rebuilding their county and building goodwill. As the movie points out, the Afghani people didn’t know that it was the U.S. who supplied the weapons to drive out the Soviets because it was a “covert war.”

I recommend Charlie Wilson’s War but only give it a thumbs up, not a way thumbs up. There were some funny moments especially with Hoffman but the drama part just didn’t capture me. Let me know what you thought of the movie.

My brother Ed put together this map showing the address we grew up at in Natick and the proximity and our activity around the Natick Laboratories, a superfund site.

According to an article, Natick’s Superfund Site, the following has been found.

• Over the years a substantial amount of dry cleaning fluid (also called perchloroethylene or PCE), trichloroethylene (TCE), benzene, pesticides, polynuclear aromatic compounds, and mercury has escaped into the local environment.
• The Natick Labs also operates a medical waste incinerator. The incinerator is used to destroy about 1500 pounds of pathological wastes each year. The US EPA has identified these incinerators as America’s third largest source of dioxins. Medical waste incinerators produce more dioxins than all paper mill boilers, industrial furnaces and boilers, cars and trucks, hazardous waste incinerators, and coal and oil burning power plants combined.
• The sediments surrounding the Army labs’ T-25 stormwater outfall near Lakewood Avenue are heavily contaminated with DDT, other pesticides, arsenic, PAHs, toxic metals, and possibly dioxins.
• The Natick Labs have released toxic air pollutants from open pit test burns, burning of wastes, including burning of clothing contaminated with small amounts of chemical weapons like Mustard (HD or di(chloroethyl) sulfide). Solvents have contaminated town drinking water wells (which are usually treated before use), and can be found in lake water at low levels. Residents are exposed to contaminants by eating lake fish or ingesting lake water containing stirred-up sediments from the T-25 outfall area.

The scary thing is that we went swimming and fishing in the water around the Natick Labs. Our house was downwind from the incinerator exposing us to dioxins in the air. I come from a large family and there are a few of us that have idiopathic-type illnesses that may be caused by our close proximity to this superfund site. I have fibromyalgia and one of my sisters and my brother Ed have it as well. Another sister has an autoimmune disorder that could be caused by environmental factors. My brother Ed as well as my mother have/had neurological problems and my mother died from ALS which again could be caused by exposure to dioxins or other environmental contaiminants.

All of this is supposition, nothing can be proved or disproved. Is it coincidental that half my family has illnesses that were not present in previous generations? Are we reading too much into this? Do you have any experience living near a superfund or brownfield site where there is a higher incidence of cancer or other environmental illnesses?

Swimming with a nurse shark

Originally uploaded by ellenm1206

One of my adventures in Cancun, actually off coast of Islas de Mujeres where I went snorkeling, saw some dolphins & turtles and finally held and kissed a nurse shark. If I had been stronger I would have gone scuba diving but illness this winter kept me from doing something so strenuous. Maybe next trip…