Picher Perfect

The LW and I watched a disturbing show last night on PBS. It was an Independent Lens program called The Creek Runs Red. I didn't know that the LW had changed the channel, but I heard someone speaking who sounded a little bit slow. I turned around to see someone who could have very easily been a part of my family down in Mississippi. She was going on and on in an obvious redneck dialect about how lead poisoning hadn't done anything to her or her family and that she didn't know what all the fuss was about. I found it interesting that this person is basically a poster child for learning disabilities caused by heavy metals .......and that by having learning disabilities, she doesn't even realize that she's the poster child.

The show is worth watching. I had basically heard these people speak before. They're all over just about everywhere that I've lived. In Canon City, CO they're the folks that still believe that dirt from the Manhattan project that's stored near the water supply (and almost leaking into the water supply for most of western Kansas) won't hurt them or their kids. Yup, if you don't want to find anything, don't put in the correct monitoring wells....problem solved right? In Mississippi, they're the families of folks that have lived near the cotton fields and been subjected to boll weevil poison and defoliant drift all of their lives, yet continue to wonder why they have so many strange illnesses in their communities. CMT anyone?