Because other people came in earlier I didn't get the spot I usually choose, so I found myself facing a different lot of "neighbors" across the row. They looked middle-aged, rather than retirement-aged, and had a nice selection of junk that seemed to move briskly enough. One still had ash-brown hair, one faux blond.
Then one of those merry little breezes blew in another scent along with the predictable privet and honeysuckle blossoms. I had time to classify it as a chemical odor before my nose clogged up. It reminded me of something our neighbor in Maryland, the one who succumbed to kidney failure, used to spray on his roses when my nose used to clog up there.
It was only a breeze. I blew my nose a few times. The breeze died down. I didn't feel suddenly sick and tired, as has happened some other times when I've been exposed to airborne poisons.
Suddenly the old man across the row hobbled over to me...Old man? Hobbling? Yes, this was the same man I'd previously noted as looking forty or fifty years old, healthy, without even grey hair. The skin on his face was not thin, dry, or wrinkly, but was starting to sag in the ugly way skin sags when people are sick. He'd been walking normally, and now he was hobbling, bent over, one hand pressed against his shirt front. He asked if I wanted a special deal on some things before he left. I wondered whether he was faking illness for sympathy as he wheezed, "I'm retired...and the heat...gets to me..."
Heat? What heat? It was such a perfectly comfortable spring day! But I watched him pack up and leave, and he continued to move as if he were having a genuine attack--asthma or angina, or maybe that all-over, all-prevailing weakness I've had after just a few whiffs of "pesticide" more than I'd had today, when the poison is actually attacking the kidneys and, yes, it really is possible that the person might black out and never wake up again. His partner seemed unaffected, but if I'd been his partner I would not have let that man drive.
It wasn't even eleven o'clock, and it was such a lovely day, and the shoppers kept cruising through and buying things. Nevertheless, at eleven o'clock people who normally stay to or past twelve were starting to pack up their merchandise. Possibly they were going to Nickelsville. Nickelsville's Friday Market usually opens in the afternoon but on some special occasions it starts early.
But some of them were hobbling; some of them were stumbling; a shopper walked past looking glassy-eyed and clutching her chest. These were people who had seemed perfectly healthy half an hour ago.
One woman who's only about seventy-five seemed especially pitiful because she's always been especially well preserved. Slimmer and more active than some of her children, she flaunts a head of particularly lush grey hair so people can generally guess who's the mother and who's the daughter. She strode into the market like a model for her expensive "casual" outfit, every inch of her original 5'10", waving and calling out to all her old friends, making a scene as only rich and good-looking people do. She remembered everyone's name, and probably all the conversations they'd had over all the years. She's a good shopper who carries plenty of cash; she can be pushy, but all the vendors like her.
Then she wilted. On her return trip past me, on the way to her car, she hardly looked taller than I am. She recognized me, but her cheerful conversation didn't make sense. Someone who had a truck got up to sit on the tailgate and made her sit down on their portable chair. Someone else led her the rest of the way back to the car, after she'd rested for ten or fifteen minutes, to take her home.
And still there were people in the crowd, and this time I was one of them, looking as if that ill wind hadn't done us any real harm at all. It was still a bustling market. If I'd dared to bring out more different kinds of merchandise than just the soda pop and the seal-top plastic bin of books, which I could leave, and the two knitted blankets, which I could carry away, in case the expected storm blew in ahead of schedule, I would have made more than $29. Some people were still feeling cheerful. Some were having fun. Some were making money. The barely-adult with the permanent limp, who always wears that prison-pants look, I suspect to get his baggy britches over a clumsy brace, was positively hopping and skipping as he replaced things on his display.
And still other people were clutching at excuses they'd obviously made many times before to explain to themselves, as well as other, what they were feeling.
"Allergies"? Funny how they hadn't had "allergies" to the same flowers that were blooming earlier in the morning, or the same meals they'd eaten earlier today or yesterday, isn't it?
"The heat"? "The sun"? From time to time the sun might have dazzled people's eyes, and when the sun stayed out from behind the clouds for a few minutes the temperature started to rise, but then when the clouds and the merry little breezes came back the temperature dropped again. It was a perfect day, not only for strolling, but for working outdoors. Let's just say, if I'm not perspiring--which I wasn't--I'm not buying "the heat" as an excuse for other people's sudden wilting. I'm sure they were feeling overheated, but that would be because they were ill. A thermometer would hardly have got past the eighty-degree mark all morning.
