Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, dead at 72 of complications from chemotherapy for a bone-marrow transplant after developing leukemia. Also, Henry Gibson, perhaps best known for his nonsensical “Laugh-In” poetry, of cancer at 73.
I like to annoy my friend Hal with e-mails whose subject is “A pome,” which probably has its roots in Gibson’s “Laugh-In” shtick. And PP&M managed to make John Denver sound good with “Leaving On a Jet Plane.”
Mad Blog Media 
Getting to the end of the road, are we?
you know what sucks?
Cancer.
say what you want about Big Tex, at least he is raising awareness and huge amounts of money for cancer causes.
On the subject of cancer and surviving it, I often attend meetings of a local society of fellow geologists, many of whom are getting on in years and have a long history working with uranium and other materials well known by now to be carcinogens. Many of these people also have a history of battling cancer; other, former members of the society have not been lucky enough to win their battle. One member of this group has a speech impairment caused by having a good portion of his palate removed due to cancer after a career in which he was exposed often to mercury. These meetings even take place in a college lecture room named for a man who worked on linking radon and uranium exposure with cancer.
So you’d think this group, most of whom have a history in geology and chemistry, would be the first to be concerned about the dangers of carcinogen exposure, wouldn’t you? Hardly. At every meeting at least one conversation comes up ridiculing environmental standards and attempts to protect the public health. It’s as if after a career of taking the extractive industry’s point of view on every environmental matter they’re blind to the effects that this exposure has had on their own health.
It’s tragically ironic to hear comments ridiculing attempts to control mercury exposure from a man whose voice is raspy due to cancer probably caused by mercury exposure.
What is worse than listening to the professional geologists, who at least made a decent living at this stuff, is watching the plight of those who are equally sick but who eked out a living with these exposure issues but for blue collar wages. And their families. Four corners area, for example.
I did some environmental lead research back in Paradise prior to moving to Bomb Town. I was often amazed at how much of a moral blind spot we had all those years of pumping lead aerosols into the air of our cities via leaded gasoline before someone (geochemist Clair Patterson at Caltech) measured the stuff and we were jolted into the realization that every car was the equivalent of a can of Raid aimed at ourselves. Lead is a neurotoxin (especially to children), a nephrotoxin, and of course preferentially affected/affects people in cities which meant more minorities than white folks.
Interestingly although we have phased out leaded gasoline and leaded paint, we continue to burn coal like there was no tomorrow, which means we are pumping mercury, radon (coal is rich in Uranium and its decay products), and other toxins into the air much as we once pumped lead into same.
Go figure. Now back to my evil deeds…
John,
I am no longer amazed at the choices people make when faced with such obvious cognitive dissonance. It is so much easier to grow a giant blind spot and a thick shell of rationalization than it is to change a behavior–especially if changing the behavior requires biting off the hand that feeds.
Cancer ain’t fun. I gather Gibson got it fast & hard. Bless ‘im, he died without a protracted fight. Stay away from those Fun-Yums, people. Eat good, ride, and be excellent to each other.
The Peter Paul & Mary thing was world shifting to me as a child, as were many other musical groups. That’s why at 55(last Thursday) I still go out & play Rock & Roll.
When I can’t do that anymore I’m gonna bike camp and ride ‘le areas.
Peter,
You so right on…..I never heard of “cancer” before LA came along and whored himself out to the ’cause.’ Maybe if ol’ LA took his dimes and put into curing cancer, instead of telling everyone how great he was, there might be something to talk about. Until then I’m interested in what he knows about this “cancer” thing you mention….never heard of it.
John and Khal,
Well for the first time I am happy I switched out of the geology program and into land use planning and then something else entirely. The image of the geologist outside working to understand how the world was put together was very appealing, until the natural gas companies came to upstate NY in the mid 70s and the guys ahead of me hired on. Talk about treating people like shit.
I doubt all of LA’s cash would put a dent into solving the problems that are cancer. Seems like a case for socialized medical research.
A lot of friends of mine got into the oil patch in the early 1980’s during a boom cycle. When boom went bust, all those great jobs turned to shit. Glad I stayed in academia. Pay was a lot less, but was more predictable.
Much of Western New York has heated its homes with natural gas for as long as I can remember, having been born and raised there.
Funny you should mention the Upstate New York gas situation. My brother in law from my first marriage, a vet, bought a bunch of land south of Elmira to preserve as deer hunting land when a couple farms were up for sale. Sure enough, Jack has the Midas Touch and it turns out the land was a major gas strike. Wish I had known he was going to buy the land.