Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter 9

This one's disgracefully late...and a bit self-indulgent. There've been more than one glyphosate news headline during October. There's been, so far, as far as I've seen, only one major headline, which is linked below. The others have, so far, consisted of local bans that may or may not be enforceable. I believe Baum Hedlund are curating the list of countries, states, counties, cities, towns, and schools that have banned glyphosate so I'll be lazy and steer you to their site for status updates. Here's the full text (front and back of one sheet of paper) you'd get in the mail if you didn't prefer to read it online:

GLYPHOSATE AWARENESS NEWSLETTER #9

The Glyphosate Awareness Newsletter is published weekly by Priscilla King, c/o Boxholders, P.O. Box 322, Gate City, Virginia, 24251-0322. It’s available free, in plain text as an e-mail or attachment. Printed or audiocassette versions are available for the cost of production. (Audiofiles are free to anyone who can convince me that s/he is blind and can’t read a document aloud using widely available software.) Reprinting, recirculating, and sharing this information at the reader’s own expense is encouraged, provided that all sources of material are credited.

1. ST. LOUIS: SHARE, SHARE, SHARE

As you know, St. Louis is the next designated US battleground for Glyphosate Awareness. We need to focus efforts there on the idea that Bayer could actually survive, and even grow—providing more and better jobs for Missourians—IF Bayer can break away from the bad old idea of spraying poisons over the land, and move forward into twenty-first-century ways to control “pest” species. Think nanotechnology! Think robots! Bayer could be building robot wasps that kill mosquitoes, not to mention robot edge steamers that kill weeds growing into roads by watering native plants in their proper place, and robot cutworms that clean weeds out of wheat fields. They have the money. They can train and pay the scientists. They can assign Missouri laborers to safer, healthier jobs!

And we need to be sure every woman, and every woman’s husband, in Missouri sees this...

2. GLYPHOSATE CAUSES BREAST CANCER

Long overdue laboratory study at Purdue University demonstrates how glyphosate aggravates oxidative stress, which is what helps tumors grow...specifically, a more aggressive type of breast tumors, formerly rare, that are more likely to metastasize and kill younger women.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-10-herbicides-breast-cancer-scientists-piece.html

3. WHY IS THIS NEWSLETTER THREE WEEKS LATE?

The short answer is: October stuff. Since a good chunk of my small, 100% non-tax-funded income comes from selling hand-knitted products that move fastest in November and December, October is when I freshen up the merchandise and find a place to park it for those key marketing months. Online time is inevitably lost.

But it’s been a particularly trying October. A friend has died (of breast cancer). A friend who loves to get out and be active has been grounded again by another stroke. A friend’s wife has been hospitalized. A friend’s husband collapsed while we were trying to work the Friday Market this morning. It doesn’t help when people whine tediously about our ages, although seventy is “old” relative to some people’s DNA, and some of my generation are now seventy. I’m having leg cramps and irregular heartbeat and brief recurrences of the headaches that are technically in the migraine category (though mild), and as a celiac I’m experiencing these things as flashbacks to the way I normally felt in my teens and twenties. I’ve been working out of a café, and as we’ve read, the next incoming crop of Colombian coffee has been poisoned...For celiacs it’s cold comfort to know that, because our reactions are so specific, dramatic, and disgusting, they may be less likely to be fatal than our friends’ more confusible, “but lots of things cause cancer” reactions. At least we know why we’re having Bad Days. People with cancer, kidney failure, asthma, etc., don’t know.

I've been working from the local cafe. I’ve guessed that the café sells Colombian coffee because I’ve been tolerating it in recent years. I don’t tolerate Kona coffee, which is poisoned with glyphosate. I’ve had low-grade chronic celiac reactions all month, already. And then we have a little local pest, the kind of visibly atherosclerotic hater who hardly even deserves a moment of annoyance, but it’s using those time-tested fourth grade bully techniques to annoy people other than me.