"Getting old"? Oh, right...they were about the same age at midday as they'd been in the morning.
"Been a long day"? Well, watching other people droop, or even collapse, does make a day seem "longer" than usual. But last summer I watched some of these people work the market till two o'clock on days when the temperature was well past eighty degrees.
"Had a stroke, and sometimes..."? Yes, Gentle Readers. Strokes as such existed long before glyphosate did; it's likely that a particularly obnoxious old character, known as "The Fool" apparently for his gluttony, drunkenness, and bad temper, had a fatal stroke--to everyone's delight--that was documented in Old Testament days. But I've worked with people recovering from strokes, and whether they noticed other symptoms or not, exposure to glyphosate causes stroke survivors to lose muscle control they've worked hard to recover. Exposure to large quantities of glyphosate has been documented to cause paralysis in patients who've not even had strokes.
I was sitting there, humming a tune that could use new lyrics, looking comfortable. Apart from not being able to think of a good song I was even feeling comfortable--almost. Except for the way the market was turning, before my eyes, from an ideal Friday Market scene into a rerun of the neighborhood poisoning I complained about earlier this month. I was trying to write a nice snarky song, and my brain was self-distracting with the thought, "And there you were, planning to test whether it was the beans or the tomatoes that made you sick last week, over the weekend. Thought you were recovering, did you? There is no escape. Before we can get a ban on glyphosate, you're going to die."
That merry little breeze with the whiff of poison on it was well and truly an Ill Wind that Blew Nobody Good, this morning.
Most of the people fleeing the market before midday had no idea what had hit them. (If they'd felt themselves suddenly "nodding off to sleep," and never awakened, I will say that has to be a painless way to die.) They'd been hit all right, and with the sun shining less than half the time, there's no way to blame the sun. But very likely some of the ones who were hit hardest are the ones who went home planning to go out and poison their own gardens, tomorrow, if they feel better after the cold drinks and cold showers they were promising themselves on their way out of the market. The poor slobs believe the lies the chemical companies are so eager to tell them.
By now there's no way even the chemical companies can believe that glyphosate is safe for humans to breathe, touch, or swallow. And I've picked on glyphosate because glyphosate happens to produce especially disgusting, painful symptoms when people who share a particular minority gene, which I happen to have inherited, are exposed to it. That's not to say that any of the other "'cide" chemicals is safe for humans, either--or that some of the others haven't made me more obviously ill, faster. Many have killed other people. Some have been used in murders. Glyphosate didn't seem likely to be used to murder humans in 1990, but that was before repeated exposure had built up levels beyond tolerance in wild animals, domestic animals, and some humans...those of us who inherited the gluten intolerance gene, or those of us who've worked with glyphosate and accumulated higher levels of it in our bodies.
Me? Oh I'm all right--for now. I'm still feeling youthful, cheerful, and energetic, now. I'll notice sudden bursts of rage that make me think, "But that was actually settled twenty years ago, so why am I even thinking about it?", probably, this evening. I'll start having to race against various eroding parts of my body to the toilet, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning, to pass gassy gushes of frothy blood-flecked diarrhea followed by gassy gushes of pure blood. Last night another bloke who might be the age of a son I might have had tried to flirt with me--I will admit that that's always a hoot, and I even let him kiss my mostly black hair!--and this weekend I'll be an old sick hag who just might take a nap and never wake up. This is not even about Middle Age, Gentle Readers. This is something that is happening to teenaged celiacs, too. The celiac reaction to glyphosate is observed in little children. Somewhere in some glyphosate-poisoned neighborhood it might be a four-year-old child who lies down for a nap and never wakes up.
And somewhere in my little poisoned town some little child of Irish descent will probably be misdiagnosed as having "allergies" to some harmless flower or animal that barely even aggravates the reaction that's actually being caused by poison, likely poison sprayed on harmless daisies or vitamin-rich blossoming clover. Or maybe it'll be "mood disorders" or "learning disabilities." Or "gluten sensitivity, even if you don't have the celiac gene." Or "Yes, s/he has full-blown celiac sprue at age seven"--only just going gluten-free, burdensome as that is for a child, won't fix it.
