Errrm...... dispersants in the gulf....

I was 'talking' to a friend from the internets this past evening. I had a flash memory from when I was five or six. It wasn't useful then, but can make sense now......

Very much sense....

So ok, I'm a nut job... have the records to prove it.. some things can worry me to the point where I get unbearable. And angry, and for outsiders, seemingly unjust in my opinions... Sooooo.... I was going ON about American guys, and cars, and all that jazz... He has offered to help me with a big problem I was having. The guy is so cool, but straight. I would marry him in a Vermont minute if he weren't, as I kidded him. It was a joke, but only barely a joke. And I set up this 'meme' about how I don't like THEM being more progressive than my roots and the New Hampshirites. It's sort of like teasing your little brother, ok? Nothing more. He works a farm.

A spectacular, wonderful man.... Of the sort you would never meet otherwise.

And this throw-away line came up, from very deep in my memory... about not being afraid to get mussed up, and cleaning a chicken barn.....

And THEN it hit me full force. My folks were in the middle of a very messy divorce. I never got or heard anything of what they were doing, but the Venerable must have been fully off the charts for distraught. He had to compensate for what my psycho Mom wraught, and worked to exhaustion 'in the mills'. Sound familiar? At the time we are talking about, we were losing the house, because she had used the mortgage money to do what SHE wanted.

So he was scrambling as fast as he could go. And I guess that my grandparents weren't all too enthusiastic about taking in two rambunctious little boys, it must have been horrible for the V.

That is just background, haven't thought about this in years and decades. And a couple of times, my brother and I got farmed out, don't remember much about it.... baby-sitters for a day.

But one thing I DO remember... a couple, gawwd, were they creepy. They had a 'fahm' up the hill. And being real New Hampsha, you didn't just take two confused kids in for the day, you put them to some 'useful' work. Like cleaning their chicken barn. It wasn't a coop, it was a barn of sorts, it was very big. From the view of a five-year-old, pint-sized kid..... I do not think it had been cleaned in years, looking back. I was up to my knees in chicken poop.

They tried to make it a game for me. I got me a pitch-fork, a shovel, a wheelbarrow, and I shoveled shit half that day. It was sort of horrific.

Today, am surprised the smell alone didn't kill me. Never liked thinking about it. All I knew was, I was keeping my little brother safe from all that, and it kept me going. So I finished it, did a good job, as far as I know, and got some sort of thin soup that I no longer had appetite for.

I fell ill from that. Can't account for it to this day... I can 'guess' that it was ammonia in the waste, because that smell turns on my barf button, ok? To this day.

I was very ill, my father had to call in the doctor the second day. Which must have been an imposition and an added burden on what was going on with him.... Hell, all I felt was that we were a burden on him at the time, in any sense, and he never sent us there again.

So yeah, what the hell does this have to do with dispersants in the Gulf, huh?

I keep seeing more and more reports on my internets. People becoming ill, but of COURSE the spill won't be to blame. The Bad Product people won't allow clean-up workers to wear respirators to protect themselves, and they are getting sick. I assume that that crap has gotten into the air in the hot, humid atmosphere of Louisiana, and I 'assume' little kids are going to fall ill.... Someone should start keeping track of how many of THEM are going to be orphaned.

And OH yeah, I am the Grinch here, or Cassandra, OR Pandora, am ranting about NOTHING if you listen to corporations.

You are listening to the wrong people, people. This will not just go away, you know, people tend toward optimism. They get blind as I am without glasses.

So yeah, it took cleaning out a verdreckte chicken barn to make me realise how dangerous this is. So just go figure.... because THIS OLDIE would rather smell ammonia and die than what people there are having to breathe.

And YES, that is hyperbolic, and YES it is not going to be rational to what you are thinking, but it is MY truth, based on what I learned many years ago.

Hardly anyone seems to be paying attention.

But you WILL see...when it is too late. DO something! Are we 'clear' on this issue? Or do I have to go over there and throw so much chicken poop on you, you will get sick? I am not even sure that would do much at this point.

And yes, I am angry, in case you didn't notice... As my blessed mother used to say, 'I told you and told you. Did you listen? No.' So I've been telling you and teling you. Listen, for once, for cripes sakes!

This catastrophe is major.

No time to just look away... and pretend nothing is happening.