And my faithful laptop computer is running low on memory; the wizards say its memory might be enhanced, but its keyboard is wearing out and its fan’s not running evenly, such that it’s crashed from overheating six times this week. I hate that even “recycling” electronics involves massive amounts of waste and pollution, but I think it’s becoming unavoidable now.

I need encouragement, Gentle Readers. Send healing energy, say prayers, send money...

4. POSTCARDS, MORE POSTCARDS

It is discouraging to get on Twitter and see, though this is probably due to shadowbanning and censorship, that the Purdue study hasn’t gone viral yet. Have you all printed off a few copies to mail to your elected officials yet? “Properly” stuck-down, bulky envelopes alarm some elected officials, as they’ve been used, in the past, to send things other than information to our U.S. Congress. Try printing with a cover sheet containing the addresses in the top third, like an envelope; fold the document in thirds, as if to send it in a business envelope, but save the envelope. Seal the folded document with a little round sticky bit of paper. This way the congressional mail sorters know they’re handling a legitimate document, and the student interns can count the copies and note that information so your busy Congresspeople need to read the document only once. You can put personal notes on the bottom of the cover sheet for your peeps in Washington (and your state capital) to read when they have time.

But that’s a lot of paper, even though it recycles. You can also save some strain on the holiday-burdened Post Office by sending your representatives postcards. They like postcards—easy for the students to sort. That’s why I’ve been spending so much online time on Zazzle, the custom digital printing and marketing service.

https://www.zazzle.com/collections/glyphosate_free_new_year_collection-119411323818420070

Gentle Readers, while I’ve been able to use free stock images to create some “hometown winter” postcards especially for sharing with elected officials from half a dozen States, those of you who have good-quality digital cameras could be creating much better ones. You could use images of your specific towns, and sell the cards for a profit if you have the right kind of local gift shop, too.

You’re not limited to the postcards I’ve posted. By no means.

If you like the images I’ve used but want to change the holiday to reflect your representatives’ traditions, Zazzle guarantees that you can do that. Click on “Edit Design,” then click on “Layers” and “Back” and “Text,” to change, e.g., “Merry Christmas and a glyphosate-free New Year” to “Peace and blessings to Rep. Omar in a glyphosate-free New Year,” if you’re represented by Ilhan Omar.

If you want to use locally specific images, to let, e.g., your New York officials know that you’re mailing from Buffalo rather than New York City, Zazzle will let you do that too. You no longer have to take the time to join Zazzle. Click on “Edit Design,” “Layers,” “Front,” “Image,” and “Upload,” and you can send your representatives photos of your town, or even your home or family (recommended for messages like “My children wish for a glyphosate-free New Year”). You could send photos of local animals and plants that are affected by glyphosate, too.

Legitimate Glyphosate Awareness postcards should have pretty images and polite messages. If you don’t like one of your U.S. Senators at all I’d recommend “Senator, I want a glyphosate-free New Year” to communicate, by its lack of warmth, an adequate level of lack-of-affection. (For what it's worth, one of mine more or less consistently fails to represent my views, but since he is at least a member of a church--a Catholic church, wouldn't you know--he gets the "Merry Christmas" version.)

If Zazzle works for you and you’ve taken some especially pretty pictures, you might want to become a member and sell your own postcards online. Nobody gets rich on Zazzle but the site will, in theory, pay if enough people buy your cards—even if you buy them first and resell them at a small profit. You can do shirts and mugs and car seat covers, too. You can network—Zazzle pays more when you sell an e-friend’s merchandise than when you sell your own, to encourage networking—and collaborate to mash up your words with a friend’s pictures or vice versa.

Your options are unlimited. Glyphosate Awareness is a movement, not a personality cult. Obviously I’d like it if youall bought a few thousand of my postcards and Zazzle actually sent me money, but your officials need to hear from you not me. So do your own thing, by all means. If you create a postcard, Zazzle will offer the option of tweeting a link to it; if you add my Twitter name, @5PriscillaKing, to that tweet I’ll add your card to the main collection.