I came back up to the cafe; a crowd was there. Someone was blethering about "allergies." Someone was muttering about "a lot of that going around." (Lot of what? Airborne poison, that's what. Trust me, if there were an active virus or bacterial infection within a mile, even strep, after all these poison-triggered celiac reactions I'd be down with it.) I stood behind someone ordering take-out lunches for half a dozen people and watched the woman who bagged up the take-out boxes mindlessly start to pour the drinks over ice for in-shop consumption. (This was the same young lady who was blurting out things like "I can't wait for the day to be over," in front of customers, the last time the town was poisoned.) Well, the drink she put on ice before the customer stopped her did look good. I bought it. And I remembered that cognitive function is most definitely linked to kidney function, too. There will be a lot of stupidity in our town this weekend. Years go by when we don't have a murder case but, if we have one this year, this weekend could easily be when it happens, or when a homicide-by-stupidity or major property damage case happens.
Like the major property damage case I remember best from last year. "I don't know what happened. I was just driving down this straight, level two-lane road in this car I've been driving for years, and I started to pull into the gas station I've been using for years, and I heard a crash, and instead of having pulled into the gas station I had pulled into the side of a car parked in front of a house on the left side of the road." Alcohol or reactions to prescription medication would be the obvious explanation, but the driver hadn't had any. They don't test blood levels of glyphosate.
Right now what I'm feeling is...strange. It's called cognitive dissonance. There's a part of me that wants to find all the fools who are killing me by torture because they're too damned lazy to dig up a dandelion, string'em up in a large multi-user toilet room, jam funnels down their throats and just pour "Roundup" through'em till they share this very special blood-gushing experience celiacs have when they poison their yards. On live television. And then there's a part of me that's going, "But a lot of the worst offenders are the sickest people. They honestly have no idea how much damage they're doing to their own fool selves. The old friends and neighbors, the favorite teachers, the parents' favorite cousins, a good half of the people who are what I have for friends now that my father, brother, and husband are dead: they're the ones who are suffering the most, today, and they're the ones who are causing all this suffering, too. They didn't see what happened in the market, even if they were there and even if it happened to them, BECAUSE ONE OF THE EFFECTS GLYPHOSATE PRODUCES IS STUPIDITY!"
And I generally think we have too much government in this country, we're Taxed Enough Already, and of "lead, follow, or get out of the way" the one thing government could do that would be most useful would be to get out of the way...but even I have to admit that this is one time when we could use bigger, more intrusive government. Somebody needs to ban these pesticides.
Go on Twitter. Type in the hashtag #glyphosate. A few poor dumb idjits are tweeting about how "glyphosate is vital" and they're so proud of their lush crops of winter wheat and summer beans, because they're poisoning their fields with glyphosate. Even on the hashtag #phenology a few fools are tweeting twaddle about "protecting their plants from tent caterpillars."
Tent caterpillars. Right. Harmless, even rather pretty, little animals that are native to North America, so the trees they infest are a textbook model of insects and host plants having evolved a near-perfect symbiosis that self-corrects when the caterpillars overpopulate and succumb to plagues. At the stage of growth when you don't want a tent caterpillar nibbling on a fruit tree, you can see the individual caterpillars visiting it, reach up, flick'em off, and whack'em with a stick. The only way a tent caterpillar is ever going to do you a bit of harm would be if you ate the poor little thing, and anyone stupid enough to poison a whole neighborhood, to get rid of tent caterpillars, ought to have to eat a whole nest of them. By ones. Fur, and illusive big black stuffed-animal eyes on the backs of their brainless heads, and creepy-crawly feet and all. And the nest full of cyanide-laden tent caterpillar frass, too. On live television.
So what we need is government--local government rather than federal, first, for choice, because this administration likes that idea generally--to ban all the'cides. Every one of'em. Require permits that specify that emergency use of any chemical that's designed to kill things can be authorized once, but not twice, in fifty years, and if the things to be killed are plants the chemical has to be in a form that does not become airborne and is painted on or injected into the specific plants. In order for me to be sure I'll be able to vote for anybody in November I need glyphosate to be banned right now, but really, Gentle Readers, we need all the poison sprays banned--not only the ones that have immediate effects on me.
Then let the idiots see for themselves how much younger and healthier and food-tolerant and allergy-free and able to enjoy nature they will be, when they're forced to stop killing their chemically stupefied selves.
DDT was not unique. DDT was typical. First the'cides appear to be harmless to most humans, and then the humans who don't have horrible reactions right away start to become ill and die. We have to stop relying on any kind of'cide to manage any kind of plants or animals.
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